New open performance solution from Ethos & Socrata uses open data to deliver outcomes to UK & European cities and municipalities on the Socrata platform
Seattle – March 18, 2014 – Socrata, a Seattle-based, open government, open data, and open performance solutions company, has announced a strategic partnership with UK headquartered, Ethos, the leading provider of “Smart City” solutions. Together, Socrata and Ethos will partner to deliver an open performance solution specifically designed to create measurable outcomes for cities and municipalities in the United Kingdom and throughout Europe.
Powered by Socrata’s Sofware-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform, the open performance solution will enable government organizations of all sizes to solve real-world problems associated with most aspects of governance including: transportation, health, energy, citizen services, spending transparency, and more. The solution includes an open data portal, government apps, performance measurement and implementation, and support services – all delivered on Socrata’s secure cloud platform.
Cities and other government organizations using the solution are expected to achieve significant benefits including:
- Improving the lives of the citizens they serve in ways that go far beyond creating government “transparency,” such as access to better health care, providing information about air quality and recreational services, access to real-time parking information and other “smart-car” services, lower crime through real-time street light monitoring and other open data-sensory technologies, and more.
- Goal-based governance through performance measurement to increase efficiency and deliver financial and electoral transparency.
- Lowering the cost of IT spending through a cloud-based, fully online solution that minimizes the need for long-term contracts and professional services engagements.
- Delivering real-time data to citizens when they need it and in the context by which they can most easily consume it – via apps, maps, and online dashboards, fed by open data.
Socrata CEO and Founder Kevin Merritt sees the massive opportunity of data-driven governing and decision-making in the public sector in the UK and throughout Europe and believes strategic partnerships are the best way to offer Socrata’s open data platform to government organizations globally. Merritt says, “Through our partnership with Ethos, we begin our ambitious global expansion strategy, having achieved significant market adoption for our platform and cloud-based solutions at state and local governments throughout the United States. We believe Ethos and its “Smart City” approach to creating meaningful outcomes for UK cities, councils, boroughs and ministries across the UK perfectly complements Socrata’s mission. Ethos brings the culture, credibility, and local connections Socrata has sought in a UK-based partner. We look forward to partnering with Ethos to increase the impact opening government data in actionable ways can have on government in the UK and beyond.”
The partnership also directly supports a number of UK government open data initiatives, including the UK Government’s Open Data Strategy[1], the Department for Innovation and Skills Industrial Strategy[2], and the recent Cabinet Office National Information Infrastructure[3] initiative.
One of the key outcomes of the partnership is to increase access to and real-time availability of all open data through common application programming interfaces (APIs) to innovators – such as computer engineers, academics, researchers, and entrepreneurs. With open data more easily and readily available, these “consumers” of open data will be able to accelerate their own goals, projects and business ventures. An increase in open data availability and standard consumption policy and practices means the creation of new approaches, jobs, social services, and new products and services that can be used to solve challenges in cities and other government organisations.
About Socrata:
Socrata is the cloud software company focused exclusively on democratizing access to data in government. We help government leaders improve transparency, modernize citizen and developer access to information, and bring facts into every decision, with unprecedented speed and cost savings. Delivered as turnkey cloud services, Socrata’s data consumerization products unlock data in enterprise silos and transform it into useful information that everyone can easily access, visualize, share and reuse. Innovators like the World Bank, Medicare, the United Nations Development Programme, the Netherlands, New York City, the United Kingdom, the Lombardia region in Italy, Chicago, San Francisco, and Maryland, have all chosen Socrata as the data sharing platform for their open innovation initiatives. To learn more about Socrata, visit www.socrata.com or follow @socrata on Twitter.
About Ethos:
Ethos Valuable Outcomes Group, “Ethos,” was founded in 2011 and is a social entrepreneurship formed from senior consultants, executives and public servants who have come together to resolve complex problems and set up innovative operations and organisations. Ethos clients include central government departments, cities, local government and major corporations. Ethos Smart facilitates and implements initiatives, products, and services in the smart city and government sectors.
To learn more about Ethos or open performance solutions by Socrata visit www.ethossmart.com or follow @EthosSmart on Twitter.