Tech Company QScend Recognizes Somerville for Citizen Alert System

SOMERVILLE, MA – The City of Somerville was honored by tech company QScend Technologies for contributing new ideas to the company's citizen alert software, QAlert.

Somerville and Pittsburgh, PA both utilize QAlert and received Innovation Awards for suggested improvements that were not originally conceived by the company. With Somerville's guidance, QScend implemented increased transparency into its system, better informing users about when their requests will be resolved.

"We want to provide people with as much detailed information on their service requests as quickly as
possible, and the notification tool helps us do that," Steve Craig, director of Constituent Services in
Somerville, said in a statement. "When we approached [the QScend] development team, we were pleasantly surprised how willing and able [they were] to implement such a change, and how fast they were able to make it happen."

In addition, QAlert is now integrated with Twitter, allowing local government greater communication with its citizens over social media. The suggestion, from Pittsburgh, allows citizens to now report issues by tweeting directly at the 311 Twitter account.

"These features now benefit each and every QAlert customer across the country," Keith Lebeau,
president and CEO of QScend Technologies, Inc., said in a statement. "The 2016 honorees characterize the collaborative spirit that is key for the improvement of our software and citizen engagement in local government."

Image via City of Somerville 311 Twitter