For city, county and district staff
Get your government online
Answer each question once. When your open data is complete and current, staff stop repeating the same answers, residents find the right office from their address, and leaders can see where service breaks down.
Online is where a good open data policy ends up. Start by seeing what the public already sees about you.
Try: Vacaville
What online unlocks
One open record, used three ways: by your staff first, then residents, then leaders. Each line says whether it works today or is where we're headed.
For staff
- Live One place to correct a record, with a review trail.
- Headed Fewer repeat calls and emails, as residents find answers themselves.
- Headed Resident feedback on each service, through Touchpoints.
For residents
- Live They find you from their address, in the Explorer.
- Live A search widget for your own website, answering from the same record.
- Live AI assistants can answer from your record over MCP, an open protocol, instead of guessing.
For leaders
- Live Your government appears in each resident's stack, with the source behind it.
- Live See what's listed and what's missing, on this page.
- Headed Track your open data policy's progress over time.
How to get there
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1 · Publish
Publish a
data.jsoncatalog at your domain. It's the Project Open Data standard (DCAT-US) federal agencies already use, so you're not adopting anything new to civic.bot. -
2 · Describe
List your civic record in that catalog: your departments, services, public bodies and officials, keyed by GEOID and OCD-ID.
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3 · Register
Tell jurisdictional.org where your file lives, so it's indexed with everyone else's.
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4 · Keep it right
When something changes, propose the correction with its source. Look yourself up here any time to see what's still missing.
What it takes
- Time
- A few minutes to look yourself up. After that, as long as your list of gaps takes, one correction at a time.
- Data
- Only what's already public: departments, services, public bodies, officials and meeting schedules. Never anything about residents.
- Cost
- Free. The data is open, the software is open source, and there's no new system to buy.
Why it matters
Many calls to city hall ask something the city already knows. When that knowledge is open and kept current in one shared record, staff answer it once instead of every day. Residents get the same right answer at midnight as at noon, and leaders can see where service breaks down.