Who’s doing what in the field of Responsible Technology?

Screenshot from Doteveryone’s Responsible Tech Organisational Ecosystem Map

Doteveryone’s mission is to champion responsible technology for a fairer future. But we know we’re not alone in wanting to see technology consider its contribution to and consequence on society.

As part of the support we received from the Omidyar Network we wanted to understand the network of organisations working in the field of Responsible Technology — or whatever label they each choose to use — and see where they can be better co-ordinated.

We started by attending and speaking at events across Europe and generally trying to understand what is going on out there. Through desk research, we also identified over 200 organisations across Europe who are active in the field of responsible and ethical tech.

Responsible Tech

Next, we linked up with the Digital Life Collective, a co-operative that researches, develops, funds and supports “Tech We Trust” to use Kumu, — a data visualisation platform that helps you organize complex information into interactive relationship maps.

Together we built a network map which explores the ecosystem of what might be trustworthy technologies to help us, and the wider field, understand who does what and where.

Why map?

A map may be able to help initiate the kind of infrastructure that’s important for an emerging field. It can help identify relationships between organisations and spot key influencers to make it easier to collaborate and share work.

Our map can:

  • Show who’s connected to whom and who is doing what
  • Help funders identify which themes and geographies currently have — or don’t have — activities
  • Help people and organisations to think more strategically about who and what they are trying to influence
  • Identify clusters by sector, country, activities, and especially outcomes
  • Help organisations see who else is concerned about the same topics

Sharing information across communities and networks is crucial if they are to be purposeful, intelligently adaptive and resilient to changing and challenging times.

Map showing how organisations group around different themes

Creating greater connectivity is helpful for building trust, developing more alignment (around a shared identity or outcomes) and facilitating collective action.

And it can lead to new possibilities too. A map can start to answer more complex questions like: “where should we intervene to best make progress?” and “how can we see and contribute to long terms outcomes we care about?”

Build the power of the map — add yourself!

To be part of the map you need to fill in a simple Google form. It takes no more than 10 minutes to fill in basic information about your organisation (location, name, social media etc) and some information about your areas of work and main audiences.

Thank you to Kumu mapper and co-founder of the Digital Life Collective, Christina Bowen who helped us develop the map and work with Kumu.


Who’s doing what in the field of Responsible Technology? was originally published in Doteveryone on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.