Terms of Reference: Technical Partner for the Civic Tech Lab
Overview:
The Digital Democracy Initiative (DDI) at CIVICUS is seeking a highly experienced Technical Partner to provide structured technical support to its civic-tech lab cohort. The partner will ensure that solutions are secure, scalable, and functional, while also offering ongoing technical guidance to the DDI programme team. This role emphasizes proactive, hands-on support that strengthens the technical capacity of both the cohort and the programme.
Location: Remote- Open globally, with preference for applicants from the Global South
Duration: 12 Months
Application Deadline: 15th March 2026
About CIVICUS
CIVICUS is a global alliance of civil society organisations and activists dedicated to strengthening citizen action and protecting and expanding civic space worldwide. Through research, advocacy, mobilisation and public engagement, CIVICUS works to expose threats to civic freedoms, influence policy and practice, and support collective civil society responses across diverse contexts.
About the Digital Democracy Initiative
The Digital Democracy Initiative (DDI) is a programme that emerged from Denmark’s Tech for Democracy initiative in response to the shrinking democratic and civic space. Its objective is “to promote and protect local inclusive democratic space in the digital era”. The initiative is implemented by a consortium of partners comprising Access Now, CIVICUS, Digital Defenders Partnership, Global Focus, European Partnership for Democracy, Fondo de Mujeres del Sur, Witness, and IWGIA. The Digital Democracy Initiative, Enable & Amplify Project, led by CIVICUS in partnership with Global Focus, aims to see that inclusive democracy and civic space are expanded and protected through the improved use of digital technology for civic engagement. Its target groups are local civil society actors operating in restrictive contexts in the global south.
Background
CIVICUS DDI Initiatives: Over recent years, DDI’s work across elections programming, civic space monitoring, the Digital Action and Learning (DAL) programme, regional hackathons, and other digital pipelines has generated a significant body of civic-tech initiatives with demonstrated relevance and civic value. These span domains including countering misinformation and disinformation through AI-enabled fact-checking tools, protecting electoral integrity, enabling digital organising and mobilisation (including DAO and blockchain models), increasing and promoting civic engagement, and mitigating digital threats to civic space and citizen action.
Addressing Persistent Gaps in Civic-Tech: Despite this progress, a persistent structural gap has emerged: many promising civic-tech solutions stall at the pilot or early-maturity stage. They demonstrate real-world use and civic value but lack the structured technical reinforcement, governance readiness, implementation planning, and sustained mentorship needed to transition into scalable, deployable, and sustainable public-interest infrastructure. Solutions remain fragile, localised, or dependent on individual champions rather than becoming robust systems that civil society organisations, institutions, and communities can adopt and replicate at scale.
About the Civic Tech Lab (CTL): The Civic Tech Lab (CTL) has been established as a new DDI work area to address this critical gap. It is designed as a scale-up accelerator—not an incubator or a seed-funding mechanism—that provides structured, time-bound support to advanced civic-tech solutions, enabling them to move from tested prototypes into deployable, scalable public-interest infrastructure that strengthens democracy and civic space globally.
The CTL will support a cohort of up to 20 mature civic-tech solutions, each receiving up to USD 20,000 in catalytic funding, over a nine-month structured programme period (May 2026–February 2027). The Lab aims to ensure that emerging solutions are tested in diverse civic contexts drawing from across all six regions; are technically robust and scalable while remaining civic-led and community-relevant; and are sustainably maintained beyond the project lifecycle.
The Technical Partner will play a foundational co-creation role in the CTL, shaping the milestone architecture, scale-readiness benchmarks, technical accountability framework of the Lab before cohort launch, and providing sustained technical mentorship and accompaniment throughout the programme period.
1. Objectives of the Assignent
The Technical Partner will serve as a core delivery partner, moving beyond ad-hoc or on-call support to provide structured mentorship that ensures civic-tech solutions in the cohort are technically robust, secure, functionally mature, scalable, and big tech resilient (where possible). The partner will also provide broader technical accompaniment to the DDI programme team.
Specifically, the Technical Partner will:
- Co-design and operationalise the CTL milestone framework across three domains: Technical, Implementation, and Impact.
- Define and apply a scale-readiness rubric aligned with the programme’s maturity criteria and the expectations of USD 20,000 in catalytic funding.
- Provide structured technical mentorship across the full cohort of up to 20 solutions.
- Ensure capacity realism through a defined partner-to-project support model that maintains quality across the portfolio.
- Strengthen documentation, deployment pathways, and ecosystem readiness for all supported solutions.
- Provide long-term technical accompaniment to all DDI team members overseeing civic-tech solutions developed as part of other DDI initiatives beyond the Civic Tech Lab, ensuring coherent technical guidance across the broader DDI programme.
