GovFresh highlights the products and start-ups powering the civic revolution. Note: This is not a product promotion or endorsement. Learn how you can get featured.

Co-founder and CEO Lily Liu discusses her civic venture, PublicStuff.

Give us the 140-character elevator pitch.

At PublicStuff we help local governments turn service requests and inquiries into tangible community improvements by connecting people directly to their city representatives from their laptop, mobile phone or tablet.

What problem does PublicStuff solve for government?

The widespread adoption of social media, coupled with recent initiatives that have opened up city data, is sparking a lot of citizen interest in city services. In response, there’s been a flurry of innovation to provide more engaging, effective ways to give residents better access to local government, however most cities are not set up to manage the resulting information flow. That’s where PublicStuff comes in. We solve this problem through a cost-effective, easy-to-use system that lets local governments manage and customize the ebb and flow of information and requests between a city and its citizens. Our customizable program allows governments to not only interact with their citizens, but truly manage the extensive amount of data they receive from inquiries and manage workflow.

What’s the story behind starting PublicStuff?

When I worked for the City of Long Beach, NY and Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s office I was inspired by the idea of bringing together governments and constituents and making citizens more civic minded.  However, I saw a lot of gaps in the back-end processes and knew there had to be more efficient ways to generate civic engagement. Those experiences, coupled with the motivating stories, companies and visions of the people I met through school and work, prompted me to create something that would meet everyone’s needs.

What are its key features?

We offer the most efficient, cost effective way for city officials to communicate with their citizens, and guarantee citizens’ requests go to the right city official. We pride ourselves on providing instant access to government with the ability to confirm you’ve been heard and to track the progress of your request.

Our Citizen Engagement Management Tools enable city representatives to view issues and resolution data by geographic boundaries, date ranges, residents and department to improve their digital communications outreach to residents. Our government facing CivicApps let officials create data flows on top of the PublicStuff app. Cities are then able to customize their platforms and distribute the most important information for their individual city, for example emergency weather alerts, holiday activities, animal shelter notifications and even updated information for sports teams.

We’re the only city-to-citizen solution that offers in-app translation. Through our One Voice service, citizens have the ability to submit requests and communicate with city officials in their preferred language, making city improvements accessible to all residents, regardless of language.

What are the costs, pricing plans?

For citizens, PublicStuff is free for all platforms.

For cities, our service is sold as a subscription and priced according to population. Smaller cities can get started for as low as $1000 per year, while larger cities can choose between a number of different editions which meet their needs and may include integrations with systems they already have in place.

How can those interested connect with you?

Cities looking to bring PublicStuff to their community can visit http://www.publicstuff.com/tour for information and a free demo. People across the country that want to communicate directly with their city representatives and have a stronger voice in community improvements can download the free app, and connect with PublicStuff on Twitter and Facebook.

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We asked Chief Operating Officer Mark Nelson to share some of its experiences trying to crack the public sector market.

How has Revelstone evolved since you first started?

We’ve seen tremendous success in the marketplace, with more than 25 municipalities in New Jersey using the software, as well as cities and towns in Ohio, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. These municipalities are starting to collaborate with their peers in order to share best practices.

We’ve also held a few events to facilitate this sharing even further – we’ve held two Annual Customer & Best Practice Sharing Days, and recently held our first Service Area Group Meeting, a meeting of fire chiefs discussing what measures they track in their municipalities, and why and how they might collaborate.
As you know, we were one of seven startups in Code for America’s 2012 Accelerator program. We learned a lot through the program – for example, we’ve incorporated feedback from our customers into our newest versions of our software, Revelstone™ Compass.

Lastly, we’ve been providing the market with information on trends. We conducted a survey on service cuts and have just launched one on shared services.

What’s been the biggest challenge you’ve had in communicating your value to government?

Our challenge has not been in communicating the value of performance measurement, the challenge is the pace at which governments adopt change. There’s wide awareness of and interest in moving to a data driven approach, but organizations just move slowly.

One of the things we’ve done to help this is we’ve developed accelerators to speed up the time from when our customers begin using the software to when they are really understanding what the data is telling them. We offer performance measurement fundamentals and training, peer networking and project management best practices.

What’s your advice to other civic startups focused specifically on serving government?

Civic startups need to find ways to break down the old school thinking that exists in many municipalities. There’s a lot of “that’s the way we’ve always done it” thinking. As a result, it can be difficult to get people to want to take new approaches to running a municipality.

I’d also recommend civic startups find ways to create momentum within their target government organizations. We’ve found when city managers hold weekly meetings where they discuss the results that are being measured, it results in meaningful discussions and helps to “convert” those who are resistant to change.

It’s an exciting time to be a civic startup – even one that’s not citizen-facing. More and more governments of all sizes are realizing that new technologies can make a huge difference in how they manage their towns and cities. Better management means happier citizens.

Co-founder Manohar Kamath shares his vision for Park.IT.

Give us the 140-character elevator pitch.

When you drive into a busy city like San Francisco, the problem is where to park, as the parking occupancy is often over 95%. Second question, can I park here and will I get a ticket? Park.it creates happy drivers driving in cities like San Francisco, by helping them avoid parking tickets or tow away charges along with parking (street and garages) choices at their fingertips.

What civic problem does it solve?

People on average spend 20-30min of their time searching for parking. This adds to the city traffic congestion leading to unhappy drivers. Park. it Lite App help drivers find on and off street parking, obey city parking laws and reduce pollution from traffic congestion. Overtime with large user base, Park. it will have collected enough user data/behaviors to develop parking analytics which can help city government and local businesses to provide incentives for people to make San Francisco their favorite destination.

What’s the story behind starting park.it?

Myself (Manohar Kamath) and Calvin Liu are the founders of www.Park.it . The company was founded in the year 2010. We worked together in Semiconductor and EDA industry. I (Manohar Kamath) live with my family in Fremont and visit San Francisco often for business and pleasure. Every time I faced the problem of finding parking, may it be in the financial district, North beach, Fisherman’s wharf, AT&T Park, theatre areas etc. Invariably ended up parking in garages (which can be expensive) due to the fear of getting a parking ticket or being towed away not knowing the parking rules. Calvin on the other hand, has been living in San Francisco downtown for over 10 years and faces the challenge of having to remember to move his car for street cleaning and has gotten his car towed away due to parking sign changes. We also have stories from friends and family who are new to the city and have racked up hundreds of $$ of parking tickets. All of this, set us on the quest of solving this parking problem in metro cities.

We launched the first Beta version of the App (both on Android and iOS) in Dec 2011. This helped us in user validation. We started out with a subscription model (monthly and/or yearly) but soon found, people didn’t like to create accounts and provide credit card info. We also received feedback from users about usability. Inspite of these issues, we saw large number of users downloading and continuing to use it till today.

For the last several months we worked on fixing usability issues, removed the need for users to create accounts and provide credit card info. Beginning 2013, Park.it Lite was released.

What are its key features?

Find parking either around where you are at or near your driving destination in the following manner,

Specify a parking duration (30min to 3 days)

Enter your driving destination address (Type or Speak) OR select current location. Currently Speak (Voice to text) is only supported for the Android platform.

Choose to display only what is desired: No parking areas, Street parking and Garage parking

In-phone notification in case the specified parking duration is exceeded or instant alerts like active tow away, street sweeping, or incline parking. This saves you getting parking tickets from PEO (Parking Enforcement officer).

For metered street parking or parking garages, the cost per hour is shown.

If SFPark metered spaces with sensors are available, the number of open spaces are displayed on real time basis.

Displays (Red hat Pin) your parked spot in case you have forgotten.

What are the costs, pricing plans?

Freemium model

Park. it Lite (Free version) with advertising currently available on Google Play and App Store.
Park. it Premium (paid version) with no advertising and special features will be made available in the future.

How can those interested connect with you?

• Facebook: Park.it
• Email: corporate@park.it

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NationBuilder Vice President of Community Adriel Hampton introduces the company’s newest offering, NationBuilder Government.

Give us the 140-character elevator pitch.

NationBuilder Government is a unified web, communications and CRM database solution – at less than $100 a month for most entities (yes, really).

What problems does NationBuilder solve for government?

Governments of all sizes struggle with listening well to feedback from a growing number of communications channels. The challenge is to provide better customer service, and to do it cost effectively.

NationBuilder is a unified organizing platform that’s designed to improve the efficiency of communications and constituent/customer service staff.

What’s the story behind NationBuilder?

We’ve been around for a few years, but just launched our Government Edition earlier this month.

Jim Gilliam founded the company after personally seeing the power of people connected by the internet as family and friends helped him get a double-lung transplant six years ago. I met Jim in 2009 while I was running for Congress, and joined NationBuilder as employee number 3 in May 2011.

Doing internet software for government better, more efficiently, is extremely important to me. There’s no reason to pay tens of thousands of dollars a year for these technologies.

Why should governments use your SaaS product and not an open source alternative?

Haha, I asked for that, right? So, open source projects have greatly helped to lower the costs of providing services over the web. We use a number of open source technologies including Ruby on Rails and PostgreSQL and Liquid (a templating language that we’ve helped extend) – that allow companies like ours flourish at very low cost.

Instead of paying millions of dollars a year in licensing, we’re able to offer end-to-end solutions to cities and officeholders for just hundreds of dollars a year.

Open source products are never free for government – they require technical staff and consultants. We value transparent pricing and require it from our partners, and provide a comprehensive, regularly updated solution that does not require a tech team to implement or maintain.

What are NationBuilder Government’s key features?

Interactive websites, email and text blasting, and constituent services tracking.

With NationBuilder, a government office can manage events, log and track issues, send email newsletters, and manage social media communications and an entire website all in one place.

What are the costs, pricing plans?

Our pricing is based on the size of your database – the smallest plans are $19 a month, a large city with 50,000 people on its email list would pay $499 a month with no limit on administrative users.

How can those interested connect with you?

• Website: nationbuilder.com
• Facebook
• Twitter: @NB_Gov
• Email: government@nationbuilder.com

Captricity co-founder Kuang Chen. (Photo: Captricity)

GovFresh highlights the products and start-ups powering the civic revolution. Note: This is not a product promotion or endorsement. Learn how you can get featured.

What

Captricity

Give us the 140-character elevator pitch.

Captricity solves the “paper problem,” unlocking digital, machine-readable data from paper quickly and accurately (even with handwriting).

What problem does Captricity solve for government?

Many government agencies still rely on paper-based data collection workflows, yet need machine-readable, digital data to function day-to-day and respond to increasing calls for open data and transparency. Getting the information off paper and into electronic systems is a major bottleneck: manual entry is slow, often inaccurate, and keeps government employees from directly serving citizens. Existing software options, meanwhile, are costly, hard-to-use and often not able to read handwriting.

Captricity offers an easy-to-use solution, combining the best of machine learning and human intelligence to capture digital data faster than manual data entry and more accurately than software-alone.

What’s the story behind starting Captricity?

Captricity was born of founder Kuang Chen’s graduate research at health clinics in Uganda. There, the relatively few trained health workers spend a disproportionately large share of their time wrangling paper files. They needed a better way to process large amounts of data collected on paper, like HIV treatment visit records. Chen began working on a new approach that would maintain the benefits of paper (the lights go out regrettably often) but also enable the benefits of electronic systems.

While completing his PhD at UC Berkeley, Chen thus teamed up with co-founder Jeff Lin, and former product manager at Microsoft (and rockstar – literally) to take Kuang’s notion of human-guided machine learning and turn it into a cloud-based service that anyone can use. Finally, as a Code for America Accelerator company, Captricity was introduced to the need that exists in government as well as the opportunity to advance open data initiatives; see our open data portal.

What are its key features?

First, the secret sauce (Captricity’s unique combination of human workers and advanced computer vision and machine learning), generates highly-accurate data far more quickly and at lower cost than manual data entry, but more accurately than computers alone could. This special combination also makes Captricity scale easily to meet your needs: you can upload 100 or 100,000 forms at a time – we just put more processing power behind your work. It also keeps your information private and secure.

Second, Captricity is a cloud-based service, so there are no drawn-out installations or pricy software upgrades (think Salesforce.com vs SAP). Set-up is fast and easy, and there are no contracts required, giving you the flexibility to upload however many forms you have, whenever you want. You can even go back and look at the actual handwriting or text that generated the digital data.

Finally, we’ve packaged all the complex technology in a simple, beautiful, easy-to-use interface that you can customize to your needs with no programming at all. If you can draw a box with your mouse, you can use Captricity. We’ve also released a mobile app and a RESTful API so that you can plug our service into a workflow or database/software application with as little hassle as humanly possible.

What are the costs, pricing plans?

Users pay based on the number of pages they process and the amount of information they want to extract from each page. Currently, you pay just $0.20 per page to get your data processed; there are discounts for high volumes and the first 10 pages are free. You can check it try it out, totally for free, right now, at captricity.com.

How can those interested connect with you?

• Website: Captricity.com
• Facebook
• Twitter: @Captricity
• Email: info@captricity.com

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Captricity demo from Captricity on Vimeo.

Nath:

“Cities and government, in general, we’re really factories of data, which is not our data. It rightfully belongs in the public domain.”

“We see this digital space of empowering our citizens as the next generation of city government.”

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Give us the 140-character elevator pitch.

Revelstone provides a web-based performance analytics and benchmarking platform to help local governments manage better.

What problem does Revelstone solve for government?

