Citizen Connect Wins Statewide Award

The County of Santa Cruz announced that its Citizen Connect app was honored by the California State Association of Counties in its annual CSAC Challenge Awards competition honoring innovation in local governments across the state.

Launched in 2015, the app provides residents an all-in-one portal into County services and information, allowing them to report potholes, illegal dumping and other quality-of- life issues; register to vote and look up ballot information; check restaurant inspections; locate the nearest County park; look up property tax information; check the status of building permits and much more.

“We have worked hard to make Santa Cruz County government technology friendly, and Citizen Connect is an important step toward providing high-quality services and information in a paperless, one-click environment. We’re proud to accept this award as a validation of our efforts,” Supervisor Zach Friend said.

Citizen Connect was honored with a Merit Award in a category for counties with populations from 200,001 to 750,000. The County has previously been honored for several other initiatives as well.

“Citizen Connect is a dynamic app that we built entirely in-house and at no added expense to taxpayers. We set out to achieve something unique to local government — an app that provides many services under one umbrella. This award shows that we’ve achieved our goal,” said Kevin Bowling, the County’s Director of Information Services.

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Citizen Connect is available for iPhones and Androids through iTunes or Google Play. It also may be downloaded from the County’s app store at https://sccappstore.co.santa-cruz.ca.us