How we do it

OpenUp builds on our civic technology roots through a variety of projects that seek to bring government and citizens closer together through data, technology and innovative-thinking. The advancement of active citizenship must consider the real conditions of the citizens and South African residents whose rights we hope to advance. OpenUp views user-centred design as not just a method for creating more effective technologies, but also as a method for empowering the communities we work with within the technology development process itself. We aim to Inform, Empower and Activate all the actors in the civic space.

OpenUp services our civic technology roots through a variety of projects that seek to bring government and citizens closer together through data, technology and innovative-thinking.

Open budget information

In the reporting period, our two most significant budgetary projects related to Vulekamali and Munimoney. Vulekamali is a collaborative project with the National Treasury and Imali Yethu, which makes government budget data and processes accessible to all. Munimoney is a collaborative project with the National Treasury and Imali Yethu, which makes municipal-level budget and financial management data and processes accessible to all. The unique government-civil society collaborations constitute essential open data infrastructure in the South African landscape.

In the reporting period, we importantly began the handover of the Vulekamali to the National Treasury’s internal development team. It is vital, as part of fostering a sustainable civic technology ecosystem, to both build the capacity within our partners to innovate and sustain their own technologies, and simultaneously ensure we help prevent vendor lockin (part of our method for doing that is through the preference for open source technologies, especially within the govtech landscape). 

It is vital, as part of fostering a sustainable civic technology ecosystem, to both build the capacity within our partners to innovate and sustain their own technologies...

Nevertheless, Munimoney continues to be co-developed with the National Treasury. In this year, and alongside our normal development updates and the expansion of datasets, we also added more informational videos. A little bird also tells us that the President of South Africa, on a presentation of Munimoney by government colleagues, was “impressed”. We too continue to be impressed with its utility :)

Open parliament

OpenUp has been awarded a grant in a consortium with the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (OUTA) and the Parliamentary Monitoring Group (PMG) from the European Union, to develop a parliamentary dashboard that aims to improve transparency and accountability.

The project’s main output  will be a parliamentary transparency dashboard. The dashboard will serve as a standalone site where up-to-date parliamentary data, analysis and insights will be shared openly. The dashboard's main goal will be to demystify parliament and make oversight simpler. At this early stage in the project, we are working to build tools that supercharge the data we have access to through PMG and People's Assembly, all the while looking for opportunities to improve reporting and data collection in areas we feel are critical to a holistic understanding of parliament. The project is able to leverage the collaborative development we have been doing with PMG for almost 10 years.

In this year, we launched the project and began with a significant focus on defining users and audience segmentation based on our historical work with the PMG and PA communities.

Wazimap

Our launch of Wazimap Next Generation - as a product refinement of Wazimap - has continued to supply a steady stream of income, whilst revolutionising social impact organisations ability to analyse and interpret multiple layers of data alongside GIS data.

OpenUp has an important qualification to our productisation approach, as a responsible social impact group. We continue to be primarily driven by the need to improve social impact, and thus are not product-driven in our solutions with our partners. You can see how this has resulted in our exploration of other GIS solutions where it is more appropriate (see below for example on the NU Landmap).

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CIVICUS Digital Democracy Defenders

We launched a great partnership with CIVICUS’s exciting new Digital Democracy Initiative and our friends at the Civic Tech Innovation Network to co-create with the digital democracy community of Sub-Saharan Africa a support mechanism for innovation. These activities are on-going, and assisting us in building a strong community of practice for regional innovators that will continue beyond the grant period.

How we do it

OpenUp’s expertise is in open-data powered, responsible innovation, which we leverage to help advance the positive impacts of a range of civil society, private sector and government partners. As part of our growth strategy, we have also begun great collaborations with like-minded private sector entities.We have also gained some important learnings through these newer types of partnership. In the previous financial year we were commissioned by Impact Amplifier to help them with data analysis and visualisation from their collaboration with Nando’s Peri Farms project. However, it was important to learn that sometimes private sector interests can mean different incentives, which derail responsible and effective data practices. We have taken these learnings to create a more strategic method for ensuring values-alignment with private companies, and our partnership with the Sishen Iron Ore Company Community Trust (SIOC) continues to act as a beacon of productive impact activities.

Journalism

SDG 16.10, which seeks to “...ensure public access to information and protect fundamental freedoms, in accordance with national legislation and international agreements”, is designed to advance journalism and media as part of information access activities - and as an advancement of transparency. OpenUp has been spearheading open data journalism support in South Africa, and Africa, for a decade and has continued to drive a number of activities for advancing data journalism and media freedom.

