Avencia Incorporated, a Philadelphia-based Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software development firm, announces the release of Australia and New Zealand political data through Cicero™, its legislative district boundary and elected official web API (application programming interface). Information about elected legislators as well as the district boundaries that define their constituencies is frequently dispersed across multiple agencies and different levels of government. Much of it remains on paper. Finding the information for any particular location can prove to be a difficult and time-consuming task. Now, through Cicero, users can easily identify national, state, territory, and province level political representatives as well as view maps of election districts for any location in Australia and New Zealand.
The Cicero web API has been available in the United States for two years, and in spring 2008, data for Canadian national, provincial and local legislatures was added. But with term limits, regular and special elections and rapidly growing populations that cause frequent changes in constituency boundaries, political and legislative data for Australia and New Zealand is particularly difficult to acquire and maintain. Cicero eliminates this problem by providing an affordable, easily integrated web service API that gives users access to continuously updated legislative data.
Since 2006, the Cicero API and the geographic database that drives it have been available as a cost-effective and accurate service for organizations that need to integrate elected official and election district lookup capabilities with existing websites or software applications. Such organizations include advocacy groups, political organizations, and funding institutions, among many others. Individual users can also match single addresses with political information and maps on the Cicero website at no cost. The Cicero dataset and shapefiles, continuously updated by Avencia’s GIS analysts, contain current national and state legislative data for all of the United States and Canada (US State and Congress, and Canadian Parliament and provincial and territorial assemblies), as well as local data (city councils) for over 70 cities in both countries. With data completed for Australia and New Zealand, Avencia plans to next expand its international offerings to include France and the United Kingdom.
Cicero is not just for political data. Avencia has also recently added school district lookups to Cicero, and subscribers will soon have the option to conduct address-based lookups for watersheds, municipalities, counties and police districts in the United States.
Cicero was developed to provide 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.
“Avencia is passionate about creating tools that enhance citizen advocacy and the democratic process,” says Robert Cheetham, Avencia’s CEO and President “By extending the Cicero geographic data service to Canada, Australia and New Zealand, we are beginning to fulfill our vision for a global service that can support enhanced communication between citizens and the democratically elected officials that represent them throughout the world.”
With the political geography and related data Avencia has developed to support Cicero, the firm is also able to cost effectively provide geographic analysis services for election campaigns, non-profit, and political advocacy organizations such as Common Cause as well as create web-based software that integrates the political data with other types of socio-economic indicators. In addition to the geographic analysis and software development projects, the firm has also provided pro bono services for national and regional democracy, civic advocacy and election monitoring groups that include: MapLight.org, Committee of 70, Hallwatch, R.E.F.O.R.M Ballot and Philadelphia Forward.
For more information on Cicero web services, visit http://www.azavea.com/products/cicero.
