Tag Archives: Civics

Reimagining 311 for the City of San José

Editor’s Note: Today marks the second annual National 311 Day. We talked with the City of San José’s CTO to learn about how they worked with Google.org Fellows to connect residents to the information they needed. 

National 311 Day is a day to remind communities nationwide to use 311, a resource to connect with their city’s non-emergency services. It’s an important tool that cities use to unburden 911 call-takers of non-emergency calls, allowing them to quickly respond to residents’ most urgent needs. It’s also a time to honor the hardworking call-takers, especially after the past year as they’ve worked tirelessly to connect millions of local residents to critical services during the COVID-19 pandemic. We like to say that 911 is for the burning building, and 311 is for the burning questions, like the latest information about COVID-19, who provides garbage and recycling services or how to report a water leak.

At the beginning of 2019 San José identified a clear problem: it was taking too long for first responders to answer 911 calls. The State of California requires that 95% of 911 calls be answered within 15 seconds, and San José fell short of this goal in 2017 and 2018. That’s when we reached out to Google for help and were selected for a Google.org Fellowship. Together, we worked with a team of pro bono full-time Google.org Fellows to reduce 911 and 311 response times, improve the customer service experience, make 311 more accessible to residents, and address the growing load on call centers with solutions like a machine learning-based virtual agent.

First, the Google.org Fellows talked to residents and analyzed call volumes to understand what was contributing to the issues. They shadowed over 60 hours of calls to identify the most impactful ways to improve the response time, how to educate residents about 311 services, and ways to make it accessible to the residents of San José. San José is also one the most diverse U.S. cities, with residents speaking more than 100 languages. This demanded a new approach to automating the intake of requests from a majority population whose first language is not English, so equitable access was also top of mind for the Google.org Fellows. 


San José Mayor Sam Liccardo alongside other city officials and representatives from Google celebrating the inaugural National 311 Day last year. Photo credit: Jennifer Leahy Photography

 San José Mayor Sam Liccardo alongside other city officials and representatives from Google celebrating the inaugural National 311 Day last year. Photo credit: Jennifer Leahy Photography 


At the end of the six month Fellowship, the City’s 311 system was more inclusive and efficient. This was especially helpful as COVID-19 began to affect our community, making fast and reliable emergency and non-emergency responses for our residents even more essential. Since then, we’ve continued to see improvements to our 311 services:

  • Improved customer and call-taker experience: 311 is handling 30,000 additional calls per year that were previously routed through the police non-emergency call center. Directing these calls to 311 has resulted in a better allocation of resources and a more efficient customer and call-taker experience.
  • More ways to connect: The channels available to residents have expanded to include a virtual agent and a chatbot in addition to improvements to the web portal, mobile app and more.
  • Increased language support: Translation services have allowed residents who speak Vietnamese, Spanish, and English to interface with virtual agents and the mobile app, which has helped to address digital equity and accessibility issues.

“The improvements the City has made came at the right moment, so that residents could get the critical information they needed in an unprecedented year," says Kent Walker, SVP of Global Affairs for Google. "I also want to thank the 311 call-takers—the “first” first responders who answer these requests every day.”

Thanks to the technical help from Google.org, we’ve been able to respond more quickly to residents and connect them to government services during this critical time. We’re beginning to work with other municipalities across the U.S. to share what we’ve learned in hopes of furthering more equitable citizen services far beyond our city limits. 



Furthering our support for election security

Last year at the start of the U.S. 2020 election season, we announced our collaboration with Defending Digital Campaigns (DDC), a nonprofit and nonpartisan organization, to give any eligible Federal campaign access to free Titan Security Keys—the strongest form of two-factor authentication. This collaboration is a part of our Advanced Protection Program, which protects high-risk individuals who have access to high visibility and sensitive information, such as election officials, campaigns, activists and journalists. In the lead up to the 2020 elections, DDC distributed more than 10,000 Titan Security key bundles to more than 140 U.S. Federal campaigns.

Today we’re expanding our support for DDC to provide eligible campaigns and political parties, committees, and related organizations with knowledge, training, and resources to defend themselves from security threats—now at both the Federal and state level. Here’s how:

  • Expanding security support to eligible state campaigns:We’re expanding our collaboration with DDC to include state campaign security support alongside our existing federal campaign efforts.

  • Support virtual security training in all 50 states: To help spread awareness and educate all persons involved in the campaign ecosystem, we’re collaborating with DDC to bring non-partisan virtual security training to all 50 states by the end of 2021. These trainings are designed to inform and educate state campaign officials, staff and others in the political sector, to understand the basics of protecting their organizations, keeping their information safe, and using built-in and widely available security tools.

  • Deploy an election security help desk and “best practices” knowledge base:We understand that security can be complex and that questions are inevitable. That’s why we will be supporting DDC to deploy a cybersecurity “help desk” to help eligible campaigns with cybersecurity-related questions and product implementation support. This will include, but not be limited to, support for our Advanced Protection Program and Titan Security Keys and other Google security products and services. DDC is also building out an online knowledge base to easily access security best practices, including steps to protect your accounts, frequently asked questions and more.

