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Albany rolls out 'Access Albany' 3‑1‑1 app; city sets September media push and Oct. 1 QAlert deactivation
Summary
City staff demonstrated 'Access Albany,' a CivicPlus/SeeClickFix‑based 3‑1‑1 app that will soft‑launch in August, hard‑launch with marketing in September and deactivate the old QAlert public app on Oct. 1; first‑year cost is about $39,382.58, staff said.
City staff presented 'Access Albany,' the new 3‑1‑1 citizen service portal built on CivicPlus/SeeClickFix, and outlined features, timelines and costs.
Miss Monk and Miss Calhoun described the app as a replacement for the legacy QAlert system and said it offers automatic routing to departments, real‑time status updates for registered users, anonymous submissions, geo‑routing tied to city/county boundaries, multilingual support and dashboards to track KPIs by ward and department. "We're getting it through Civic Plus," the presenter said, introducing the app, and showed screenshots of both the web and mobile interfaces.
Staff told the board the app has a soft launch (available via link and by downloading) with a hard launch and media campaign slated to begin in September; the QAlert app will be removed from the app stores beginning Sept. 1 and deactivated for public use Oct. 1 so that current tickets can be cleared. Nicole Sprawl, the 3‑1‑1 call center supervisor, explained routing and escalation: once a constituent submits a ticket it will route to the appropriate department and, if not completed within local SLAs, will escalate to supervisors.
Board members probed ownership and integration. City IT staff said the software is owned by SeeClickFix/CivicPlus (the vendor retains the application code) but the city can customize dashboards, embed portals into city websites and create home‑screen buttons to link to additional municipal services. Staff said a one‑year subscription price for year one is $39,382.58 with an expected 5% annual uplift; multi‑year terms (3–5 years) are commonly available and may offer pricing discounts.
What happens next: Staff will present the contract to the commission for approval and proceed with the marketing plan. The board asked staff to share rollout dates and to continue coordinating with departments on integration and data retention of legacy QAlert tickets.
