Open Government Toolkit Based on Pioneering San Francisco Open 311 Initiative to be Rolled Out Internationally

ROCKVILLE, Md., Aug. 2 /PRNewswire/ -- Lagan, the global leader in Government to Citizen (G2C) technology, today announces the international launch of an integration toolkit that will enable its 200 local government customers worldwide to receive and action service requests via social networks, mobile applications and third-party websites.

Lagan's local government customers already serve the needs of more than 60 million citizens throughout the US, Canada and the UK.

Lagan's new Open 311 Integration Toolkit will make it possible for any developer to create apps that link their sites, social networks or mobile applications direct to local government. For the first time service requests received through any of these channels can be seamlessly and automatically integrated into the work order processing system and managed and tracked through to completion.

Lagan has been working with the City of San Francisco on a bespoke product and having proved the concept, Lagan is now launching a version that will work for all Lagan customers worldwide.  The version will make it possible for governments and citizens to exchange information in multiple message formats, acting as a multi-directional translation tool that forms what Lagan describes as an "intelligent glue".

"The implications and applications of this global launch are immense," said Des Speed, CEO of Lagan. "This toolkit will transform citizens' relationships with government globally.  It has the potential to weave public services in more aspects of our lives, creating imaginative adjacencies and numerous opportunities for mobile ubiquitous citizen access to local government services without adding cost to service delivery."

Chris Vein, CIO, City of San Francisco, said, "Having our CRM vendor, Lagan, support the Open 311 initiative and build it into their product, makes it possible for native integration into Open 311, strengthening the Open Gov movement and bringing another level of support and technical capability from the IT community into the Open 311 discussion. Efforts to build out this API standard have been incredible with applications being developed such as SeeClickFix's integration with SF311 Lagan CRM using Open 311. It is heartening to see the work that has been done with vendors such as Lagan, when a CRM company sees the beauty and the potential of what we've got going on here, signing the pledge and agreeing to change product in order to meet the needs of the Open 311 API movement.  It's just a fantastic thing, so my hat's off to those very large companies for doing that."

The City of San Francisco project has been praised by the White House CIO Vivek Kundra for its pioneering work on the Open 311 initiative.

Almost every city in the US has a 311 Customer Service Center.  These centers provide residents with answers about a wide range of city services, and they offer a conduit for residents to report potholes, graffiti and other issues.

The City of San Francisco's 311 Center opened in March 2007 and since then more than 8 million calls have been answered and thousands of requests have been submitted online.

In 2009 the City launched a service that enabled residents to submit requests via Twitter to make it easier for San Franciscans to communicate with government and report problems. Thousands of residents have taken advantage of this service, tweeting requests to 311 at no cost to the City. The Open 311 initiative expands the utility of that service to a substantially wider range of platforms including Facebook and mobile devices.

Lagan will offer the integration toolkit to its 200 local government customers in North America and the UK and is planning to launch the toolkit in the Australian market.  In the UK, where Lagan has 130 local authority clients, it will be offered as part of Lagan's "Big Society Toolkit", a suite of offerings that Lagan is aligning to the new government's principal theme of driving new levels of citizen participation in the activities of government.

About Lagan

Lagan Technologies is the global leader in G2C (government to citizen) technology.  Lagan software enables governments and citizens to communicate online, on the phone and on the move with its suite of Local Government CRM and Enterprise Case Management (ECM) solutions. With approaching 200 public sector customers worldwide, Lagan helps local governments serve the everyday interests of more than 60 million citizens.

For more information about Lagan, please visit http://www.lagan.com/ and contact us at [email protected].  Keep up with industry news on Twitter at http://twitter.com/lagan_business.

SOURCE Lagan