The Aurora City Council will vote Tuesday on adding onto a contract it has with Zencity Technologies to do four short surveys of Aurora citizens on their attitudes about certain city issues.
The addition would cost $45,000, and would give the city at least four pulse surveys – short-term surveys that take only about five to eight weeks for results – which city officials use to find out what people think about certain city matters.
According to a memo from Michael Pegues, chief information officer; Viviana Ramirez, chief Community Services officer; and Jeff Anderson, deputy chief information officer, the city has used Zencity since 2019, “to enhance city efforts to help collect, organize and handle potential resident requests being shared on social media.”
“With the use of advanced AI algorithms, we analyze data from social media, city hotlines and other relevant sources, and provide local government stakeholders with detailed, real-time insights about how their citizens view and use the city,” the memo said. “The analysis can be accessed through a web-based interface on desktop and mobile devices.”
A spokesman for Zencity told aldermen at a recent Committee of the Whole meeting that the company would do “short-term, very quick digital surveys.”
But some did not want the city to extend the contract. Keith Larson, a candidate for alderman who spoke during public comment at the meeting, said the company benefits from harvesting information.
“Please do not allow further surveillance of residents,” he said.
Ald. John Laesch, at large, questioned the accuracy of city surveys and said they seem “like a lot more PR” than true information gathering, and pointed to past surveys that got less than what he said was a representative sample.
He also said the company uses the surveys for “data scraping.”
But the company spokesman said the surveys “have nothing to do with data scraping.” And he said the company guarantees representative samples by continuing surveys, even at company cost.
In answer to another question, from Ald. Ted Mesiacos, 3rd Ward, about how the data would be shared with the public, and if it would be put online, the spokesman said, “whatever you choose.”
“We have a number of cities that take data and place it online,” he said. “You own the data.”
Alex Alexandrou, the city’s chief management officer, said the surveys are a “tool we use to survey the community.”
“We use it project by project,” he said. “It’s nothing nefarious other than to inform citizens and the administration.”
slord@tribpub.com
