5 Civic Tech Innovators You Need to Know in 2016
Civic technology is a trillion-dollar industry. It’s larger than the hotel industry, the taxi industry or the restaurant industry.
All across the country, startup companies are cropping up around this concept of civic technology, innovating the way we approach healthcare, public safety, and global social issues. It’s a tech industry that does something more than build cool apps and games. These civic innovators focus on data collection, government engagement and helping local municipalities access better resources. Here are five that you should know.
InstantAPI helps developers build and publish an enterprise-grade API for their services within minutes (a process which used to take an average of four months). Their mission is to give every website, app, company and person the ability to share their information with ease and security. The platform offers a suite of enterprise features and training videos, including hosting and management of your APIs. For municipalities that want to support open data but don’t have the tools or internal teams to make it happen, InstantAPI offers a solution that’s easy even for non-tech teams to integrate.
Polis Politics understands what a headache organizing volunteers can be. The D.C. startup takes the voter targeting and outreach powers of a presidential campaign and makes them scale for anyone. Their mobile app allows campaign managers, from the local level and up, generate efficient walking routes for door knocking and canvassing, and track their volunteers progress in real time. By automating the research, logistics and data collection process, campaign staff can spend less time analyzing spreadsheets and more time talking with voters about the issues that matter.
Local governments are notoriously tech-strapped. That is, they often lack the funding and talent required to build and maintain websites that move at the speed of modern technology. Capriza works across industries, from banking and insurance to government and professional services, but it’s especially needed in the municipal sector. The platform offers a drag-and-drop interface that helps agencies create what they call a “zapp”: essentially a mobile version of their website that functions like an app. It helps transform those klunky, desktop-only, browser-specific city websites into mobile-friendly formats.
OpenCounter builds the tools that help cities improve economic development. It’s really a service for new businesses and entrepreneurs who need help navigating the regulatory jungle of red tape and permitting to get their ideas off the ground. The one-stop-shop for business permitting helps you find and complete commercial and business permits, residential permits, special events permits, and any licensing that your city might require. OpenCounter also offers a service called Zoning Check which translate the language of city planning code (aka zoning ordinances) into a format which the average citizen can understand. OpenCounter is currently in 19 cities, mostly in California, but hopes to continue expanding across the country.
mySidewalk (formerly known as Mindmixter) helps you grow from confused bystander to empowered activist in the civic arena. The service has been around for five years and is now in 1,400 cities and towns across the U.S. They’ve been growing like crazy after raising a $17 million Series C round back in 2014. The platform attempts to simplify the process of gathering actionable insights from local demographics data, combining the hundreds of sources and dozens of different reporting geographies on population size, average home values and more into easy to understand charts that are helpful for citizens, government agencies and non-government organizations alike.
