OpenUpSA

03/06/2026

🌍 You're invited to our next brown bag session!

On 11 June 2026, OpenUp and Africa Data Hub are hosting a free online session exploring GIBSON – a tool that makes exploring NASA satellite imagery data simple and accessible.

OpenUp developer Dirk Meerkotter will show how GIBSON streamlines browsing NASA GIBS imagery layers, making geospatial data easier to navigate for everyone.

📅 11 June 2026
🕐 1:00–2:00 PM SAST
💻 Online via MS Teams

Register here: https://buff.ly/q8s3ghL

01/06/2026

Is South Africa's parliament truly representative, or just diverse on paper?

OUTA - Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse's new Indicators for Democratic Parliaments report (Target 7: Representative Parliament) finds that while our electoral system is strong, real influence remains unevenly distributed. Women, youth, persons with disabilities and smaller parties still face barriers to meaningful participation in leadership and decision-making.

Presence is not enough. Read the full assessment on ParlimeterSA: https://www.parlimeter.org.za/post/representative-parliament

Parliamentary Monitoring Group - PMG

29/05/2026

Turning a less-than-ideal situation into an opportunity. 🌱

The DDISA team has turned the content from the workshop we were scheduled to present at RightsCon26 into a free DIY online resource – Ubuntu Economics: Building Sustainable Funding Models for Digital Democracy in Sub-Saharan Africa.

If your organisation is working on democracy and civic tech projects and grappling with funding sustainability, this is for you. It includes practical activities, revenue mapping, a pitch framework and a budgeting sheet – all free to access.

Blog article 👉 https://buff.ly/fUSLYei
Straight to the workshop 👉 https://buff.ly/BOUKUrX

CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation Civic Tech Innovation Network

28/05/2026

Putting information online and making it usable are two very different things.

OpenUp and OUTA - Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse dig into the parliamentary data gaps that ParlimeterSA is working to close in this ITWeb feature. 👉 https://www.itweb.co.za/article/the-data-behind-democracy-how-to-fix-broken-pipelines-and-make-oversight-measurable/lwrKxq3Y2rN7mg1o

Explore accessible parliamentary data on ParliMeter today👉 https://www.parlimeter.org.za/

21/05/2026

Ever wonder what it actually takes to make government data useful? OpenUp Research and Data Lead Carl Teffo explains exactly how the team behind ParlimeterSA's new BRRR dashboard tackled it.

Starting with hundreds of inconsistent PDFs and no way to link the same parliamentary ask across years, the team built a pipeline: Hand-curate, extract, match. Months of manual work, then scaled with an LLM, to surface which budget recommendations are new, which are ongoing, and which have been quietly ignored for years.

Read Teffo's full story about the methodology behind Parlimeter's new BRRR dashboard👇
📖 https://www.parlimeter.org.za/post/how-we-turned-parliamentary-recommendations-into-a-searchable-thread-map
📊 https://dashboard.parlimeter.co.za/brrr/

OUTA - Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse

Each year, Parliament's committees publish dense PDF reports. We extracted recommendations by hand, then used an LLM to scale – so anyone can track which "asks" were repeated.

20/05/2026

While we finalise our Cohort 1 shortlist, we're sharing some data highlights from the over 100 applications we received for the Digital Democracy Innovation in Sub-Saharan Africa (DDISA) Fund. 🌍

The scale and diversity of democracy work happening across Sub-Saharan Africa is extraordinary, and we are proud to be part of supporting it. Swipe through to explore for yourself.

📍Cohort 1 announcements coming soon.
🕰️Cohort 2 opens June 2026.
👉 https://ddisafund.org/

CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation Civic Tech Innovation Network

19/05/2026

Parliamentary committees make written, public, on-the-record budget recommendations every year, with deadlines attached. So why do so many go unanswered?

ParliMeter just launched a new tool to help South Africans find out. The BRRR dashboard lets you search and filter over 5,800 recommendations across seven years, tracking which departments keep keep ignoring the same asks, year after year – or where parliamentary recommendations have made an impact.

This is the kind of transparency tool democracy needs. Explore it today 👇
📖 https://www.parlimeter.org.za/post/parlimeters-newest-feature-reveals
📊 https://dashboard.parlimeter.co.za/brrr/

OUTA - Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse ParlimeterSA

65% of Parliament's budget recommendations have gone unanswered – for years. ParliMeter's new BRRR dashboard finally makes over 5,800 recommendations easily accessible.

08/05/2026

The cancellation of RightsCon this week was a blow to the digital democracy community, but it also tells us something important about the state of digital sovereignty in Africa.

In her latest blog, OpenUp Executive Director Gabriella Razzano unpacks why "digital sovereignty" is harder to achieve than policy documents suggest – and what African governments, regulators and civil society actually need to get there.

A timely read as our DDISA Fund grantees are set to begin their work across the region soon.

Read more 👉 https://openup.org.za/blog/the-practice-of-digital-sovereignty

Civic Tech Innovation Network CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation

A policy idea with some under-discussed underpinnings.

06/05/2026

Constituency offices exist so that when your water stops running, your clinic is understaffed, or your school is falling apart, someone in Parliament hears about it.

But an analysis of more than 5,200 parliamentary questions from 2025 by Parlimeter found that the majority of parliamentary activity is not driven by what’s happening on the ground. Opposition MPs use questions strategically to name specific towns and facilities, but governing coalition engagement often happens informally – with no public record. Local issues tend to surface in Parliament only when they reach crisis point.

Check out the ParliMeter constituency offices map for more information on parliamentary representation in your area: constituency-offices.pa.org.za

🔗 Read the full analysis: https://buff.ly/LN1BZZ7

OUTA - Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse Parliamentary Monitoring Group - PMG

Only 1 in 5 parliamentary questions reflect local issues. Are constituency offices really working or just creating the illusion of accountability?

04/05/2026

DDISA Fund Cohort 1 applications are now closed, and we are thrilled by the response! 🎉

Over 100 applications were received. We are working through each one and hope to notify successful applicants within the next few weeks.

Missed this round? Cohort 2 opens June 2026. Stay tuned!

👉 https://buff.ly/mGM5tzw

Civic Tech Innovation Network CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation