CivicActions, Inc. is a services firm that provides technological support with a focus on

free and open-source software Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...

to agencies.

History

CivicActions was founded as an

Llc A limited liability company (LLC for short) is the US-specific form of a private limited company. It is a business structure that can combine the pass-through taxation of a partnership or sole proprietorship with the limited liability of a ...

in 2004. Their focus was to provide hosted FOSS group forming network technologies to NGOs. They were the early adopters of

Drupal Drupal () is a free and open-source web content management system (CMS) written in PHP and distributed under the GNU General Public License. Drupal provides an open-source back-end framework for at least 14% of the top 10,000 websites worldwide ...

(that they are a services provider now), Openwall Linux, and CiviCRM. Over the period between 2004 and 2012, its claimed that they have served over 175 organizations including Center for Reproductive Rights, American Public Media,

Amnesty International Amnesty International (also referred to as Amnesty or AI) is an international non-governmental organization focused on human rights, with its headquarters in the United Kingdom. The organization says it has more than ten million members and sup ...

, and Society for the Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science. In 2014, CivicActions, with people in federal, state and local governments, founded
AGL (Agile Government Leadership)
' and published the
Agile Government Handbook
'. All of the work of AGL is published under

public license A public license or public copyright licenses is a license by which a copyright holder as licensor can grant additional copyright permissions to any and all persons in the general public as licensees. By applying a public license to a work, pro ...

, where it can be used by government workers, as well as other

agile software In software development, agile (sometimes written Agile) practices include requirements discovery and solutions improvement through the collaborative effort of self-organizing and cross-functional teams with their customer(s)/ end user(s), ad ...

vendors. In early 2016, CivicActions co-founder Aaron Pava was recruited to join the United States Digital Service team in Washington DC to assist the

federal government A federation (also known as a federal state) is a political entity characterized by a union of partially self-governing provinces, states, or other regions under a central federal government (federalism). In a federation, the self-governin ...

in transforming procurement practices to enable federal agencies to more easily procure services from small businesses like CivicActions. He returned to CivicActions in November 2016.

Defective by Design

Gregory Heller and

Henry Poole Henry Poole may refer to: *Henry Poole (died 1559), MP for Leicestershire *Henry Poole (died 1580), MP for Wootton Bassett in 1553 *Henry Poole (died 1616) (1541–1616), of Sapperton, English MP for Gloucestershire *Henry Poole (died 1632) (1564� ...

, who are both involved in Free Software Foundation and CivicActions, with the help of

Peter T. Brown Peter T. Brown was the executive director of the Free Software Foundation (FSF) from 2005 until early 2011. Having come from a business management and finance background, he began working for the organization in 2001 as a comptroller, and was ...

who was the president of FSF, have played major role at formation of Defective by Design, an anti- DRM campaign advocating for elimination of digital restrictions.

Work

Partnerships

CivicActions has worked with multiple entities mostly United States government entities. In 2016, they worked with the Defense Security Cooperation Agency in creating ''GlobalNet'', a collaboration and social media platform.. In 2017, CivicActions worked with

California Polytechnic State University California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo (California Polytechnic State University, Cal Poly"Cal Poly" may also refer to California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt in Arcata, California or California State Polytechnic Univ ...

in creating their ''Digital Democracy'' platform. They also work with the Department of Education with the creation and maintenance of ''LINCS'', an adult literacy website, and with the San Francisco Human Services Agency, with the creation of ''Eatfresh''. Through Acquia, CivicActions also worked with the Department of Justice and the Department of Treasury. CivicActions has also worked on website modernization for the

U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs The United States Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is a Cabinet-level executive branch department of the federal government charged with providing life-long healthcare services to eligible military veterans at the 170 VA medical centers an ...

and the Federal Communications Commission.

Services

CivicActions provides several services. Those are: * UX * Open Data * Security & Compliance * Support * Drupal * DevOps * Education Services * Quality Assurance * Innovation Lab

References

External links

*
Employee HandbookGithub PageTwitter
{{FOSS Free and open-source software organizations Organizations established in 2004 Fiscal sponsorship organizations Organizations based in California Companies based in Contra Costa County, California