Today, we’re experiencing the shift that naturally happens when something ceases to be new and becomes familiar, ceases to be optional and becomes essential. Not only are we dependent on our digital systems, our work is shaped by the regulations, motivations, and product design decisions of the companies that manufacture and provide our digital tools. Our work is also shaped by the governmental policies that regulate the way our digital systems work.

As civil society is now digital we face new decisions at every level, from the individual to the organizational, from civil society to democratic governments:

  • Decisions people make about their own digital behavior, including protecting their privacy, being aware of surveillance, or deciding what is trustworthy information and what is not;
  • Decisions that organizations make about hiring staff and selecting board members with expertise on digital security and data collection, access, use, storage, and security;
  • Decisions that nonprofit/philanthropic managers make about what information to collect, hold, or share as well as increasing awareness of data regulations on certain sectors or populations (health, finance, insurance, children); and
  • Decisions that governments make about laws on data rights; regulation of internet platforms and telecommunications companies; surveillance technologies; civil liberties and human rights. At this level we also get considerations of the marketplace of technologies—what alternative tools and products and systems might we want, need or develop?

Digital civil society will advance effectively in the year(s) ahead if it is marked by collective action in three broad arenas. And since all of civil society (everyone) is now digital civil society, the implications and opportunities pertain to us all.

First, nonprofit and foundation capacity building efforts must recognize digital security and data governance issues as core parts of an organization’s responsibilities. Effective organizations will be those that manage and govern all of their resources—time, money, staff, data, and digital systems—toward mission. Today, technological support and advice, board governance, management or operations training, and program development are siloed—within organizations and from the vendors and trainers that serve them. These will be integrated in the years to come.

Second, integrated advocacy efforts must recognize that civil society today is shaped by laws about digital technologies, and that the digital policy agenda is civil society’s policy agenda. Examples include diverse alliances of rights groups fighting against the use of facial recognition technologies or foundations and nonprofits working together to support expanded privacy protections for individuals.

Third, civil society must create or call for digital systems that reflect civil society's values. There are two global success stories here—Mozilla with its Firefox browser and Open Whisper Systems’ Signal, an encrypted messaging application. Mozilla and Open Whisper Systems are nonprofits. Firefox and Signal are globally used, open source, noncommercial products designed in the first case to protect access to the internet and in the second case to protect private conversations. These two successes shouldn’t mask how hard it is to get widespread adoption of noncommercial alternatives.

Read the full Blueprint 2020 at Stanford PACS.