The economy has been harsh on local governments, and municipal leaders are being asked to do more with fewer resources. Revelstone Compass provides the analytical tools to identify areas to become more cost effective and efficient, helping them to answer three basic questions:

• How are we doing?
• What could we be doing better?
• How can we learn from our peers to improve?

What’s the story behind starting Revelstone?

We (co-founders of Revelstone) have spent the last 20 years of our careers working in the private sector with Fortune 500 companies implementing performance management systems. As the economy became challenged over the past few years, we started to realize that governments lacked the tools and, more importantly, information about their performance, to make difficult budget decisions which impact services to citizens. We are excited to help local governments all across the country manage better with performance analytics, benchmarking and peer learning.

Revelstone Compass was launched in July 2011 and some of our customers include:

• Woodbridge, NJ
• Millburn, NJ
• Princeton, NJ
• Wyoming, OH
• Upper Uwchlan, PA

What are its key features?

Key features of Revelstone Compass include:

• Pre-defined measure catalog specific to local government
• Data capture, reporting and analysis
• Real-time benchmarking
• Peer learning and sharing of best practices
• What are the costs, pricing plans? (if applies)
• Revelstone Compass is sold with a low-cost monthly subscription.

How can those interested connect with you?

• Website: revelstonelabs.com
• Twitter: @Revelstone
• Email: info@revelstonelabs.com
• Phone: 201-649-1716

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Neighbor.ly

GovFresh highlights the products and start-ups powering the civic revolution. Learn how you can get featured.

What

Neighbor.ly

Give us the 140-character elevator pitch.

Neighbor.ly is a civic crowdfunding platform for U.S. cities and civic-minded organizations. We help fund creative civic projects in communities that care.

What problem does Neighbor.ly solve for government?

With dwindling city budgets, Neighbor.ly provides a way for cities to pre-capitalize tough projects instead of relying on borrowed capital. Every dollar donated up-front means less a city will pay in interest. We’re beginning to steer the platform into a mechanism for cities and civic organizations to come up with a local dollar match to win federal dollars, an increasingly common requirement when looking for federal funds.

What’s the story behind starting Neighbor.ly?

Neighbor.ly launched on July 7, 2012.

The founders are Jase Wilson (CEO), Briston Davidge (COO), Chris Parrott (CFO), Shaul Jolles (CBDO) and Patrick Hosty (Advisor).

Crowdfunding civic infrastructure is a centuries old practice that the Internet has helped to simplify. Neighbor.ly isn’t a new idea, but a variation on platforms like Kickstarter and Spacehive. The concept was sparked earlier this year after founder Jase Wilson attended a presentation by Rob Goodspeed on civic crowdsourcing in other parts of the world. Soon after that, he attended a public meeting in Kansas City, MO to discuss parking ordinances along a proposed downtown streetcar line. The meeting kept getting off topic and triggered a discussion on how the city would fund said transit line. Finally, a conversation between Patrick Hosty and another Kansas Citian took place about a problem with a local bond deal in which both approved of only one aspect of the deal but not the other, causing them to not vote at all. As a direct response to that conversation, Neighbor.ly was created to let people vote with their dollars to support the civic projects that they really care about. Tough or creative projects that likely wouldn’t receive government funding but would have a positive impact on the community.

What are its key features?

Neighbor.ly works directly with entities on projects that are sometimes contingent on a vote or other process that may decide the fate of a project, even if a project is fully funded. If the project is greenlit on our side but fails to go through on the city’s side, money is directly refunded back to the donors. We’re finding that social media is really powerful when engaging communities. Twitter and Facebook are baked into the platform, so when you donate to a project you’re passionate about, you can share it with your networks and show them the good you’re doing in your community. It’s a really great way to rally supporters around a common cause.

What are the costs, pricing plans?

There is no upfront cost, just a 5% platform fee. For every dollar donated, we keep a nickel. We are exploring the idea of consulting with organizations to help them develop a strong campaign in which there would be a consulting fee.

How can those interested connect with you?

Interested parties can reach us at howdy(at)neighbor.ly or by visiting our website at http://neighbor.ly. We’re also on Twitter (@neighborly) and Facebook (facebook.com/neighbordotly).

Citizinvestor founders Tony DeSisto, Jordan Raynor and Erik Rapprich share their vision.

Give us the 140-character elevator pitch.

Citizinvestor is a crowdfunding platform for local government projects.

What problem does) Citizinvestor solve for government?

There are an unlimited number of local government projects that are not completed because of a single problem – lack of funding.

