Who’s the mayor of Dunwoody? How do you connect with the state senator for Alpharetta? Who represents Sandy Springs on the school board?
When it comes to accessing your government, finding out who is in charge can be confusing.
“The complexity around the system is something no one wants to be a part of,” Atlanta-based software designer Horace Williams said. “There is nothing accessible about it.”
That's why Williams came up with Empowrd, a cell phone app that uses geolocation and a heavy set of overlapping databases to trace elected leaders from the president and congressmen down to state lawmakers, local school board members, city councilors, prosecutors and judges. Then the app gives citizens email, telephone and address information for their leaders.
Williams sees Empowrd as a way to straighten out the lines of communications that frustrate citizens and elected officials alike. Georgia is the test case for the technology.
So far, folks who download the app have instant access to their governors, congressional representatives and other constitutional offices, no matter where they live in the United States. About 16,000 elected officials are in the app’s database, although Georgia is more fully represented.
Williams said the Peach State is a perfect place to test Empowrd. First, it’s “kind of a swing state” in terms of the relative balance in voting-age residents who describe themselves as Republican and Democrat, although elected officials are predominately Republican.
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