What we believe

Code for All’s partner institutions operate under the following shared principles:

We show what’s possible. Using data-driven, user-centered and iterative methods, Code for All partners create digital interfaces to government that are simple, beautiful, and easy to use, and do this dramatically faster and cheaper than through traditional channels. Showing what’s possible changes the conversation, lowers the risk of experimentation, and creates political will for innovation in government.

We build for and with citizens. Engaging citizens in our work is central to our theory of change. Strong democracies rely on trust between citizens and government, and we believe that organizing the public to actively participate in improving bureaucracy and service delivery is the most productive way to build sustainable change in the public sector. We also support government and civil society to develop the capacity to effectively collaborate with the public.

We improve government and civil society, not politics. Code for All’s work focuses on opening and innovating the implementation of policy and the delivery of public services, through the administration and bureaucracy of governments and civil society. While we recognize the import of political reform and policy advocacy to the success of our work, we have purposely narrowed our focus to the areas where citizens are most likely to come into contact with government.

We operate in public. We promote openness in our work and in the work of our civil society/government partners. All of our digital tools are open source. We actively encourage documentation, sharing, collaboration, and reuse of all of our tools, programs, and processes.

We help build an ecosystem. Whenever possible we reuse existing tools, standards and platforms, encouraging integration and extension. We operate as a global community, leveraging each other’s knowledge and resources, because all of our work is better if we are connected.