
The Cicero team welcomes 2012 with a new face and a new engine. We’ve just launched a new Cicero website (www.azavea.com/cicero). Additionally we are in the process of developing a Cicero REST API to allow for more integration flexibility (Cicero is currently a SOAP-based API), building an online batch stamping tool, and have just released a vital and timely data set. We’ll talk about the new API in a future newsletter, but I’ll focus on the new data set here.
Following every decennial census, each state goes through the process of redrawing their legislative district boundaries at the congressional and state levels. As many of you know, we’ve done a significant amount of research and software development related to making the process of drawing and analyzing new legislative districts easily accessible by anyone (e.g. DistrictBuilder, Redistricting The Nation, “Redrawing the Map on Redistricting” whitepaper, etc.).
We’ve also had to consider the significant impact redistricted boundaries will have on our Cicero users. Many organizations need to match their members or contacts to legislative districts in advance of organizing a call-to-action campaign or lobbying effort on behalf of their organization. Many Cicero users expressed a desire to match their address databases to both the boundaries currently in place and those that will take effect in the new legislative sessions.
Because our team is continuously accessing legislative boundary and elected official data we are in a great position to quickly serve up this data, and are now able to support both:
Legislative boundaries currently in use – This includes the district boundaries released after the 2000 Census that are still in effect. As state elections take place and inaugurations occur (Louisiana, New Jersey, Virginia elections used new boundaries in November), we will incorporate those boundaries that have gone through the final approval process by the state and will be in effect following the elections.- Legislative boundary plans that have been officially approved but will not take effect until the next election - This data set will not provide complete coverage of the United States until all states have completed the redistricting process. New states will be added as we receive and process the data.
If you have any questions about any of the Cicero team’s recent developments, please feel free to contact Project Manager, Abby Fretz at afretz@azavea.com or via phone at 215.701.7503.



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