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SpatialNews.com Press Release
Upcoming Elections: Phila-Based GIS Company Brings Democracy to Citizens
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Tomorrow, citizens throughout the country will be voting for mayors, city council members, state legislators, governors and judicial candidates. Our democratic institutions rely on citizens, businesses and other organizations that are willing to communicate needs and opinions to their elected officials. But do most of us know all of our legislators or how to reach them? No. And that’s a problem not only for citizens but also for advocacy groups whose mission is to empower their members to communicate with their elected officials and thereby influence the decision-making process.
Avencia Incorporated, a Philadelphia-based GIS company, set out to develop a cost effective and accurate web-based service for citizens, local governments, unions, businesses and non-profit political and advocacy organizations to find their local, state and national elected officials, all in one central place. The system called Cicero™, simply matches addresses with the elected officials who represent these addresses. It can be used for free to look up single addresses or as a Web API (Application Programming Interface) that enables organizations to add legislator lookup capabilities to any website or software application.
Avencia built Cicero in 2006 to support the advocacy efforts of the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance. By the fall of that year, they offered national service covering 40 cities, but the services now includes more than 60 major U.S. and Canadian cities as well as legislator contact data for all U.S. state and federal legislative districts. Avencia continues to update Cicero as elections take place, legislators are replaced, and regions go through the process of redistricting, and can add additional locations based on customers’ requests.
"Working with Avencia, the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance has moved to the forefront of online advocacy. The Cicero software quickly matches our advocates to their local legislators -- a groundbreaking application of database technology at the grassroots level." -- April Williamson, GPCA Advocacy Coordinator
Cicero returns elected officials’ contact information, affiliation(s), website, etc., as well as maps showing their district boundaries. While other online legislative lookups return state and national at-large elected officials, Cicero uses Geographic Information Systems technology to precisely match addresses with all levels of legislature as well as create district maps. In the next few months, Avencia will release all U.S. school district lookup and Australian legislative districts.
The backbone of Cicero’s functionality is a geographic database for local, state and national legislative districts. There is no official repository of spatial data on local districts – Avencia has gradually gathered this data from each city individually, including digitizing the districts manually, when necessary. Cicero is now the leading source of spatial information on local legislative districts and information about local legislators.
Robert Cheetham, Avencia’s CEO and President, is passionate about bringing democratic tools to citizens and is an advocate of local political advocacy groups such as the Committee of 70, Hallwatch, R.E.F.O.R.M Ballot and Philadelphia Forward. He has engaged Avencia with several pro bono projects for organizations devoted to democracy and civic advocacy. It is his hope that the Cicero service will grow into a global repository for elected official lookups. With Canada and the United States as the starting point, and Australia and other countries in the works, Cicero is certainly on its way to becoming just that. For more information on Cicero web services, visit www.avencia.com/cicero
About Avencia
Avencia is an award-winning, Philadelphia-based geographic analysis and software development firm specializing in the creation of innovative location-based software tools to enhance decision-making processes. Avencia believes these location-based technologies can help promote the emergence of more dynamic, vibrant communities. For more information, visit www.avencia.com
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