No maintenance funding for democratic digital infrastructure (no civic Sovereign Tech Fund)
The UK's democratic data and civic tech layer is maintained by a handful of fragile organisations: mySociety (TheyWorkForYou, WhatDoTheyKnow, FixMyStreet) cross-subsidises via consultancy and short grants; Democracy Club crowd-sources candidate and results data that the state does not publish, and the Electoral Commission is absorbing only the polling-station finder. mySociety's Shifting Landscapes report (January 2026) and Careful Industries both conclude there is no systematic support for public-interest technology in the UK, unlike Germany's Sovereign Tech Fund, which pays for maintenance of critical open infrastructure. Grant funders prefer novelty over maintenance, so load-bearing civic services live perpetually one funding cycle from shutdown.
Parliament-monitoring, FOI and election-information services are used by millions and underpin journalism, research and voter participation. Their collapse would be invisible until an election. Maintenance-blind funding also wastes public value: the state repeatedly rebuilds what civic tech already runs, at higher cost.
A Democratic Digital Infrastructure Fund (£10–20m/year, DSIT/DCMS + foundations, modelled on Germany's Sovereign Tech Fund) paying for maintenance and security of critical civic codebases and datasets; plus statutory duties to publish open candidate, election-results and council-decision data, removing the volunteer burden Democracy Club currently carries.
// Build now: First artefact: philanthropic maintenance fund paying maintainers of Democracy Club-class codebases; statutory open-data duties are the later end-state.
Civic services used by millions run on organisations perpetually one grant from shutdown; the Sovereign Tech Fund model is proven and unfunded here, but no date forces action now.
One gap, several dossiers: entries folded into this one (1)
The research pass surfaced this gap independently in more than one domain. Those entries are merged here so the map counts it once: the same sustaining funder for the mySociety/Democracy Club civic-tech layer after Nesta's pivot.
№ 145 · No sustaining funder for civic tech since Nesta's pivot (Funding (lens))
Nesta, the historic anchor funder (Democracy Pioneers, digital democracy research), refocused its Strategy to 2030 on early years, health and decarbonisation; the National Lottery's Digital Fund closed; Luminate narrowed. Result: mySociety's group income fell 15% to £2.6m in 2024/25 with restricted income down 39%, and election-information services (Democracy Club model) fill state gaps with charity money nobody has committed to sustain.
Its fill: Either a civic tech endowment (£50-100m yielding £3-5m/yr in core grants) seeded by foundations plus tech wealth, or statutory procurement: Cabinet Office/Electoral Commission contracts that treat candidate data, polling-station finders, FOI and parliamentary-monitoring services as paid public digital infrastructure.