What we do

At Political Watch we work to promote a more just and sustainable society. We do so through research, the development of civic technologies, advocacy and support to companies, public administrations and organizations in their innovation and transformation processes to meet the commitments of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
Democracy

Democracy

Citizen surveillance for a better society

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Coherence

Coherence

Policies that live up to the challenges of our era

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Areas of expertise

Software Development

We offer:

  • Automatic data extraction techniques (web scrapping).
  • Treatment of large volumes of data (Big Data).
  • Automatic Learning (Machine Learning) and Natural Language Processing (NLP).
  • Conversational interfaces for virtual assistants such as Google Home or Alexa.
  • Instant messaging bots (for Telegram and others).
  • Modern web development (webapps and APIs)

Some of the projects in which we have used and developed these technologies are:

Training

Our training programs include our areas of greatest expertise: civic monitoring, policy coherence for sustainable development, 2030 Agenda, parliamentary monitoring, and software development with a focus on social change.

We have experience in:

  • Training at the higher education level: Comillas Pontifical University.
  • Training on Policy Coherence for public entities such as the Generalitat de Catalunya, Diputació de Barcelona and City Councils.
  • Training for capacity building of social organizations.

Data visualizations

This is a key part of our research, projects and advocacy campaigns, as it enables effective communication of results and large volumes of information.

We work with dashboards and both static and dynamic visualizations for internal use or in communication campaigns through different channels.

Some of the dashboards we have created:

Research and specialized technical assistance

We conduct research both internally, as an input for our advocacy actions and parliamentary monitoring projects, among others, and externally, through consulting and specialized technical assistance to civil society entities, the private sector and public administration. The topics vary depending on the project or assignment but are usually related to our areas of greatest expertise.

Some recent research projects include:

  • Analysis of investment in education for adaptation to the COVID-19 context in Spain.
  • Elaboration of a system of indicators for monitoring Policy Coherence for Sustainable Development in Sant Boi de Llobregat City Council.
  • Mapping and elaboration of a matrix of indicators for the monitoring and analysis of Spain's contribution to SDG 3 and Global Health.
  • Diagnosis and strategic orientations for the adoption and implementation of the Policy Coherence approach in Centelles City Council.
  • Development of a methodology to analyze the inclusion of the sustainable development approach in International Investment Agreements (IIAs) for the Center for Global Development.

Check our research repository out

Organization of multi-stakeholder meetings and debates

We organize events on different topics, some of them related to ongoing projects and others to topics we are interested in deepening. These debates are usually held in collaboration with FUNCAS and are privileged spaces with key players from different actors in civil society, the public and private sector and academia.

Some of the last meetings were:

  • "Rethinking Spain as a brand: is there a place for foreign direct investment and international cooperation?"
  • "Trump Administration: foreign, energy and trade policy."
  • "Challenges and opportunities for Spanish financial cooperation."
  • Presentation of ColeSeguro's final report

Audience analysis

Our software allows the extraction of information from Twitter and:

  • Its thematic tagging using knowledge bases elaborated ad hoc according to the needs of the project.
  • Impact analysis of an account based on the aggregate impact of its tweets.
  • Affinity analysis of an account's followers and the impact of their interactions with the main account.
  • Categorization of followers according to the project needs.
  • Analysis of new audiences, identifying potential new allies based on the analysis of affinity and impact of their Tweets.

Strategic plan

To guide our work and direct it to the achievement of our main goals, we develop since 2019 strategic bianual plans, building them in a participatory way between all the members of the team. You can access our Strategic Plan 2019-2021.

Download our Plan (in Spanish)