Azavea Inc., an award-winning Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software design and development firm, announces the release of a new ‘Cicero Free’ plan - a free subscription plan for Cicero, Azavea’s district matching and elected official lookup web service API. The plan offers up to 1,000 credits each month which can be used toward any coordinate-based legislative district matching, elected official data lookups and/or map web service requests. Avencia created the ‘Cicero Free’ pricing plan to give organizations with limited resources the opportunity to provide their website or online application with legislative data through the Cicero API free of charge.
The Cicero web API currently provides legislative district boundaries and elected official information to public and private web applications for newspapers, election watchdog groups, philanthropic foundations, unions, arts organizations and private commercial firms. A beta user of the ‘Cicero Free’ plan is Our Philadelphia, a new website built by Common Cause Pennsylvania. The site tracks campaigns contributions in Pennsylvania and will also soon focus on redistricting reform for Philadelphia and the state, tracking the influence of lobbyists, and promoting higher ethical standards for public officials.
The free subscription makes available most of the Cicero API including maps of districts, district matching based on coordinates and contact information for local, state and national elected officials in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The Cicero database now includes almost 10,000 legislative boundaries and information on almost 12,000 elected officials. Details about the ‘Cicero Free’ plan are available at: http://www.azavea.com/Products/Cicero/Purchase/CiceroFreeAccount.aspx.
In 2009 Azavea released several new additions and improvements to the Cicero API including support for ESRI’s new ArcGIS Online premium geocoding service and a decrease in the price for Cicero services. In addition, the firm launched a batch geocoding and district matching service. The service uses the same Cicero API provided to developers, but it enables users to send Azavea a database of addresses that are stamped with geographic coordinates, districts and legislator contact information and then returned to the customer.