What is the name of your solution?
Poly Platform
Provide a one-line summary of your solution.
Poly Platform is a smart-city civic engagement app that digitizes local government services and makes them accessible to residents.
In what city, town, or region is your solution team headquartered?
Provo, UT, USAIn what country is your solution team headquartered?
What type of organization is your solution team?
For-profit, including B-Corp or similar models
Film your elevator pitch.
What specific problem are you solving?
According to the HHS, we are going through a global crisis in isolation and loneliness with more than half of adults feeling completely disconnected from their communities. This has been only made worse by the onset of the covid pandemic which radically transformed our day to day lives in mere moments. It exposed the failures of local government in responding to the needs of constituents and the tremendous barriers that governments faced when it came to community outreach. Ultimately, the need for our institutions to adapt to modern technologies was made overwhelmingly clear.
In the face of future problems of collective action, it is imperative that our government modernizes and improves the way that it communicates with its citizens. While media perception tends to be focused on politics at the state and federal level, it will often be the local municipal government that has the most direct influence over your life. Local Municipalities often struggle with keeping their residents engaged in their communities and aware of what is going on, they often rely on a variety of web tools to engage with their residents that are outdated or inefficient. Not only do they often rely on a mix of different technologies they have to balance multiple different procurement contracts for these services. Ultimately not only do few people end up being aware of everything that is going on in their community but the government has low awareness of the needs of its citizens as well.
When they do receive resident feedback, it tends to be negatively biased as someone is unlikely to come to a town hall to shout about what the town is doing right. Often the most disenfranchised members of the community feel like their voices are not being heard while the "Squeakiest Wheel" in the room gets all the governments attention. Contrasted with the private sector, where the latest digital technologies are implemented expediently to maximize efficiency, there is a lot of work to be done.
Given the stated inefficiencies of local government, I decided to launch a startup that works to digitize all of a city's key infrastructure and make it accessible to residents through an app on their phone.
What is your solution?
Poly Platform is a smart-city platform that consolidates many third-party tools onto one easy-to-use and cost-effective platform. Poly Platform aims to improve civic engagement, boost data-driven decisions within city administration, and improve municipal efficiencies. Using our platform, municipalities can promote town events and local businesses while using our data-driven insights to create their own economic development plans. In addition, this platform allows towns to promote awareness of local initiatives and integrate active resident feedback into their town’s development process. Our success in providing these services in cities across Utah and the broader United States, enables increased efficiencies at the state level administrator view.
Poly is a website, mobile app and software dashboard tailored exclusively to an organization, municipality, county or state. It streamlines communication from administrators to their constituents, effectively eliminating the unrelated content and noise administrators have to currently face online to reach their residents, students, or employees.
Poly consolidates all organizations' activities and events onto one central platform and uses push notifications to inform its residents, students, or employees. Users can access a news feed that displays all the events of their organization. Users can condense their feed based on interest selection while adding the activity to their calendar and sharing them with friends. Administrators can create events as well as disseminate surveys and polls to their community. Administrators will make improved decisions based on Poly's business analytics page that show live analytics and data. Poly is a mobile app and a robust web platform fitted with mass notification capability, permissions, analytics, voting, survey capability, chat function, reporting tool, event creation, privacy, organizational management, event creation, data analyzing, and messaging.
Poly Platform has experience working with government agencies, schools, and nonprofit organizations across Utah and the broader U.S. Lehi City has been a customer with Poly Platform for over a year, and Poly Platform continues to gain trust with other municipalities within the United States. Testimonials and recommendations can be provided upon request.
Who does your solution serve, and in what ways will the solution impact their lives?
We are already profitable with presence in 24 cities across the United States. We have recently launched a major pilot in the city of Pittsburgh Pennsylvania and are hoping to expand to D.C. where we can get exposure for our product to representatives from all 50 states. In the cities that we have contracted with, we have developed their own customized municipal platform typically called "my(cityname)" which givens local residents access to a variety of services such as utility billing, local events, parks and recreation and active polls and surveys around their well-being from city administrators. On the admin side, we give city managers access to a variety of relevant usage data in a combination of a data visualization panel and in depth analysis reports created by our team. Cities where our platform was launched have seen a significant uptick in community engagement and the data collected around this engagement has allowed for a variety of data driven decisions to be made regarding the development of the city.
How are you and your team well-positioned to deliver this solution?
Our CEO Kamel Greene grew up in East Palo Alto, a city that was on the edge of Americas top tech hub while also suffering from the nations highest crime rates. As such, he saw both the highs and lows of society from an early age. His mother was an active member of the local city government and by helping with her campaigns as a kid, Kamel saw first hand what it means to engage with the community. Decades later, Kamel was able to graduate with an MPA from BYU and the desire to change the world. He worked for both Federal and Local governments and saw their inefficiencies first hand. Kamel was ultimately able to gather up some like-minded colleagues in the local government space and created an all-star team of individuals with a passion for modernizing government as well as the experience to do so. Aside from our CEO, we also have a Lead Engineer with decades of experience, a Head of Analytics who has designed municipal surveys for various municipalities in the past and a product director who was an expert in emerging government technologies for the Boston Consulting Group.
Which dimension of the Challenge does your solution most closely address?
Promote and sustain peace by increasing community dialogue, civic participation, reconciliation, and justice efforts; strengthening cyber security, and monitoring or preventing violence, misinformation, and polarization.Which of the UN Sustainable Development Goals does your solution address?
