• Promoting transparent governance is a problem around the world that has been increasing in the digital age; governments often come into office accusing the previous administration of a lack of transparency, but then fail to uphold transparent practices themselves.
• How do we engage political networks and link them to social media networks?
• In closed societies, many technologies are blocked, monitored, or are difficult to access due to high costs or other factors. How do activists communicate effectively and safely in such situations?
• It is important that activists and organizations employ technology-enabled solutions that address political goals by enhancing well-established organizing methods, and avoid employing technology-driven solutions for which technologies are built without being designed to support an established approach, and thus do not advance larger political objectives or become sustainable.
• Many areas around the world do not have the infrastructure and level of connectivity for Web-based and mobile campaigns; it is important to always employ technologies that are appropriate to the environment in which they’ll be used.
• It is a challenge to adapt and adopt technologies and approaches from very different political, infrastructural, and cultural environments.
• Financial restrictions, as well as a lack of software developers, make it difficult for some organizations and individuals to create the tools they need.
• It is a challenge to explore innovative approaches to support democratic or political goals in risk-averse environments in which funders or implementers may be unwilling to invest the needed resources and take on the associated risk of failure.

• Technologies themselves do not usually solve the problem of creating good governance or effective political organizing; they are often best used to encourage traditional offline organizing activities.
• To attract members and/or viewers, Web site and online platform builders cannot forget the importance of design and using good visualizations. Making information accessible through tools, such as maps, charts, graphs and other creative approaches, can clarify and enhance messages. Some sites can even use “flashy,” “cool,” or humorous approaches to engage visitors, especially youth.
• Using icons and even colors that are relevant to the local context can increase interest in a site or project. For example, the ¡Cuidemos el Voto! project used the colors of the Mexican flag on its Web-mascot’s costume. Calling on local individuals and NGOs to be involved in creating tools can also promote buy-in and build capacity.
• It is important to understand which technology tools and platforms are used in a given country and use them as opposed to creating new tools. For example, different social networking sites are widely used in countries around the world, and in some countries text messaging for data collection may be more appropriate than call centers because of mobile service costs
• Identifying local bloggers, activists, journalists, and people of influence can help bring more informal reporting into the mainstream media. Integrating social media tools (such as Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, etc.), as well as blogs or Web site tools, such as custom widgets, can help political network sites or platforms reach a larger audience by driving traffic from a third-party source. Including different types of tools on a single platform (such as videos, RSS feeds, blogs, etc.) can also help to raise interest.
• To increase transparency, governments and organizations should make their data available to the public and it should be complete, raw, and available in real-time. This approach can help citizens hold their governments accountable and can increase oversight. If one lacks the skills to put this data on the Web and local Web developers are not available, seeking technical support from a community of open source developers for a project can be an effective way to get people from different countries to volunteer to help.
• Data from governments is often dense and therefore daunting.  It can be helpful if organizations can sift through the data and develop tools and visualizations, such as maps, graphs, or charts, which make the information more accessible. Putting this information on the Web can easily increase the number of people who can access it.
• In systems in which technologies are being used to report fraud or a lack of transparency, such as a crowd-sourcing application, it is helpful to have a feedback mechanism so people know what issues are being responded to and how. Ultimately, this will help individuals to understand if the reporting process was effective.
• Tools, such as short wave radio, satellite television, cell phones, etc., can be used in democracy work in situations where there is low infrastructure and/or political challenges to operating.
• The international community should help political parties, NGOs, civil society, human rights defenders, etc. to own the media in societies where it is not free.
• Using humor is a way to make Web sites seem less threatening in closed or semi-closed societies.
• Connecting people through global networks can help the democratic experience through a cross-cultural sharing of ideas. Having translation services available for cross-cultural exchange can be especially helpful.
• In citizen reporting, one needs to rely on administrators to cull through incoming reports to ensure that information has been verified. A certain amount of inaccuracy is to be expected, but to be as accurate at the outset as possible, and to have guidelines for the kind of information that should be allowed on a site, is essential.

The presentations and resources from this panel (and others) are available at www.ndi.org/wmdpublications.