In this FY, our main mechanism for the advancement of this impact work was through our collaboration under the Africa Data Hub - and in partnership with several other civic technology organisations on the continent. Under these activities, we have been expanding our “Data Desk” activities - providing on-call support for data-related queries from our journalism community. Additionally, we have been investing in supported advertorials on climate-related issues with newsrooms (discussed later). We believe this will offer a novel approach to data journalism support and have begun impact monitoring to review this. An excellent example of this process was exemplified in the Inanda Dam story we helped to develop with Inkundla Yezindaba, an isiZulu newspaper based in KwaZulu-Natal.

We also continued our support of the National Lotteries Tool, which remains an excellent example not just of the potential of open data for accountability, but also of the nuance of impact (as well as delays in the impact of tools over time). Beginning in 2019, the tool was built in collaboration with investigative journalist Raymond Joseph to help make information about Lottery grants more transparent and keyword searchable. Our National Lotteries tool may have only had a small number of users in the reporting period, but those users have had a massive impact. The tool drove Ray’s investigations into fraud in our National Lotteries Board. This reporting not only won him the Taco Kuiper Award for Investigative Journalism but also directly contributed to the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) launching an investigation into the Lotteries Board. This has resulted in a preservation order recovering millions of rands. Impacts like these directly contribute to advancing SDG 16.6 - substantially reducing corruption and bribery in all their forms.

We also contribute to the advancement of impact journalism through our general support of the information and data ecosystem. For instance, one member of the Association of Independent Publishers uses our open Wazimap instance to understand her audience and inform her business practice.

Law and accessibility

SDG 16.3, which seeks to “...[p]romote the rule of law at the national and international levels and ensure equal access to justice for all”, is designed to help advance a just society and access to justice. OpenUp has significant experience in focused and impactful legal tech.

OpenUp co-developed a case management system for the legal advice offices coordinated through the Community Advice Offices South Africa, to help improve efficiencies and centralise data. As one of the users noted:

“Before Casefiles, it was difficult to have detailed oversight of cases that the paralegals were working on. Casefiles has made the tracking and management of cases extremely effective. I am now able to drill down on every case which makes it possible to characterise and understand our beneficiaries and the support they require.

We are now in a better position to develop and support our paralegals as we are able to identify the different types of cases that each of them face depending on where they are based.

To be honest we are very happy with the platform and the team at Open Up has been nothing but supportive in the onboarding process. They have also enabled modifications and additions unique to our requirements”.

Land and housing

SDG 11.1, which seeks to, “...[b]y 2030, ensure access for all to adequate, safe and affordable housing and basic services and upgrade slums”, seeks to advance spatial justice. 

We continue as the creators and custodians of the Evictions Guide that has assisted 1000s of tenants and landlords to better navigate the complicated and destabilising eviction process in South Africa.

In this FY we also co-developed a simple, interactive, open map in partnership with Ndifuna Ukwazi that shows the distribution of public land in the City of Cape Town: the Peoples Land Map. The Land Map was well received, with significant media attention - see for instance:

• A Daily Maverick Article; and
• A Cape Talk radio interview.

Rumour has it that the map has been reviewed prolifically within the City’s administration, spurring significant conversations. NU has used the map to great effect in three separate eviction cases, demonstrating the strong connections between information provisions and advocacy action! NU has developed an affidavit based on the map's data, and they use it to argue for better-located alternative accommodation when people are facing an eviction. The courts have viewed these affidavits positively.

NU used the map extensively in their People's Land Campaign wherein they submitted applications from communities across SA to get public land donated to them directly in terms of the State Land Disposal Act. The campaign is ongoing.

NU has been approached by the heads of three separate land and housing NGOs to be walked through the map and its data in order to see how they can use it in their own work. They have similarly been approached by other players in the social housing space for the same exercise, thus contributing to the broader just housing ecosystem.

Health

Data and technology have significant potential to help advance health and the SDG Goal 3 to “...[e]nsure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages”. 

We continue to support our legacy technology, the Medicines Pricing Register, which has become a central open source software advancing fair medicines pricing. The Tool simply and effectively provides users with regulated medicines pricing in South Africa in order to empower individual health decisions.

As one Doctor in the Department of Health and Wellness, Western Cape  noted:

“I work in RSA state healthcare. I have opened the MPR app at least once a week since I discovered it almost a decade ago…

Thank you very much for [MPR]. I’ve been using it since medical school days. Such as to check what PPI might be cheapest for a patient who needs to heal her PU and the hospital is stocked out, to search for trade names patients give you to the drug name so I can follow along, or simply to consider if my clinical decision for IV cloxacillan versus PO flucloxacillan is clinically warranted based on the price and in the best interest of distributive justice.

Your program has made a difference among the colleagues I’ve shown it to and helped contextualise massive dumps of data from government in a way thats easy to navigate.

Thank you.”

Our other contributions to the open source ecosystem also continue to assist, with Munimoney being actively used by a researcher in the National Department of Health to conduct research into budget monitoring and expenditure tracking on HIV/AIDs.

Significantly advancing our health informatics experience, we have begun partnering with the South African National Bioinformatics Institute to establish an infrastructure for African Public Health Labs, enabling seamless sharing of pathogen genomic data and its associated metadata. This great collaboration has engaged our data governance support skills, and is laying the foundations for truly profound and responsible health data sharing in the region, to advance African health. (edited)

Economy and youth

SDG Goal 8 seeks to “...[p]romote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all”, as a mechanism to promote sustainable and equal economies in the country - and SDG 8.6 more specifically seek to “..[b]y 2020, substantially reduce the proportion of youth not in employment, education or training”.

Our open source ecosystem advances this goal in several ways. We collaborated with the Presidency to co-develop the Presidential Employment Stimulus Dashboard. This dashboard has been used by academics and policymakers, for instance in this research on youth employment creation.

In the FY, our Munimoney API has also been used to power several independent web apps and Youth Explorer (our Wazimap instance with the Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit) has been used actively by policymakers in the Mpumalanga government, Western Cape government, and other government structures. 

We also promoted South African youth empowerment through our continued co-development of the Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit Basic Package of Support(BPS)  Case Management system, which has been improving efficiencies and case management services.

Water and sanitation

SDG Goal 6 seeks to “...[e]nsure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all”, as a mechanism to promote water justice. Our WaterWazi instance continued to promote water justice, with the investigative series of reports it inspired - Rivers of Sewage - being shortlisted for the Sigma Awards during the year.

Climate change

SDG Goal 13 demands us to “...[t]ake urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts”. OpenUp has had great success in building up a portfolio of climate change-focused work. Working under the Africa Data Hub, OpenUp launched our interactive story called “Unsettled Debt”. This explainer shows how a just energy transition that considers polluters' debt to Africa could both reduce emissions and boost living standards. As one climate activist noted about the story:

“Congratulations to you and the [OpenUp] team! I really enjoyed reading through it and it’ll be a great resource for our work".

This year we also began a collaboration with Green Connection, South Africa (these activities will be reported on in more detail in our next annual report).

Democracy and transparency

SDG 16.6 seeks to “...[d]evelop effective, accountable and transparent institutions at all levels”. Ahead of the scheduled 2024 National elections, OpenUp contributed to helping establish a strong - and prepared - democratic apparatus.

We co-developed a data dashboard with the My Vote Counts group creating interactive data visualisations on party political funding sources in South Africa. This provides interactive, open and simple access to funding data for oversight and research.

Again, our open source infrastructure has also contributed to fostering South African democracy. Political parties, like Progress, acknowledged using Wazimap for their campaigning strategy. Even the Electoral Commission has used it in their education activities. Importantly, we have been developing with the South African National Editors Forum an independent national elections Wazimap that leverages our previous collaboration for local government elections.

How we do it

In building capacity in our partners, OpenUp believes that - while data and technology are a potential source of empowerment - in addition the incorporation of innovation methods like agile project management, and user-centred design, are also a necessary focus. We also provide a wide range of service offerings to help our partners achieve their data and impact aims.

Datafying organisations

Investing in datafication empowers civil society and social impact organisations to enhance transparency, streamline operations, and demonstrate tangible outcomes. By harnessing the power of data, these organisations can optimise decision-making, amplify their impact, and foster a culture of accountability in pursuit of their mission. We provide a variety of data offerings for the advancement of our organisational partners.

Training

OpenUp’s TrainUp programme has grown as a consistent and rich stream of services. In this FY, we have launched an incredible data and digital training syllabus. Our Global Partnership for Sustainable Data’s Capacity Accelerator Network training activities (funded by the UN Foundation) have demonstrated our ability to conduct regular, highly technical training to a regional audience with significant consistency. With over 80 participants, many of whom represent African national statistics agencies, we conduct training three times a week. These activities look set to continue in the 2025 and 2026 FYs.

Our community data training programmes have also continued with their success - with our Rosh Pinah youth training resulting in 206 successfully completed surveys from a total town population of under 3000 people!

