My side project is based on civic technologies and personally I feel the main problem here is the focus on federal government and nationwide policy. Congress members are too far removed from normal citizen, and national policy is hard. There's too many competing services at the national level (CNN, CSPAN, FiveThirtyEight, etc), and federal policy is ephemeral for most Americans.
Starting at the local level is closer to home, it has more of an impact. "Rep Smith was one of 300 members of congress who voted for Bill 1234" doesn't have the same impact as "Mayor Williams wants to remove the crosswalk signal in front of the middle school that your kids attend".
Tell people what's happening in their backyard because they probably don't know. Everyone knows what's happening at the national level and very few care. No one knows what's happening locally because local news has been absolutely gutted over the last 20 years. If you want to disrupt government and create citizen interest, it has to start locally where people care but no one is reporting.
I think this is right in the sense of "a project for an individual to make a local difference".
A lot of people have gone down this road trying to build major projects, especially 8-10 years ago when hyperlocal was the next big thing (remember everyblock?). They all sort of petered out, presumably because it was just too hard to scale with tech as opposed to having people on the ground. Us nerds tend want projects based on data feeds, not on people sitting in city council meetings and interviewing people, and most journalists I know are more interested in working for the Washington Post than being the only reporter on the nowheresville tribune.
In fact, I think the same can be said about pretty much anything. Sometimes it's hard to figure out how you might find something to contribute to the world. Sometimes we have the tendency to think "too big", asking ourselves what do we excel at, in which way are we especial.
Turns out that we all live in different places, have different views of the world, different skills, ideas and contacts. That's a better starting point than many people realize.
I'm working on a cultural/creative project, and I've also taken that approach starting locally.
Starting at the local level is closer to home, it has more of an impact. "Rep Smith was one of 300 members of congress who voted for Bill 1234" doesn't have the same impact as "Mayor Williams wants to remove the crosswalk signal in front of the middle school that your kids attend".
Tell people what's happening in their backyard because they probably don't know. Everyone knows what's happening at the national level and very few care. No one knows what's happening locally because local news has been absolutely gutted over the last 20 years. If you want to disrupt government and create citizen interest, it has to start locally where people care but no one is reporting.