FixPhillyDistricts.com: local redistricting contest kicks off with cash prizes

The FixPhillyDistricts.com local legislative redistricting awareness campaign and contest Technically Philly wrote about earlier this month has launched in earnest.

Visit the website to submit your vision of how Philadelphia legislative boundaries should look and be in the running to have your idea presented to City Council, in addition to a cool $1,000.

The project is using GIS shop Azavea’s DistrictBuilder tool based on its Cicero API. The project is in partnership with WHYY, which hosted a rousing kickoff event, and the Philadelphia Daily News.

Azavea’s Cicero API goes international, GIS firm launches new website

Beyond dots on a map.

That’s the new tagline of GIS software firm Azavea, which has undergone a branding overhaul since it changed its name in March following a disputed legal claim.

As part of that move, last month, the shop based in the Callowhill neighborhood unveiled a new look to its website, completing the shift from a decade-old Avencia name to its new Azavea brand. Read about their CMS here.

The new look coincides with news that Azavea continues to expand the map they go beyond.

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Azavea debuts free subscription plan for legislative district, elected official search API

Fresh off a name change, GIS software firm Azavea, formerly Avencia, has launched a free subscription plan for Cicero, its much-touted legislative district and elected official search API.

The plan offers users 1,000 monthly credits toward “any coordinate-based legislative district matching, elected official data lookups and/or map web service requests,” according to a release [PDF].

The company release leans heavily on suggesting the ‘Cicero Free‘ plan is for more limited organizations that want to add legislative data to their Web sites or online applications. The recently released Our Philadelphia platform, which was built by Common Cause Pennsylvania to track money in local politics, used a beta version of the free plan.

Play with it the free API here.

Avencia and Common Cause PA partner on Our Philadelphia, tracking city campaign contributions

The Web was always supposed to be democratic. But for all the good government oversight resources online, local politics often fail to attract the spotlight of transparency.

After Hallwatch went under, Philadelphians were left without a resource for hard data about their elected officials.

It’s an issue that certainly interests nonprofit, non-partisan citizens’ lobby organization Common Cause PA. Enough so that the organization has harnessed legislative data API Cicero, the brainchild of Callowhill GIS development company Avencia, to launch Our Philadelphia. The Web site explores “the role of money in local politics and allow users to investigate these issues for themselves.”

Made possible by the Samuel S. Fels Fund, the site shines the light on local campaign contributions for city legislators. Users can create custom RSS feeds, search by address, as powered by Cicero, and track information and content relevant to other keyword searches.

So, for example, a Frankford resident might find it entirely peculiar that the top contributor to the campaign of his city Councilwoman Maria Quinones Sanchez is energy drink manufacturer Cintron Beverage, to the tune of $21,500.

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Callowhill software developer Avencia releases legislative data API

Showing Philly's gerrymandered 5th councilmanic district

Updated: 3:51 5/7/09

Here’s a completely uncontroversial statement: the sloppy, meandering legislative districts that are used to keep incumbents in power are an embarrassment to our Republic.

Don’t worry, though, technology is going to solve that, too.

A cool, new version of a free subscription-based district-matching and legislative data API has been released by Avencia, a geographic analysis and software development firm based in the Poplar Callowhill neighborhood west of Northern Liberties.

The new version of CiceroLive, a free sample of the data and mapping tool Cicero API, which pools relevant information about political representatives at all government levels, including the district boundaries for 100 major U.S. cities, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, comes before another likely round of redistricting in 2010, with new Census data arriving then.

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