Hold your government to its own word
Civicsmith is free software for a group of people who want to know whether their government is doing what it must: obeying the laws that bind it and the court decisions it is subject to, keeping the rules it set for itself and the promises it made. The group gathers the records, works out what they show, and publishes what it finds in a form anyone can check. Neighborhood groups, newsrooms, professional associations and offices checking their own work all use it the same way.
How a group uses it
- Gather the records. Members collect the records that bear on the question, from wherever they were published: the city's minutes, budgets, contracts and letters; state and federal regulations and reports; court decisions; the press releases and filings of private firms. Civicsmith keeps each one exactly as its source published it, with where and when it came from. Together these are the group's record.
- Ask a question. In the group’s own words: “Did the city collect the rent its lease requires?”
- Weigh the evidence. Members mark the passages of the record that bear on the question. Civicsmith grades each passage by how easily a stranger could check it, from a copy fetched straight from the office down to one person's word.
- Reach a finding. The group's answer to its question, resting on named evidence, with how strong that evidence is. A hunch is kept as a hunch; it never becomes a finding.
- Publish a case. The findings, their evidence and their strength, published together and signed by a member of the group. Anyone can read it and check it without asking the group.
What a group gets
- Its own copy of Civicsmith. Each group runs its own copy, in a Cloudflare account the group controls. Nobody else holds the group's work, the people who make Civicsmith included.
- Findings anyone can check. Every finding points to the passages it rests on and says how strong that evidence is, so a reader never has to take the group's word for it.
- Help for people who have never done this. A guide walks each common job step by step, from asking an office for a record to publishing a case. An AI assistant is optional: it answers only from what the group holds, says where it looked, and never concludes, signs or sends. Everything works without it.
- Free software. Civicsmith costs nothing. The group pays Cloudflare $5 a month for the account its copy runs in.
What Civicsmith does not do
- It takes no side on what policy should be. It asks only whether the government kept its word.
- It gives legal information, never legal advice.
- It publishes nothing a member has not signed, and it sends no email.
Already a member of a group?
Your group's Civicsmith has its own address, and you sign in there, not here: civicsmith.org holds no accounts. Ask your group for its address, or find it on your group's own website.
Questions
Write to the people who make Civicsmith: The address to write to is published here before the site opens.