City of Oakland to Launch an Innovative Open Social Media Archive With ArchiveSocial

OAKLAND, CA--(Marketwired - June 16, 2015) - Oakland continues to demonstrate leadership in tech innovation and open government by becoming the first California city to partner with ArchiveSocial (http://archivesocial.com) to provide an open archive of thousands of its social media records.

The interactive social media archive will be available to the public in the next few months and will provide an easy way for citizens to access public records from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube communications from City departments and programs.

Oakland's commitment to archiving social media records was driven by Chief Information Officer Bryan Sastokas, a seasoned tech innovator who has been repeatedly recognized for his Excellence in IT Practices by the Municipal Information Systems Association of California. Sastokas is a champion of open government who continually seeks ways to use technology to bring value to the community while lowering the costs of government.

"Providing transparency and access to data are critical needs of our community. I believe that for cities to experience the transformational benefits of open data, they need to leverage technology to get data into the hands of the people. Solutions like ArchiveSocial allow for the public to gain access to information on their terms," says Sastokas.

ArchiveSocial -- a Code for America Accelerator Company, powers the social media archive. This isn't the first time that Oakland has leveraged Code for America to improve government. In 2013, the City of Oakland worked with CfA fellows to create RecordTrac -- an application that makes public records requests more user-friendly for citizens and more manageable for city employees.

Anil Chawla, ArchiveSocial's CEO says, "Oakland continues to raise the standard for transparency in public records, both here in California, as well as across the nation. ArchiveSocial is deeply honored to partner with a City that is promoting open government principles in their use of social media, as well as their long term record keeping."

About ArchiveSocial
ArchiveSocial enables public entities to safely and effectively utilize social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn. ArchiveSocial is the industry's first social media archiving technology providing 100% authentic capture of social media for compliance with state and federal records laws. It provides a legal safety net, and eliminates the time and effort required to respond to public records.