OpenCity Platform

Our project is about open, effective and trustful interaction in a modern city. In a city where the authorities are accountable to the citizens, where you are understood, and your opinion is taken into account. The city is in your palm!

We make OpenCity Platform - an open communication platform, developing local initiatives of residents, interacting with authorities and organizations and helping to improve the city in which you live. Thanks to social technologies, the OpenCity project identifies local leaders among active citizens, develops them, motivates them and gives them the tools necessary for positive action. We are trying in the development of the project to combine the best practices of SmartCity solutions, innovative approaches (in particular, the possibility of AI – artificial intelligence) with the openness of the platform, independent of the authorities.

Big cities are becoming the world's centers of development in the modern world. And millions of people every day are faced with the poor performance of law enforcement and city services, violation of their rights, injustice and various dangers lurking in the urban environment. And there is an acute problem of competition between cities for talents and gains largely depends on whether there is a comfortable environment in the city, and it cannot be created without the active participation of the citizens themselves. The problem is how not costly, safe and convenient to inform and coordinate the activities of millions of people for the implementation of urban social initiatives. So far there are no such specialized professional solutions in the world (social networks have their limitations and disadvantages).

The main ultimate beneficiaries of the project are urban cityzens - activists and leaders of local communities, NGO and ordinary residents of many cities who can use new social technologies and IT tools to implement their initiatives.

Day by day with the help of OpenCity project, we help thousands of people in different cities improve the world around them. They solve their problems, communicate and create stable communities, establish horizontal connections, feel themselves the masters of the city, form a comfortable urban environment, this is the basis of urban democracy and self-government in modern cities.

They fix potholes, reduce illegal dumps in their neighborhoods, fight the spread of drugs and environmental pollution, help homeless people and homeless animals, ensure accessibility of urban environment for disabled people and implement many useful social initiatives. Better communication increases participation, maximizes efficiency, and enhances the quality of life in the cities.

We make OpenCity - innovative crowdsourcing platform, developing local initiatives of the residents, interacting with authorities and organizations and helping to improve the cities.
Thanks to social technologies, OpenCity platform allocates local leaders among active citizens, develops, motivates and gives them tools, necessary for affirmative action. OpenCity services are free and available to all local communities:
«Problems and Solutions» – the tools for solving urban problems
together: residents and authorities.
«Initiatives» — online service to implement new ideas, find likeminded
collaboration.
«Actions and Events» — the service, which will help to be
informed about planning activities — joint cleaning debris, planting
trees and other activities in which to participate.
«Accessible Environment» — service that contains information
about the availability of socially significant facilities for people with
disabilities.
And 5 more services for e-participation.

OpenCity Platform has several components - Web-portal and Mobile apps (Android and iOS) for citizens, CRM for organizations and authorities, tools for the moderators and administrators and Open API for better integration with other solutions. 

We implemented a service approach where any city or organization can choose one or several services depending on their current needs and already existing IT-environment.
And the significant advantage is that any NGO, initiative group or local organization can very easily organize their own project on the platform. Combating the spread of drugs, making or checking hyper-local news,
monitoring road conditions, helping homeless animals, environmental initiatives, etc. - projects can be very different.
OpenCity Platform is also a form of social network. Only the center of attention is the problem and users with their social roles participate in solving it all together.
And although we are developing a socially-oriented project, it will be at the most advanced technological level among modern SmartCity solutions.

What is one of the features of our project? - In parallel with the platform, we together with our partners are developing a new standard of communication in the modern city (SmartCity). It will be called OpenCity API. It covers several basic scenarios of interaction between different social groups in cities (multiservice approach). - This is an expanded and more modern version of the limited and already slightly outdated Open311 Protocol.

OpenCity is a multi-service platform that consists of several components - Portal and mobile apps for residents, CRM for teams (service organizations, local business and authorities), OpenCity AI Engine and OpenCity API, interactive widgets and other service components. 

In recent months, we have been actively engaged in embedding the possibility of AI (ML) in the platform. We see some very interesting scenarios of using ML in working with data.

What an important question! )) We are now paying all our attention to this - we use Customer development techniques, design processes, work on the usability of the main components of the platform. The key to success is a very large live audience in our test projects (65 cities) and constant feedback.

Now - 35 000;

In one year - 100 000;

In 5 years - 3 500 000.

The best and most useful communication solution for cities. 

Within the next year - 500 000 users in 5 countries. 

After 5 years - 3 500 000 users in 25 countries. Leaders in this segment.

There are no barriers. All these are small solved problems...

Our team is so motivated in the implementation of the project that we will not notice the barriers ) 

We will overcome everything!