- Deliver structured training and capacity-building initiatives for CIVICUS DDI focal officers to enhance their technical proficiency across key domains, including UI/UX design, AI fundamentals, data security, blockchain, and IT platform architecture ensuring a robust understanding of the prevailing technological landscape. Develop specific digital products for the other CIVICUS initiatives
Scope of Work
A. Co-Creation and Programme Design
During the preparation phase, the Technical Partner will:
- Collaborate with the CIVICUS DDI team to finalise the CTL Programme Framework, including mandatory and flexible milestones, indicators, and assessment criteria.
- Develop a structured Scale-Readiness Checklist that outlines the criteria for assessing the readiness of civic-tech solutions to scale.
- Support technical vetting and due diligence of shortlisted applicants during the selection cycle.
- Lead on the in-person co-creation convening (which will take place before participant contracts are signed; clarity from the convenings will inform the refinement of proposals that will be used for participant contracts).
- Propose a clear delivery model (e.g., centralised review model, cluster-based support model, or hybrid), including realistic capacity allocation across up to 20 solutions.
- Contribute to the design of baseline technical assessment tools.
B. Technical Mentoriship and Delivery
The Technical Partner will provide structured, milestone-based mentorship across the following domains:
B.1 IT, Platform Architecture and Scalability
- Platform stability and performance readiness assessments.
- Cloud/hosting and backend infrastructure alignment.
- Codebase review (where feasible and agreed with individual solution teams).
- Deployment pathway clarity, including replicability and reproducibility across contexts.
B.2 UI/UX and Accessibility
- Expert design reviews for user-facing interfaces.
- User feedback loop integration into development cycles.
- Accessibility standards guidance aligned with civic-tech usage contexts.
- Support for user-testing integration into milestone reporting.
B.3 Security and Data Governance
- Data protection and privacy compliance review appropriate to each solution’s operational context.
- Risk analysis for politically sensitive civic environments, including assessments of governance risks and regulatory dependencies.
- Mitigation strategies for digital harm and misuse.
- Application of a basic security audit checklist applied consistently across all cohort partners.
B.4 Emering Tecnologies (Where Relevant)
- Advisory on AI governance implications for civic-tech solutions.
- Blockchain architecture feasibility (if applicable to specific solutions).
- Ethical technology considerations, including responsible AI deployment and AI Governence.
B.5 Structured Mentorship Cadence and Capacity Building
- Minimum bi-monthly technical review sessions per solution (with flexibility for higher-need cases).
- Group clinics or thematic technical workshops delivered across the cohort.
- Written milestone validation feedback at agreed reporting intervals.
- DDI Capacity-Building Sessions & Modules—Comprehensive trainings and session modules for DDI focal officers and partners on technology, UI/UX, AI, data security, blockchain, and architecture.
C. Broader DDI Technical Accompaniment
Beyond the Civic Tech Lab cohort, the Technical Partner is expected to provide long-term technical accompaniment to the DDI programmatic focal officers taking lead on the implementation of civic-tech related activities that form part of DDI’s broader programme portfolio. This includes providing guidance on technical strategy, architecture decisions, and scaling considerations for digital tools that sit outside the CTL cohort but are part of the broader DDI programme portfolio. This accompaniment ensures coherent, consistent technical quality across all DDI digital work and enables the DDI team to make informed decisions on technology-related matters.
D. Digital Product Development for CIVICUS and Civic Space Ecosystem
As part of the deliverables under this engagement, the Technical Partner will also develop an AI Chatbot for CIVICUS Research and Analysis insight generation. The partner will develop an AI-powered chatbot that will be trained on CIVICUS Monitor reports, State of Civil Society (SoCS) reports, and broader historical research and analysis produced across CIVICUS initiatives.
Its purpose is to enable users to generate synthesised, comparative, and contextualised insights on civic space through natural-language queries. Drawing from the full archive of relevant CIVICUS publications (including, but not limited to, the Monitor and SoCS), the chatbot should provide accurate, well-referenced, and context-aware responses.
The tool will support researchers, activists, journalists, policymakers, and other stakeholders in accessing civic space intelligence and producing real -time, evidence-based insights that reflect both historical trends and current realities
E. Monitoring, Documentation and Assessment
The Technical Partner will:
- Conduct baseline technical assessments for all selected solutions at programme onset.
- Validate milestone progress at mid-point and end-line.
- Contribute structured inputs to CIVICUS reporting requirements.
- Provide a comparative portfolio-level technical readiness synthesis across the cohort.
- Support updating the Digital Solutions Catalogue with verified technical improvements.
- Provide clear “deployment readiness” classification at various milestones and at cohort completion, using categories such as: Ready for Scale, Ready for Replication, or Requires Further Strengthening.
