NYU Wagner's Beth Noveck Honored as “Civic Innovator” of the Year

Beth Noveck, Founder and Director of The Governance Lab at NYU Wagner, is among a group of civic innovators from around the globe who have just been honored by the nonpartisan National Democratic Institute (NDI) for their efforts to use technology to hold governments accountable, give citizens a voice and improve democratic governance in our digital age.

The awards were presented at NDI’s 2013 Democracy dinner held December 10 in Washington, D.C.

Noveck, who is the Jacob K. Javits Visiting Professor at Wagner, was recognized for her work with The GovLab, which is helping to improve people’s lives by seeking new ways to solve public problems using advances in technology and science. She joined government officials, elected politicians, entrepreneurs, and civic activists in receiving the year's NDI honors for using technology to crowdsource legislation, increase government transparency, connect citizens, support freedom of information online, and more. The group of 18 innovators were chosen for their contributions to making democracy deliver on its promise around the world.

The other honorees for this year include:

  • María Baron, Chair, Latin American Network for Legislative Transparency and Executive Director, Fundación Directorio Legislativo (Latin America)
  • Jared Cohen, Director, Google Ideas and Ginny Hunt, Strategy Principal, Google’s Civics Team (United States)
  • Vukosava Crnjanski Sabovic, Founder and Director, Center for Research, Transparency and Accountability (Serbia)
  • Gregor Hackmack, Co-Founder, Parliament Watch (Germany)
  • Kuntoro Mangkusubroto, Lead Government Chair, and Rakesh Rajani, Lead Civil Society Chair, Open Government Partnership (Global)
  • Ellen Miller, Co-Founder and Executive Director, Sunlight Foundation (United States)
  • Rufus Pollock, Founder and CEO, Open Knowledge Foundation (Global)
  • Tom Steinberg, Founder and Director, mySociety (United Kingdom)
  • The Amnesic Incognito Live System (TAILS) (Global)
  • Oras Tynkkynen, Vice Chair of the Committee for the Future, Parliament of Finland (Finland).