In Russia, the law on foreign agents is in force for NGOs, and any
foreign financing can bring NGOs under its action and lead to
additional difficulties in the work of the organization. Or even to
the closure of it. Therefore, we have to create a mixed structure of
organizations, including both commercial and non-commercial
form of organization. In fact, this is the only possible option in
Russia for the implementation of large-scale social-oriented
projects.

5 full-time (core team) and 7 part-time.

And some external resources (designer, legal services, accounting and tax).

It is probably enough to note that we were the first in Russia and Eastern Europe to launch a crowdsourcing project in the field of socalled “street democracy”. Our example was followed by many initiative groups in many cities of Russia. Now, with our IT solutions, we support communication processes of interaction between residents and authorities in 62 cities.

Our philosophy is based on the idea that today's consumer society transforms to the society of participation. The state cannot know about all the problems and cannot resolve them everywhere and in time. The city authorities should deal with big things: strategy development, roads, transportation, and the likes. But they can't think of a private street or private home. Residents, who need to be competently provided with resources, must help.

Our efforts and our project are both about Opportunity and Sustainability (Sustainable development of local communities, cities and regions). Large-scale environmental initiatives are also being implemented on the basis of our innovative platform. 

We have a very strong motivation for the project, and our cool team has already developed the ability to “run a long distance”.

East Europe Foundation (Ukrain) - http://eef.org.ua/en/ 

Urbica (Russia) - https://urbica.co/en/

Let's Do It Foundation (Estonia) - https://www.letsdoitworld.org/ 

InfoCulture (Russia) - https://www.infoculture.ru/

Grounded Strategies and TreePittsburgh (USA) https://groundedpgh.org/ https://www.treepittsburgh.org/

1) InfoCulture and Urbica as technology partners help in the design and development of the platform in terms of GIS tools, data visualization, in the creation of interfaces of interaction with other solutions (Open API) and mechanisms for working with open data. 2) Grounded Strategies and Tree Pittsburgh – share with us the experience of building their successful it services and processes for social activities. 3) East Europe Foundation and let's Do It Foundation are partners who help to build optimal information models of our services according to their needs, they will be the first direct users of our new opencity Platform development.

And one more thing. There is an agreement with partners in Kiev from East Europe Fondation on joint promotion since 2020 of the OpenCity Platform and projects based on it in Eastern Europe and Central Asia – Belarus, Moldova, Kazakhstan, Slovakia, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Poland, 3 Baltic States, Georgia, Armenia and 7 other countries...

The base monetization mechanisms for OpenCity Platfrom are: 

1) Freemium SaaS (ready platform in the form of a set of tools and accompanying services) for the organizations and authorities of regions and municipalities, business structures. And Pro accounts with advanced features and a set of additional tools; 

2) Custom crowdsorsing solutions for Customers (public and infrastructure organizations in big cities); 

3) Co-Branding on the resources of the platform; 

4) Integration projects with the information systems of Customers; 

5) Joint partner solutions with mass-media companies. 

We tested a significant number of monetization options with our MVP-solution on real users, real customers in several European countries and in former Soviet Union countries and developed the most effective approaches to monetization.

We started our project with a thorough study of the business model and several monetization options. Our MVP already pays 50% of the current costs for the development of the platform. And we plan to achieve full payback and launch a full monetization model in 2020. 

Monetization will ensure sustainable development of the project. But we also look forward to partnerships with strong Internet players (Yandex, ...) and are interested in investment partners to accelerate growth.

I want: 

to gain knowledge of scaling project to other countries and make the project international and large-scale; 

to find friends and partners among other participants to establish partnerships in their countries and to strengthen our team; 

to get help from mentors and experts.

Also we need to work in several important ways, getting as many benefits from the program - We want to improve our customer development, make our profit receiving better, consult about business-plan, determine the most effective channels of promotion and build an international sales channels. And of course to create an effective structure of the company for the conduct of international business!

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https://sunlightfoundation.com/ 

http://eef.org.ua/en/ 

https://www.mysociety.org/

https://groundedpgh.org/ 

We are preparing an interesting proposal. We will present at the competition in September. 

Do not have time to fill in the application, but be sure to look at us in the final!

We are preparing an interesting proposal. We will present at the competition in September.

Do not have time to fill in the application, but be sure to look at us in the final!

We are preparing an interesting proposal. We will present at the competition in September.

Do not have time to fill in the application, but be sure to look at us in the final!

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We are preparing an interesting proposal. We will present at the competition in September.

Do not have time to fill in the application, but be sure to look at us in the final!

We are preparing an interesting proposal. We will present at the competition in September.

Do not have time to fill in the application, but be sure to look at us in the final!

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