Glossary In this example, Cicero accurately places an address in Pennsylvania House District 175. By contrast, a ZIP code-based geocoder would mistakenly locate the same address in PA House District 181— the legislative district in which the centroid of ZIP code 19123 is located. Address-level vs. ZIP code-level Geocoding  Cicero uses address-level geocoding - the most precise method of geocoding. Most other lookup services use ZIP code-level geocoding. Cicero accurately places constituents and stakeholders in their legislative districts. Address-level geocoding pinpoints addresses on a street level map unlike ZIP code geocoding, which uses the centroid of a ZIP code zone as the reference point for all addresses within that ZIP code. Street-level data fit neatly within even the smallest legislative districts, accurately linking citizens to their national, state and local elected officials. In many cases, ZIP code boundaries don’t match legislative district boundaries. In fact, ZIP code zones are larger than many city council districts. Using ZIP code geocoding in these cases returns large numbers of incorrectly geocoded addresses - that is, assigned to an incorrect legislative district.

API - an application programming interface (API) - is a source code interface that an operating system or library provides to support requests for services to be made of it by computer programs.  In other words, an API provides a method for an application program to make requests for specific data or functionality from a remote operating system or other application. Cicero’s API is simple and well-documented. Learn more about it here.

An Assembly is a legislative body typically governed by a set of procedural rules and charged with making decisions for a given electorate (often defined geographically, such as a state). In representative democracies, members of an assembly are elected as representatives of voters, either from geographically-defined legislative districts (see below) or by the population at large (see right). Members of an assembly may serve on committees, which are tasked with making decisions about issues that are narrower in scope. The membership of some assemblies is determined by a vote on a fixed schedule, while others may call elections only when the ruling coalition faces a vote of no-confidence. The Cicero elected official database contains information on assemblies at the city, state and national levels in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

At Large describes those officials who are chosen to represent the whole of an electorate (whether a city, state or nation) rather than a particular subset, such as a geographically-defined legislative district. The Cicero elected official database returns information on at large legislators in addition to those who serve particular constituencies.

An Elected Official  is a legislator or civil servant whose is elevated to public office as the result of a popular vote. At every level of government executives and legislators are typically elected officials. At the city, county and municipal levels other officials—including treasurers, sheriffs, district attorneys and judges—may also be elected. Because elected officials derive their authority from the will of the people, they remain accountable to their constituents, who can contact them to influence policymaking. The Cicero database currently contains detailed information on more than 11,000 elected officials in legislatures across the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Gerrymandering describes a form of redistricting wherein the boundaries of an electoral district are manipulated to favor partisan political groups. This usually takes the form either of “packing”—drawing electoral boundaries so as to concentrate supporters of the opposition in a single district and thus win surrounding districts—or of “cracking”—drawing boundaries such that opposition supporters are divided among several districts, thus diluting their collective power. One geographical indicator of likely gerrymandering is the shape of a district: gerrymandered districts tend to take on convoluted spatial forms. Indeed, the word is a portmanteau formed from the name of former Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry and the salamander-like district he signed into law. For this reason, compactness—the area of a district relative to its perimeter—can be a helpful metric for identifying cases of possible gerrymandering. Analyzing the shapes of electoral districts in a GIS allows us to identify those that are least compact and thus most likely to be gerrymandered. For more information on this issue, read Avencia’s white paper on the topic.

Geocoding refers to the GIS operation that assigns latitude and longitude coordinates to a geographic reference (street address, location-based data, etc.), which can then be displayed as a feature on a map or used for analytical purposes. Cicero uses geocoding to assign coordinates to addresses input by users, then uses analytical tools to combine this information with other georeferenced features (such as legislative districts) to determine a match.

Geographic Representation in the context of Cicero, refers to a political system whereby legislative representation is apportioned based on spatially-defined electoral districts. Electoral systems based on geographic representation stand in contrast to those based on proportional representation, in which legislators are elected as a result of their political party’s share of the total popular vote. In a system of geographic representation constituents are represented by a particular legislator and are able to influence the decision-making process through this person. Cicero uses GIS technologies to quickly and accurately match addresses to elected officials.

A Geographic Information System (GIS) is a collection of computer hardware, software, and geographic data for capturing, managing, analyzing and displaying all forms of geographically or spatially referenced information. In the case of Cicero, data include a detailed streets network used for geocoding and continually updated representations of electoral districts; users supply the address data as input. The hardware and software are all maintained by Avencia, and the Cicero API allows analytical results to be delivered to customers through a simple and convenient web service.

A Legislative District is a geographically-based constituency: a group of people assumed to have common goals or values based on their spatial proximity. A given legislative or electoral district will elect one or more representatives to a legislative assembly. Generally speaking, legislative districts are intended to represent populations of roughly equal size. To maintain this balance, they periodically undergo redistricting-- the redrawing of district boundaries and the creation of new districts-- to distribute the population evenly among districts. When conducted by partisan political bodies, this process runs the risk of reflecting gerrymandering (see above).

SOAP is a protocol for exchanging messages over computer networks used by Cicero’s web services API. Because it is XML-based and uses HTTP/HTTPS, SOAP is platform- and language-independent. This makes it ideal for accessing web services because it can communicate between applications running on different operating systems and using different technologies or programming languages. SOAP is a simple and extensible protocol, making it easy to integrate Cicero’s web services into existing applications or databases.

Web Services are a system architecture and methodology for providing distributed software services across a network. You can think of a web service as akin to a utility, like electricity or gas. The information is there and ready to be tapped-- a client need only have a subscription and use the correct protocol to plug in. Avencia possesses the specialized knowledge necessary for maintaining the service so that clients don't need to. Avencia has developed Web Services for several clients including the City of Philadelphia, spatial data clearinghouses, police departments, and for conservation modeling.

© Header photo of a 1907 Webster Dictionary used with permission by J. Brownell, via flickr.com.