These are projects like building parklets, installing bike racks and renovating pools that citizens want to invest in and governments want to take on but can’t, due to a lack of available funds.

For decades, we have seen citizens solve problems like this on a small scale. Neighborhood barbecue fundraisers to save a park or that neighbor who goes door-to-door to fund a project she’s really passionate about are great examples of citizens stepping up to invest in local projects – projects that can only happen through local government and citizens partnering together. But what do these barbecues and door-to-door pitches look like in the 21st century and what does it look like when vastly more projects have an equal chance of being funded?

We believe the answer is Citizinvestor.

What’s the story behind starting Citizinvestor?

One of our co-founders, Tony DeSisto, is an attorney who currently serves on the City of Tampa’s Budget Advisory Committee. On the Committee, Tony consults with the city on budgeting issues, trying to find new and innovative ways to fund local government projects at a time in which budgets at city Halls are tighter than ever before. Seeing the crowdfunding trend, Tony thought there needed to be a platform where citizens can micro-fund the local government projects they really want to see built. Thus, Citizinvestor was born.

We are planning to launch in late July in two major pilot partner cities, one of which is one of the five most populated cities in America. We expect to roll Citizinvestor out to new cities nearly every month.

Brief bios on the other two co-founders can be found below:

Jordan Raynor is a digital strategist who has spent his career solving difficult problems in government, politics and technology. Jordan most recently served as Client Director at Engage – deemed a “mega interactive agency” by Mashable. At Engage, Jordan’s primary client was the Voting Information Project – an initiative that works with election officials to put polling place location data in uniform XML format. Jordan was honored as a Google Fellow at the 2010 Personal Democracy Forum.

Erik Rapprich is a web director, developer and strategist. Most recently, Erik served as Creative Director at Engage, where he met Jordan. At Engage, Erik lead product strategy for Multiply and iContribute – products used by leaders like John Boehner, Newt Gingrich, Paul Ryan and Bob McDonnell. In 2010, Erik served as Web Director for the Republican Governors Association, managing a team that created 38 websites and applications in five months.

What are its key features?

Citizinvestor allows citizens to invest in the local government projects they care about most. Here’s how it works.

Local governments submit pre-approved projects to citizinvestor.com. The cost of these projects have already been set and department approved, the only thing lacking is funding. Citizens then find the projects they care about most and pledge to financially invest in those projects. Once a project is 100% pledged, the project is built! Citizens don’t pay a dime unless the project is fully funded. This ensures that there’s no risk to the participating governments or citizens.

While municipalities are the only users who can post projects to the site that raise actual dollars, we are giving citizens a platform to “petition” their governments for projects they want to see built. Once a petition reaches a certain threshold, we will work with the person who started the petition to bring it to city hall and hopefully get the petition turned into a Citizinvestor project.

What are the costs, pricing plans?

Citizinvestor is absolutely free for municipalities to use. Citizinvestor takes a 5% fee on all successfully funded projects, but that cost is posed to citizens, not municipalities.

How can those interested connect with you?

Email jordan@citizinvestor.com, follow our progress on our blog at http://blog.citizinvestor.com or on Twitter and Facebook.

Kudos to him for openly acknowledging Measured Voice’s application, but also articulating a mission-driven motivation, which I believe is important for any business, especially those serving government.

More importantly, Jed sheds light on a fundamental civic need, but also one where there’s currently little market competition: helping government better communicate to citizens.

Jed and I have talked about government communications at length, and I’ve written about this in the past. Unlike founders of many civic startups, he has worked closely with government and gets its culture and inherent challenges. He is truly serious and passionate about this, especially as it pertains to how government can best leverage social media.

From his post:

While there are many social media management tools, none are focused on government, and none focus as closely as we do on the most important component of government social media communications: clear, strategic messaging. As more government organizations are pushed to communicate via social media, we aspire to be the tool agencies choose to develop professional, mission-driven, social media communication teams.

Our wildest ambition is to help improve the clarity of language used in public facing government communications.

and:

Our #1 goal as a company is to do work that we’re proud of. If we can help government organizations communicate more effectively with citizens, we’ll improve millions of people’s experiences with the government. The chance to work on these kinds of problems is what gets us out of bed in the morning.

Much of the Gov 2.0/open government movement focuses on data, transparency, open source, apps and other technology solutions without addressing the fundamental challenge of effectively informing the common citizen and meeting them where they are, which more often these days is through social media. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard local government representatives say they know they need to get on Twitter or Facebook, but have no understanding of where to begin.

As we build more agile, affordable technology solutions for government, let’s also focus and allocate resources on helping it better communicate to citizens.