For LGA officials
Your council already has a page. Make it answer.
Joining means your staff publish what the council does, builds and owns, and residents get answers from your records instead of rumour. It costs nothing, and the records stay yours.
What joining takes
Five steps, all done by council staff in the workspace. No software to install.
- Name a data ownerOne officer, usually in Planning, Research and Statistics or the Council Secretary's office, approves every record before it is public.
- Get accountsThe portal administrator creates an administrator account for your council. Your administrator then adds editor and viewer accounts for other officers.
- Publish first recordsStart with the service directory and the projects in the current budget. Twenty services and ten projects make a working portal. A budget page already online can be imported from its web address as a draft.
- VerifyMark each record with its source and the date you confirmed it. Records without a date are shown as not yet verified, never hidden.
- Work the queueEvery question your records cannot answer lands in a data-gap queue. Add the record, close the gap. Flagged answers show what to fix.
What your council gets
Answers in five languages
English, Pidgin, Hausa, Yoruba and Igbo, from your records only, with the source on every answer.
A ticket for every call-back
When a resident asks to talk to a person, a named officer gets a ticket, with alerts by SMS or email once configured.
Monthly report and handover pack
A one-page monthly report, and a handover pack for a change of administration.
Open data addresses
Your registers in JSON and CSV, so state and civic platforms reuse your figures instead of guessing them.
An ask box for your own site
One line of code puts the same ask box on the council or state website.
What people need
See the questions residents ask that you have not answered yet, ranked by how often they come up.
What it does not do
It takes no payments, fills no forms, and gives no opinions about officials or contractors. Documents you mark as internal are never sent to the answer service. Residents' questions are stored without personal details.
How to start
Send the council's name, the data owner's name and role, and an official email address for the first account. A state can onboard all its councils at once and put the ask box on the state website.