FAQ
All the answers to your questions about the OGP Toolbox

What is the OGP Toolbox?

The OGP Toolbox is a collaborative platform that gathers digital tools developed and used throughout the world by organizations to improve democracy and promote transparency, participation and collaboration.

The OGP Toolbox is designed as a social network: concrete use cases, technical criteria informed by the community and recommendations in the form of tool collections allow to benefit from the experience of users that have already implemented existing solutions.

What can I find in the OGP Toolbox?

The platform showcases 4 types of items:

Tool

A digital tool is either a computer program (software, application) or an online service (website, platform, resource).

Use case

A use case is a concrete example showing how one or multiple tools were used by an organization.

Organization

An organization is either the user or the developer of a tool, and is part of the public sector (government, administration, parliament, subnational entity), the private sector (company, startup) or the civil society (non-profit organization, movement).

Collection

A collection is a list of tools recommended by a contributor. The same as bookmarks or favorites, but for tools!

Why do we need an OGP Toolbox?

The OGP Toolbox aims at empowering organizations by sharing resources and experiences. The objective is to facilitate cooperation and the implementation of concrete engagements related to the open government through the appropriation of digital tools.

The platform enables to find the most adapted tool to each project or initiative through search and comparison functionalities by category, use case, organization or technical criterion. The idea is to simplify access and manipulation of digital tools for everyone.

Who is the OGP Toolbox for?

The OGP is intended to all public sector, private sector and civil society organizations that develop projects to promote democracy and promote transparency, participation and collaboration. Any engaged citizen willing to be introduced to new tools and to discover particular use cases will be able to access relevant information, and to get in touch with the users’ community.

In which languages is the OGP Toolbox available?

The OGP Toolbox is available in English and French. The platform is crowdsourced, which means that other than the online interface (translated by Etalab), any content can be modified and translated by users, such as the description of tools and use cases, as well as the tags used to categorize them (see below). Content will be displayed in the language you configured. If an element is not available in your language, it will be displayed in English by default, with an invitation to translate it.

How are tools and use cases categorized?

Rather than classify each tool (and their use cases) in monolithic and exclusive categories (i.e. “a tool cannot be in more than one category”), the platform is based on tags, allowing to qualify each tool and each usage with as many key words as necessary. This is called social tagging or folksonomy.

These tags are represented by bubbles. By cliking in different bubbles, you're simply searching in the Toolbox the tools and use cases matching those key words. Results are updated in real-time on the page.

How can I add information about a tool, a use case or a collection?

It's easy. Creat your account on the platform and click on “Add” at the top right of the screen. You will be guided!

How are contributions moderated?

The OGP Toolbox is based on community moderation. Data from the harvested catalogues and users’ contributions are automatically sort out through an open vote system. For each field, the most popular suggested description is highlighted in the tool, use case or organization card. The vote on available propositions is accessible by clicking on the “edit” button at the right of each field.

What is the source of the data?

The OGP Toolbox data comes from multiple sources:

  • Existing catalogs are regularly harvested to feed and update the data base:
    • Appstream Debian
    • Civicstack
    • Tech Platforms for Civic Participation
    • Ultimate Debian Database
    • Wikidata
    • Wiki Nuit Debout
    • ParticipateDB
  • OGP Toolbox users can create new tools, use cases and organizations, or edit existing ones.

Where can I find the source code of the OGP Toolbox?

How can I access the data?

The OGP Toolbox is an open source (AGPL License) and open data project (CC0 License), that's why we publish its source code as well as all harvested data. You'll find all informations and resources on this page:

https://framagit.org/ogptoolbox/ogptoolbox-ui/

How can I report a bug or suggest a new feature?

If you can't contribute directly to the code of the OGP Toolbox (cf. previous question), you can still help us by telling us about the problems you've encountered on the platform or about your ideas to improve it. Please file a new issue on this page:

https://framagit.org/ogptoolbox/ogptoolbox-ui/issues

How can I contact the team behind the OGP Toolbox?

For all questions, please send us an email:

info@ogptoolbox.org