For a thorough explanation of the project concept, with supporting videos, prototype previews, and more, visit the blog site here.

The first pieces of the application are currently hosted here but there is already more content in development.

I started working on DigiCiti back in 2011 while I was studying political science and realized how much our antiquated political processes could be improved by use of ubiquitous technological advances. When I started the project I was not able to program web or mobile applications but I managed to create some mock-up prototypes that were semi functional. As of July 2017 I completed a coding bootcamp program and started developing digiciti.org as a side project.

“DigiCiti.org will create a fun and efficient online environment for the public to engage in politics. In simple terms, it will be a social networking site that focuses on political interaction by combining resources for debating, learning, writing legislation, and much more. It will fill a void in the niche demand for political social networking and offer a collection of tools enhancing the public’s ability to govern. Using tactics of gamification, DigiCiti will make being politically active an easy daily activity and stop it from seeming like a daunting, pointless, or taboo effort. It will draw audiences of all ages and welcome increasingly internet savvy generations to the political sphere on more familiar terms. Over time, increased participation translates into a more effective democracy with an active and informed citizenry. Having low voter turnout rates and limited issue awareness, the US has great room for improvement in voter participation. The broad mission of the site is to enhance democracy in the US by improving the quality and frequency of political activity using modern technological solutions.”

There are a number of other tools and networks attempting to offer similar features but none have done it quite right and thus they are far from attaining their goals. Digital Citizen can "move the needle closer to the mark" by inspiring and working with other organizations which share in the same mission.

The project was started in Sinatra, but has been recreated in Rails 5 with some basic testing and planning as well as confirmed usability of ProPublica API for data on members of congress and their photos from a public repository of US data. The project will be built primarily in Rails 5 for the web application and this will double as a backend API to support the React Native front-end for the mobile application.