Demystifying innovation, technology and systems

An important part of our empowerment support is demystifying innovation and technology for our communities. Outside of our direct interactions with partners, we have also been building up Knowledge Work products supporting this kind of focus:

• With the support of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation (KAS) we hosted a workshop with the Parliamentary Monitoring Group (PMG) on the potential for incorporating Artificial Intelligence into their organisation strategy in December 2023;
• We launched with the Civic Tech Innovation Network the civic tech funding guide, “A Playbook Starter”, and its interactive website;
• We have constructed a template, and supporting blog, to help organisations design their internal AI Use policies: https://openup.org.za/blog/can-i-use-ai-for-this…; 
• We have constructed a tutorial on how to access Twitter data for accountability research (unfortunately, since become X the platform has changed access options): https://openup.org.za/blog/tweeting-for-accountability-exploring-npa-accountability-using-twitter;
• We have constructed a tutorial on how to make a request for information under the Promotion of Access to Information Act: https://openup.org.za/blog/empowering-yourself-how-to-access-information-through-paia
• We have constructed a tutorial on how to budget effectively for impact technology projects: https://openup.org.za/blog/how-to-budget-for-an-impact-technology-project; 
• We have constructed a series of Working Papers on issues of community and human-centred design strategies for the implementation of responsible technologies:some text
  • https://openup.org.za/blog/working-paper-ii-risk-and-design; and
  • https://openup.org.za/blog/supercharging-google-sheets-with-the-power-of-chatgpt.

Networks and community-building

We have begun consolidating our community and network-building activities as we move toward the launch of some of our incubator activities ahead of the 2024-2025 FY. The CIVICUS Digital Democracy community is emerging as an important new community, as are the CAN network participants and our Africa Data Hub journalist community.

We are active members of several important networks, such as the:

• The Code for All Network;
• The Civic Tech Innovation Network;
• The MySociety Access to Information Community of Practice;
• The African Alliance for Access Data;
• OpenHeroines; and
• The South African Procurement Working Group.

For technology-driven impact to flourish in the region, we need a vibrant and sustainable civic tech ecosystem. To contribute to this ecosystem, OpenUp regularly engages in conference and presentation activities, like:

• Auwal Socio-Economic Research Institute’s Future Leaders Programme (presentation given), March 2023
• Westerford High School Career Day (presentation given), March 2023
• Code for All’s International Women's Day Celebration (presentation given), March 2023
• RightsCon, June 2023
• Public Sector Innovation Conference, August 2023
• South African Internet Governance Forum (presentation given), October 2023
• Civic Tech Innovation Forum #AfricaFlows (presentations given), October 2023
• Code for All Summit (presentation given), September 2023
• NEMISA Datathon 2023 with Geekulcha (judged), February 2024

Operations

OpenUp continues our professionalisation goals. However, we took the difficult decision this year to close our Local Government and Codebridge Youth Programme. The reason for the pivot was as an implementation of our new Funding Strategy. As we have moved to more revenue activities, and as the broader grant funding environment remains constrained, programmatic activities (especially ones like those under Codebridge Youth with significant direct costs and constant communications needs) are difficult to sustain. The year has seen us focusing on our core value-add more significantly to help guide our revenue activities and grow our impact more sustainably. Centring impact is an essential guide for helping to make these kinds of organisational decisions.

Software Development

We generally adopt a low-tech approach; technology is a tool, and as such must be context-specific. This means actively choosing interventions that prioritise usability over stack preference — for instance, we have significantly benefited from the use of webflow.io for helping to implement highly responsive, simple websites, rather than pursuing mobile applications unecessarily. You can read about our preferred tech stack here. 

Our development philosophy is fundamentally open (and open source). This contributes not just to transparency and re-use, but also to sustainability for public service development (it means we avoid vendor lock-in, in particular). As part of this too, we are proud of our Github contributions, which can be reviewed here: https://github.com/OpenUpSA. This is in itself an indication of our contribution to the development of a capacitated and socially focused civic technology community, where we have almost 200 repositories with multiple forks and a few hundred stargazers.

Work with our Chief Technology Officer has seen us refining our technology offerings, and OpenUp are proud of the quality of technical service support we are able to provide to clients and partners.

Financial Summary

Interestingly in this FY, though we were anticipating a significant decline in income as our grant income reduced (and had planned for a 30% reduction) - our income decline was only around 6%, thanks to the professionalisation of our revenue service offerings.  

We continue to constrain our overheads outside of salaries, strictly. This helps us with our revenue funding income. However, we are seeing noticeable increases in our software and hardware costs. Whilst this must be accounted for in project budgets, it is also an indication of the growing diversification in our technical skills and offerings.

Our Audited Financial Statements are still being finalised but will be submitted to the Department of Social Development on finalisation.