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TO: Mayor Richard C. Irvin
FROM: Michael R. Pegues, Chief Information Officer
Clayton Muhammad, Director Public Information Officer
Jeff Anderson, Deputy Chief Information Officer
DATE: December 7, 2022
SUBJECT:
Requesting approval for a three-year software maintenance renewal agreement with Zencity Technologies US Inc. for the Zencity platform in the total amount of $264,000 ($88,000 annually).
PURPOSE:
Zencity is a platform for understanding people in the city on a wide scale. With the use of advanced AI algorithms, we analyze data from social media, city hotlines and other relevant sources, and provide local government stakeholders with detailed, real time insights about how their citizens view and use the city. The analysis can be accessed through a web-based interface on desktop and mobile devices.
The City has utilized the Zencity platform since 2019 (Resolution R20-093) for both social to 311 and the inclusion of Spanish Algorithm to enhance city efforts to help collect, organize and handle potential resident request being shared on social media. Zencity's unique machine learning technology can translate Spanish into English and thereafter assign a topic, category, and sentiment to posts and comments.
The City also wishes to extend the Zencity platform to utilize the Community Survey platform to perform surveys among residents concerning various City services. These types of surveys have been utilized by several government agencies to increase collaboration and transparency around City decision making processes as well as gathering resident satisfaction metrics for better performance management.
BACKGROUND:
The ZenCity platform collects data about citizen interactions from a variety of sources and analyzes them in real time using a set of Machine-learning based algorithms. The analyzed data can be accessed via a variety of graphs on our admin dashboard, including the following:
1. PLATFORM FEATURES
1.1. Category bar chart - the main bar chart shows how many interactions relate to each area of responsibility of the city, and what is the sentiment towards that topic. The name and number of topics can be modified to fit the customer’s needs based on our list of automatically identified sub-categories.
1.2. Alerts and notifications - the platform can create alerts about popular posts or comments or about significant changes in whole categories. The alerts can be accessed through the dashboard, but can also go out on a daily, weekly or real time basis via email - per the user’s request.
1.3. Word cloud - The word cloud shows the most popular terms used in interactions analyzed by the platform. The larger the word is the more popular it was.
1.4. Overall sentiment view - the overall sentiment pie chart shows the ratio of positive, negative and neutral interactions out of the total sum of interactions analyzed.
1.5. Popular stories - the rotating digest of popular stories shows the stories which received the most interactions across all data sources.
1.6. Map interface - the map interface will show all interactions which have a location property, divided by category, by type or in a heatmap format.
1.7. Category drill down - each category has a drill down view which shows the level of discussion over time in that category, alerts, word cloud, map and popular stories views which include data just for this category and an operative view of city hotline calls for the category - including open calls, calls over the last week and changes over time.
1.8. Conversation analysis - the third level of drill down will be the “conversation analysis” which allows drilling down to the level of stories themselves. In this view, users can analyse conversations based on category, date range, sentiment or keyword search, or a combination of the above, and see both the trend and the stories themselves that make up the data. Each story will include its source, category, sentiment, location and a link to the original content.
2. DATA SOURCES
2.1. Facebook - we analyze all interactions (posts, comments, likes, tags etc.) from public pages and public groups, both official and unofficial. This includes official accounts of the city and other agencies, resident groups, accounts of local businesses, community organizations, causes and any other relevant page or open group.
2.2. Twitter - apart from the same analysis employed on facebook, on twitter we also collect all geotagged interactions in the area and all interactions mentioning specific hashtags or keywords.
2.3. City Hotline reports - we take all city hotline reports from your database.
2.4. Additional sources - we may be able to incorporate other relevant data sources identified, such as local news sites, community message boards, other social media platforms etc. General new data sources implemented (such as new social media platforms) will be offered once they are available. Unique sources (such as local news sites) will be discussed and agreed upon by both sides.
DISCUSSION:
Funds are available in account 101-1281-419.45-02.
The City has used the ZenCity platform successfully since 2020 (Resolution R20-093).
IMPACT STATEMENT:
N/A.
RECOMMENDATIONS:
Requesting approval for a three-year software maintenance renewal agreement with Zencity Technologies US Inc. for the Zencity platform in the total amount of $264,000.
cc: Finance Committee
CITY OF AURORA, ILLINOIS
RESOLUTION NO. _________
DATE OF PASSAGE ________________
title
A Resolution requesting approval for a three-year software maintenance renewal agreement with Zencity Technologies US Inc. for the Zencity platform in the total amount of $264,000.
body
WHEREAS, the City of Aurora has a population of more than 25,000 persons and is, therefore, a home rule unit under subsection (a) of Section 6 of Article VII of the Illinois Constitution of 1970; and
WHEREAS, subject to said Section, a home rule unit may exercise any power and perform any function pertaining to its government and affairs for the protection of the public health, safety, morals, and welfare; and
WHEREAS, Zencity is a platform for understanding people in the city on a wide scale:
WHEREAS, With the use of advanced AI algorithms, we analyze data from social media, city hotlines and other relevant sources, and provide local government stakeholders with detailed, real time insights about how their citizens view and use the city; and
WHEREAS, The City has used the ZenCity platform successfully since 2020 (Resolution R20-093); and
WHEREAS, the City desires to extend the usage of the Zencity platform to include Community Surveys; and
WHEREAS, Funds will be available in account 101-1281-419.45-02.
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED by the City Council of the City of Aurora, Illinois, as follows: requesting approval for a three-year software maintenance renewal agreement with Zencity Technologies US Inc. for the Zencity platform in the total amount of $264,000.