What is your solution’s stage of development?
GrowthIn which of the following areas do you most need partners or support?
Who is the Team Lead for your solution?
Kamel Greene
What makes your solution innovative?
At Poly Platform, we take pride in our track record of serving various U.S. municipalities as a leading resident engagement software provider through our mobile app and web platform. Our team members have a wealth of experience collaborating on IT initiatives with public entities, private companies, and universities, which has honed our expertise in data analytics and government technology. This extensive experience has granted us a deep understanding of municipal as well as state needs and the intricacies involved in creating effective digital infrastructure for governments across the US.
We firmly believe that our web platform is an innovative solution with little to no real market competitors. Our platform offers a range of unique key features that are designed to streamline and enhance the existing business processes performed by all departments, including financial management, budgeting, procurement, asset management, community development, and enhanced reporting. Some of the key features of our offering include :
- A comprehensive, user-friendly website that offers access to all government services, events, and issue reporting.
- A robust local business directory to enhance resident access to business information.
- Live-streaming capabilities that enable the public to engage in meetings in real-time.
- Feedback mechanisms for residents to provide input on town halls, events, and services, enhancing transparency and decision-making.
- Simplified social media publishing tools for effective community outreach across multiple channels.
- Ongoing support to ensure a smooth implementation process and continued success.
Describe in simple terms how and why you expect your solution to have an impact on the problem.
Our logic model is relatively simple. We serve a two sided marketplace where the city administrators and the residents are both the inputs needed for our platform to work. Our platforms success is measured by the number of posts and notifications being sent out by administrators on one side and the number of daily active users of our app on the other. In order to keep residents engaged we need to keep administrators using our platform. In order to keep the administrators on the platform we need to show them that they are actively reaching their residents. We make this easier for administrators to understand by visualizing the number of reports filed, events attended and other key usage data on their dashboard.
What are your impact goals for your solution and how are you measuring your progress towards them?
Our goal is to fundamentally increase civic engagement and build out the digital infrastructure for a modern digitized democracy. By creating a digital citizen identity through our platform, we provide a much more efficient channel through which residents can communicate with their government. We will measure impact through daily active users as a proportion of population as well as the number of registrations and sign ups for activities through the platform, bills paid and reports filed.
Describe the core technology that powers your solution.
The MVP of our platform is largely cloud based, utilizing google analytics capabilities to provide in depth data analysis around the usage of the platform by city residents. As we grow, I have built out several key features that make our platform unique in their implementation. These features are as follows:
- Poly Waterwise Blockchain Water Record Management: We are working in partnership with Georgetown University researchers to develop a water records management system based on blockchain technology. This new system will enable both cities and residents to accurately track their water usage. By creating a state-wide blockchain network, our aim is to facilitate efficient water markets across the state, standardize prices and practices, and optimize water usage in order to reduce seepage and spillage. This will play a significant role in promoting water sustainability and preservation.
- Poly Resident Rewards: By working with local Business Improvement Districts (BID’s) Poly is developing a tool to reward resident engagement and participation in their local communities. As part of this partnership, we will allow residents who repeatedly use Poly’s tools to report issues and attend events to start to gain discounts at local businesses while highlighting their positive impact on their community.
- Poly AI: Poly is using Large Language learning models (LLM) to create an AI assistant that can save time for government administrators in engaging with residents. The AI assistant collects the most frequently asked questions from residents and directs them to the answers without needing an administrator's dedicated time. This is particularly helpful for residents who do not have the time to go to council meetings or call the city, as they can get their questions answered from their mobile devices.
Which of the following categories best describes your solution?
A new application of an existing technology
Please select the technologies currently used in your solution:
If your solution has a website or an app, provide the links here:
getpolyplatform.com
In which countries do you currently operate?
Which, if any, additional countries will you be operating in within the next year?
How many people work on your solution team?
4 Full-Time (Kamel, David, Trevor, Reina)
4 Part-Time (Aaron, Denise, Steve, Ali)
2 Interns (Tom and Sarah)
How long have you been working on your solution?
Since March 2020
Tell us about how you ensure that your team is diverse, minimizes barriers to opportunity for staff, and provides a welcoming and inclusive environment for all team members.
We pride ourselves on our strong commitment to DEI as our team is comprised of a diverse group of individuals from a wide variety of backgrounds. Our CEO and Lead Engineers are African American. our head of analytics is a native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander and our Product director is a first generation immigrant born to Ukrainian refugees from the Soviet Union. Our backgrounds have informed our daily work and we make sure to focus the efforts of our impact on the most disenfranchised members of society.
What is your business model?
Poly not only has the capabilities of many third-party software, it consolidates all these capabilities onto one easy-to-use platform at a fraction of the cost. Poly’s consolidation of various capabilities allows cities to provide residents with a tailored mobile app for easy municipal access. We typically sign annual contracts with municipalities with pricing based on the population size of the city.
Do you primarily provide products or services directly to individuals, to other organizations, or to the government?
Government (B2G)What is your plan for becoming financially sustainable, and what evidence can you provide that this plan has been successful so far?
We are currently profitable with a year's worth of financial runway and presence in over 20 U.S. Cities. Since we are already profitable our current target is rapid sustained growth.
Solution Team
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David Keptsi Director of Product, Poly Platform
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Our Organization
Poly Platform