Digital social innovation brings together people and digital technologies to tackle social and environmental challenges.Across the world, thousands of people, projects and organisations are using digital technologies to tackle social and environmental challenges in fields ranging from healthcare, education and employment to democratic participation, migration and the environment.

DSI PROJECTS ARE CHARACTERISED BY:
the primacy of social or environmental impact over financial return;
a dedication to openness, collaboration and citizen empowerment.

These initiatives use a broad range of established and emerging technologies - including collaborative platforms, open data, citizen sensing, digital fabrication, open hardware, blockchain, machine learning, and augmented and virtual reality - to empower citizens to collaborate and deliver social impact. They have the potential to transform the way our public services operate, revitalise civic life and allow citizens to become direct participants in tackling social challenges.

We call this field digital social innovation (DSI), a term which overlaps significantly with other terms including tech for good, social tech and civic tech.

• harness digital technologies to improve lives and reorient technology towards more social ends;
• empower citizens to take more control over their lives, and to use their collective knowledge and skills to positive effect;
• Increase the accountability and transparency of government, business and civil society;
• foster and promote alternatives to the dominant technological and business models — alternatives which are open and collaborative rather than closed and competitive;