Innovation Advisory · Framework 14
5 questionsThe Rapid Civic Tech Canvas
Five questions to sit with before building a public tool at the speed of the news cycle that produced its need. Drawn from the Democracy by Design build.
What piece of the public record will be gone in a week if you do not act?
Rapid civic tech only earns its speed when the artefact it protects is genuinely time-limited. Protest placards discarded by Monday, a leaked WhatsApp screenshot pulled by Tuesday, a page taken down by Wednesday. If the record is not disappearing, this is not the framework to reach for — build slowly instead.
Who could this tool hurt — and what have you built in before you shipped?
The instinct to ship fast is right; the instinct to add safety later is wrong. Identify the vulnerable subjects (protesters, whistleblowers, minors, sources), specify the harms (identification, state retaliation, targeting), and put the guardrails in the first commit. Auto face-obscuring, verification of takedown requests, no logs of submitter identity — decide these before the domain name.
What will this tool refuse to become — even when asked politely?
A one-line archive of protest posters becomes a general news outlet, a general commentary platform, then a general political site — unless the refusal is written down. Decide the scope in the first hour. Write the refusals into the editorial guidelines. When somebody asks the tool to widen, point them at the refusals.
How do you care for the record without claiming certainty about it?
Every submission gets a human check plus an automated pass — EXIF, metadata, cross-reference against public sources. Publish the chain openly; do not pretend the archive is a court. An archive that says what it can and cannot verify behaves like a witness. An archive that claims certainty can be used against its own subjects.
Can this ship at the speed of the news cycle that produced its need — and if not, is it the right project for that cycle?
Some civic tools have to exist within days of the moment they respond to; others should not be rushed. The two-hour test is not that everything should ship in two hours. It is that the moment which produced the need has to still be present when the tool arrives. If it will not, the tool is a memorial. If it will, ship.
The stance the canvas is taking
Rapid civic tech is a legitimate mode of practice, not a shortcut around the slower canvases. The five questions are the discipline the speed requires — the guardrails, the refusal, the verification chain, and the honesty about what the moment can and cannot support. A tool that answers these five in the first hour is a tool that survives its second week.
If any of the five answers is unclear when you sit down to build, do not build yet. Sit with the question that failed until it clears. The rapid part is the shipping, not the thinking.