2. Deliverables
The Technical Partner will produce the following deliverables over the 12-month engagement:
| # | Deliverable | Description |
| 1 | Technical and Scale-Readiness Framework (Pre-Cohort) | Milestone framework across Technical, Implementation, and Impact domains; scale-readiness rubric; baseline assessment tool. |
| 2 | Baseline Technical Assessment Report | Technical baseline assessments for all 20 selected solutions. |
| 3 | Midline Technical Review | Mid-programme technical review memo with portfolio-level observations and solution-specific feedback. |
| 4 | Endline Technical Assessment and Deployment Readiness Report | End-of-programme assessment for all 20 solutions, including deployment readiness classification. |
| 5 | Cohort-Level Technical Synthesis Report | Portfolio-wide improvements; ecosystem implications; lessons for future CTL cohorts. |
| 6 | AI Chatbot for the CIVICUS Research and Analysis | AI-powered chatbot trained on past CIVICUS-led research, such as the Monitor and SoCS reports, providing synthesised and comparative civic space information. |
| 8 | DDI Capacity-Building Sessions & Modules | Comprehensive trainings and session modules for DDI focal officers and partners on technology, UI/UX, AI, data security, blockchain, and architecture. |
| 9 | Thematic Tech Support | Documented technical accompaniments for focal areas within the DDI project, including regional mechanisms and electoral integrity. |
| 10 | In-Person Participation & Lead Technical Support | Lead technical support at one in-person co-creation convening (before contracts are signed) and one close-out or learning convening (subject to programme structure). |
| 9 | Ongoing DDI Technical Accompaniment | Continuous technical guidance to DDI team members overseeing civic-tech solutions across all DDI initiatives beyond the CTL. |
3. Governance and Coordination
- The Technical Partner will coordinate and report to the CIVICUS DDI Programme Lead.
- A designated Technical Focal Point must be appointed by the partner organisation as the single point of contact for all CTL and broader DDI engagements.
- Monthly coordination calls with the CIVICUS DDI programme team are mandatory.
- The partner will collaborate, where applicable, with any advisory panel established for the CTL.
- The partner will not directly disburse funds to grantees; all financial management remains under CIVICUS.
- CIVICUS retains final decision-making authority regarding milestone approval and final tranche release for cohort participants.
- The in-person co-creation convening will take place before participant contracts are signed. Clarity and insights from the convenings will inform the refinement of participant proposals, which will then form the basis for contracting.
4. Qualifications and Selection Criteria
| Criterion | Requirement |
| Proven Track Record | Demonstrated experience scaling civic-tech or public-interest digital solutions from pilot to deployment, with a strong ability to operate effectively with civil society actors in diverse, resource-constrained, or politically sensitive contexts, particularly in the Global South. |
| Technical Breadth | Proven experience in software architecture, cybersecurity, data governance, UI/UX design, and functional development across platforms. |
| Technical Support | Experience delivering structured accelerator, portfolio-based, or cohort-based technical support programmes. |
| Project Management Capacity | Demonstrated ability to manage a diverse portfolio of projects with clear staffing allocation and reliable delivery. |
| AI Development and Governance | Experience building AI-powered tools and digital platforms, with knowledge in AI governance, ethical considerations, and policy frameworks for responsible implementation. |
| Programme Design | Experience developing similar structured programmes and frameworks that enable digital solutions to scale effectively |
5. Budget and Logistics
- The partner must provide a clear cost breakdown aligned with staffing allocation, expected level of support intensity across the cohort, and costs for digital product development (AI chatbot and civic space wiki). The budget should follow the below breakdown: Staff Costs – 30%, Admin/indirect costs – 5%, Programme Costs – 65%.
- Travel costs for CTL solution participants for agreed convenings will be covered under the CTL programme travel budget managed by CIVICUS.
6. Capacity and Risk Considerations
- The Technical Partner must clearly articulate how it will manage support intensity across up to 20 solutions without diluting quality, including proposed staffing ratios and workload distribution.
- Risk flags—including security vulnerabilities, governance weaknesses, scalability bottlenecks, and political or regulatory risks—must be formally documented during reviews and escalated where appropriate.
- CIVICUS retains final decision-making authority regarding milestone approvals and grant tranche releases for cohort participants.
- The partner should account for varying levels of technical maturity across the cohort and propose differentiated support approaches where needed.
- The partner should address sustainability considerations for the AI chatbot and civic space wiki, including maintenance, hosting, and long-term governance arrangements.
7. Detailed Submission Requirements
Please send your complete application package, including all the required documents below, to [email protected] by 15th March 2026 with the subject line: Proposal for Technical Partner for the Civic Tech Lab (CTL). We are open to accepting joint proposals from two organisations pooling together expertise for this call.
Required documents include:
Samples of frameworks, checklists, technical tools, or platforms developed (including links to AI or civic-tech solutions built).
Organisational profile and relevant experience (including examples of civic-tech scaling, accelerator-style technical support, and digital product development).
A technical proposal detailing the proposed delivery model, technical approach to the CTL milestone framework and mentorship model. (Maximum 10 pages)
Proposed approach to developing the AI chatbot, including indicative architecture, timeline, governance, and sustainability plan.
Detailed cost breakdown – aligned with the prescribed budget structure (Staff 30%, Admin 5%, Programme 65%) on excel.