On Thursday April 6, 2023 from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society will be hosting a discussion on “Digital Public Spaces for a Healthy Democracy: goals, values & aspirations”.

The event is timed to coincide with the public launch of a new tool called MAPLE that helps people to direct their perspectives, insights, and passions about societal issues to channels that influence public policy. Specifically, MAPLE (the Massachusetts Platform for Legislative Engagement) makes it easy for anyone to submit written testimony to the MA legislature, and to see testimony written by others. MAPLE, has been built by a group of volunteer technologists at Code for Boston and has been incubated by Northeastern University’s NuLawLab. They are operating as a nonpartisan, open source, and nonprofit (501c3) project operating under Open Collective and supported by Partners in Democracy.

Get Involved

If you are a software engineer, designer, or otherwise interested in helping with increase citizen engagement with the Massachusetts legislature, you can connect at Code for Boston’s Tuesday hack night.