Welcome to DigiCiti!

This website is essentially a blog that will share feature descriptions, wire frames, and development plans for the full Digital Citizen website which is currently in early startup stages.  This blog is just beginning, and will grow exponentially over the next few weeks or until the project has sufficient funding to produce a prototype.

“DigiCiti.org will create a fun and efficient online environment for the public to engage in politics. In simple terms, it will be a social networking site that focuses on political interaction by combining resources for debating, learning, writing legislation, and much more.  It will fill a void in the niche demand for political social networking and offer a collection of tools enhancing the public’s ability to govern.  Using tactics of gamification, DigiCiti will make being politically active an easy daily activity and stop it from seeming like a daunting, pointless, or taboo effort. It will draw audiences of all ages and welcome increasingly internet savvy generations to the political sphere on more familiar terms. Over time, increased participation translates into a more effective democracy with an active and informed citizenry. Having low voter turnout rates and limited issue awareness, the US has great room for improvement in voter participation. The broad mission of the site is to enhance democracy in the US by improving the quality and frequency of political activity using modern technological solutions.”

After careful consideration, it has been decided that initial stages of development for the site will focus on offering the Social Networking and Debate features.  In an ideal world, it would be possible to create all of the features discussed in the Feature Development section all at once, but that would essentially require the overnight formation of a large fully staffed organization.  While the goals of the Digital Citizen project remain ambitious, it is sensible to make incremental gains.  The social networking features are not the most unique but they provide a functional baseline many other features depend on.  Its development will help us gain popularity and traction as a new organization.

This project is in need of web design and programming support so if you, or anyone you know, is committed to improving democracy and has technical talents, don’t hesitate to contact us!

To learn more or support the project, email digiciti@outlook.com, follow this blog, and share this site via your choice social media methods.  Comments on all areas of the site are also very much appreciated.

Please check the various pages of this site to learn more about planned content and to get a preview of how political engagement can be revolutionized!

Development has Resumed!

Dear Digital Citizens,

It’s been a long time since I’ve posted regarding this project but I assure you that not a day has passed where I wasn’t taking a step toward making this vision a reality.  It’s been a long time because I’ve since learned to develop web applications, and now I’m proud to say that I can initiate development of this project all on my own.  Ultimately I will need a team of talented engineers etc, but it will help tremendously that I can now produce much of this application, and will be a more capable leader of this project.  I’m currently building features little by little each week and I’m very excited to finally have the capacity to build a working prototype.

If you’re interested in checking out what the app does so far (very very little) feel free to sign up and test it out here.

Note that accounts and any changes you make may be erased as development continues.  If you use your actual email address during sign up I can contact you to give updates.

This is still pre-pre-pre-alpha stages so most of what’s there is ugly and only used to test the functionality of some baseline features.  It will be dramatically overhauled for style and usability purposes once more of the essential programming is in place and the foundation of the application is stronger.

To follow development stay tuned here, or keep an eye on the GitHub repository.

Thanks for reading and showing an interest in enhancing democracy. Stay tuned!

-Mike Tarkington