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Digital Impact was created by the Digital Civil Society Lab at Stanford PACS and was managed until 2024. It is no longer being updated.

DI Reads

10 Reads for Your 2021 List

We made a list of notable books (and a few articles) from 2020 that will inform and inspire you and your organization this year.

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A New Class of the ‘Tech Left-Behind’

A recent report suggests that while technology today is advantageous for some, the culture behind it debases the core tenets of human dignity.

Civic Freedom and the Pandemic

An alliance of CSOs and activists made recommendations to governments in response to “serious concerns about the state of civic space.”

Legitimizing True Safety

The the first in a series of discussions on race, tech, and civil society examines police surveillance in Detroit.

Digital Infrastructure in Times of Crisis

If digital infrastructure is the backbone of civil society and democratization, then why aren’t we doing more to protect it?

Who Watches the Watchers?

MIT’s new surveillance rating system is ready to “capture details of every significant automated contact tracing effort in the world.”

Finding Your Place on the Journey to Data Maturity, Part 2

UK-based Data Orchard shares key lessons from producing its first online self-assessment and benchmarking tool.

Finding Your Place on the Journey to Data Maturity, Part 1

UK-based Data Orchard is rolling out a self-assessment tool designed to empower nonprofits in their decision-making.

Facing the Challenge of an Evolving Digital Civil Space

Access Now’s Digital Security Helpline is helping to build people-first digital infrastructures, one content moderation request at a time.

Watched and Still Dying

Social justice advocate Tawana Petty writes, “We fear the unknown and what we don’t understand and sometimes that fear turns us into people we might not otherwise be.”

Creating a New Global Standard for Privacy and Location Sharing

A geolocation system developed by citizen scientists could provide potentially life-saving data without eroding the right to privacy.