A new platform called Citizenly will bring constituents and elected officials or political candidates together in a positive way. The platform, which has launched in Oregon, is designed to improve the experience of being a citizen and public servant. We’re hopeful that county officials in Oregon will be willing to try out this early version at citizenly.com and let us know how we can improve the platform to meet your, and your constituents’, needs before we expand nationwide.
Here’s why Citizenly was started and how it’s meant to help government officials, candidates, and members of the public.
Citizenly was created because the internet, for all of the good it’s done, hasn’t necessarily improved the experience of being a citizen or public servant. In fact, the internet has arguably made it worse or harder in some ways. If you are a county official, you may have experienced it firsthand: anonymous Facebook users questioning your motives, X (Twitter) users replying to your post with personal attacks, or messages that may be from bots or non-constituents. These toxic interactions have, especially over the last few years, reduced trust locally and nationally. And it’s probably dissuaded some people from public service.
Additionally, members of the public find it difficult to know who represents them at all levels — from federal through state and county down to cities, school boards, and special districts. Simply put, nowhere before has all of this information existed in one place and been well-organized and easily accessible.
Our goal at Citizenly is to change all of that by creating a single place where citizens can go to get information and where public servants can interact with constituents in a way that welcomes discourse and disagreement, but constructively.
Here’s how it works now, in our “beta” phase, and how we envision it developing in the future. Again, we’d love for county officials in Oregon to sign up and help us find ways to improve it before it expands nationally!
In our first release, any resident of Oregon can sign up for free and immediately see all of their elected officials and candidates, along with key information about each. If you are an elected official or candidate, you can also sign up for free and check your profile.
We’re also really proud to have compiled the world’s first and most complete database of every elected official and political candidate in the country, from the President to school boards and special district officials. Our goal for all states is for our data to always be 99%+ complete and 99%+ accurate at any one time — a standard we’ve already met and exceeded in Oregon. (We’ve aggregated all of this information from public sources and don’t distribute any private information.)
So, what’s our vision for Citizenly, and what’s to come? In the months ahead, we’ll be steadily iterating Citizenly to be a little like a mashup of LinkedIn and NextDoor: where those platforms connect users based on professional network or neighborhood, we’ll connect users based on jurisdiction or constituency, as well as political or policy issues of common interest. As an elected official or candidate, you’ll be able to “claim” your profile and update key fields, like your photo and information about you and your role. We’ll offer various outreach and compliance tools, such as surveys for the former and records retention and public meetings notices for the latter. Underneath it all, as a county official, you’ll be able to see whether the person you are interacting with is actually a constituent or not. We’ll be working hard to balance freedom of expression with a prohibition against personal attacks and clearly false statements. In short, Citizenly is intended to be a one-stop shop for sharing and obtaining reliable information, and interacting with others based on constituency or shared policy interests. It’s also meant to be an inclusive place that welcomes people across the political spectrum.
But first things first. We’re really excited about this early version of the platform; however, like any early version, we know that there will be some things we didn’t anticipate or didn’t fully think through. We’d be enormously grateful to any county official in Oregon who signs up (it’s free) at citizenly.com. We welcome feedback from constituents and everyday users as well.
Thanks to Oregon’s county officials for your service and thank you in advance for giving Citizenly a try.
John Horton is the founder and CEO of Citizenly. Prior to founding Citizenly, he worked at the county, state, and federal levels, first as a deputy district attorney in Multnomah County, then as legal counsel to the Oregon House Judiciary Committee, and later as a White House aide. He subsequently founded an Oregon-based technology company, LegitScript, where he served as CEO and Chairman for 15 years. Citizenly is headquartered in the Portland, Oregon, area and has approximately a dozen employees. Citizenly is not a partisan organization, and its employees’ political views span the political spectrum.
*Sponsored content provided by AOC Business Partner Citizenly