{"id":19979,"date":"2025-04-17T19:09:53","date_gmt":"2025-04-17T18:09:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/civictech.guide\/?p=19979"},"modified":"2025-11-28T15:13:36","modified_gmt":"2025-11-28T15:13:36","slug":"graveyard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/civictech.guide\/graveyard\/","title":{"rendered":"Graveyard"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Civic Tech Graveyard<\/a>\u00a0is where you can visit, celebrate, and pay your respects to the projects that are no longer with us. This collection was originally created for the purposes of\u00a0original research by Micah Sifry and Matt Stempeck<\/a>. We\u2019ve continued updating it with new entrants in the years since.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the main objectives of the Civic Tech Field Guide is to help the field’s builders and funders learn what didn’t work, so they can make and fund things that do. Which makes this page one of the most important on this site.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Visit the Graveyard<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

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Illustration by Lorin Camargo<\/em><\/p>\n

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Some of the projects were experiments that proved a point and weren’t meant to endure. Others were fantastic, heavily funded flame-outs that ignored lessons learned by their predecessors. As The Museum of Failure<\/a> puts it, “The majority of all innovation projects fail and the museum showcases these failures to provide visitors a fascinating learning experience. Every item provides unique insight into the risky business of innovation.” Ditto.<\/p>\n

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Or, as the authors of Digital Tools for a Responsive Government<\/a> put it, “The history of civic technology is littered with discarded tools. Too often, well-intentioned city governments establish tools that never gain user attention, tools that obtain attention from select communities but fail to attract a broad user base over time, and tools that do little more than create a theater of civic engagement without actually increasing government responsiveness, thereby leading to a quick demise.”<\/p>\n

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Recommended reading\u200b\u200b<\/h2>\n

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