We continue to recommend that everyone associated with political campaigns enroll in our Advanced Protection Program, which is free, bundles the strongest Google Account security options together, and proactively protects against new and evolving threats. Advanced Protection is available for both personal and Workspace accounts—we recommend campaign members enroll both types of accounts in the program.

In addition to our continued work with DDC for campaigns, we’re also supporting a new cybersecurity training initiative for elected officials and their staff. Cybersecurity for State Leaders, driven by the National Cybersecurity Center and supported by Google, aims to educate state lawmakers and staff on ways to strengthen their defenses against digital attacks. The training will be conducted in all 50 states over the course of 2021, through a series of virtual seminars throughout the year.

Keeping everyone safe online remains our top priority and we look forward to continuing our work in 2021 to make sure campaigns and elected officials around the world stay safe online. Through our network of global Google Safety Engineering Centers (GSEC) we will also further expand our reach to bring Google’s strongest security protections to those who need it most around the world.

Our work on the 2020 U.S. election

It’s been over a month since polls closed in the U.S. 2020 election, and more Americans voted in this election than in any recent Presidential race. In the months—and years—leading up to this cycle, our teams worked hard to create tools that help voters find authoritative information about the election, educate campaigns on how to connect with voters and equip them with best-in-class security features, and protect our platforms from abuse. 


After Election Day, as votes were still being counted, we continued this work to show timely election results from The Associated Press (AP) on Google. We also enforced a Sensitive Events ads policy after polls closed, temporarily pausing more than 5 million ads referencing the U.S. 2020 election, the candidates, or its outcome as election results were certified. This week, we are lifting this pause and allowing advertisers to continue running election-related ads on our platforms, as long as they comply with our global advertising policies.

Record numbers of voters engaged with Google tools

We know that people turn to Google to look for information on a variety of topics, and the U.S. 2020 election would be no different. In fact, this U.S. election cycle saw all-time highs in searches for civics-related topics. We worked to create and launch features that would help people find the information they needed to participate in the democratic process. We introduced several features to help voters find information about how to register and how to vote in their states, and as the election neared, we also helped people find polling and ballot drop off locations. Across our products, these features were seen nearly 500 million times. 


We worked with non-partisan, third-party data partners, such as Democracy Works, which aggregates official data directly from state and county election administrators, and we linked to state government official websites for more information. Using this data, we also made it easy for people to quickly find nearby voting locations in Google Maps, along with information about how far they were, how to get there, and voting hours. From mid-October through Election Day, we added more than 125,000 voting locations in Google Maps. 


We also showed “how to register” and “how to vote” reminders to all our U.S. users directly on Google Search, Maps and YouTube, to help everyone across the country find the information they needed to register to vote, find their voting locations, and cast their ballots. These reminders were seen over 2 billion times across our products. And starting on Election Day, we worked with the AP to provide real-time election results for relevant searches on Google. This results feature had more than six times the number of views in 2020 as in 2016. Additionally, YouTube linked to this results feature in its election results information panel, which was shown over 4.5 billion times.

How we helped educate and protect campaigns

We also focused on helping campaigns and elected officials effectively use Google and YouTube products to reach voters and on helping them enhance their election security. As part of our Civics Outreach Virtual Training Series, Google held 21 training sessions for over 900 candidates, campaigns, public officials, and nonprofit leaders. Overall, we held 45 group and individual trainings to help more than 2,900 election workers learn to use Google tools to amplify their message and better connect with voters through events like digital town halls, debates and virtual campaign rallies.


And as a part of our Election Cybersecurity Initiative with the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School, nearly 4,000 elected officials, secretaries of state, campaign staffers, political party representatives, and state election directors in all 50 states received training on ways to secure their information and protect their campaigns against cyberattacks. At the start of the 2020 election season, we partnered with Defending Digital Campaigns (DDC) to give any federal campaign access to free security keys—the strongest form of two-factor authentication. We helped DDC distribute more than 10,500 Advanced Protection kits. Now, we continue to educate campaigns and newly elected officials about digital security and encourage them to enroll in our Advanced Protection Program.

Protecting our platforms from abuse

In the years leading up to the 2020 election, we made numerous enhancements to protect the integrity of elections around the world and better secure our platforms: we introduced strict policies and restrictions around who can run election-related advertising on our platform; we launched comprehensive political ad libraries in the U.S., the UK, the European Union, India, Israel and New Zealand; we developed and implemented policies to prohibit election-related abuse such as voter suppression and deceptive practices on platforms like YouTube, Google Ads, Google Maps and Google Play; our Threat Analysis Group (TAG) launched a quarterly bulletin to provide regular updates on our work to combat coordinated influence operations across our platforms and flagged phishing attempts against the presidential campaigns this summer; and we worked closely with government agencies, including the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force, and others companies to share information around suspected election interference campaigns. 


And long before any voting in this election started, our global Trust and Safety teams were already working through possible threat scenarios and abuse vectors related to the election. These teams work in a variety of roles to help develop and enforce our policies in an apolitical and non-partisan way, monitor our platforms for abuse, and protect users from everything from account hijackings and disinformation campaigns to misleading content and inauthentic activity. We estimate that we spent at least $1 billion over the past year on content moderation systems and processes. We continue to invest aggressively in this area.


The job of protecting our platforms from abuse is always a top priority, but especially during sensitive times like elections. Our election integrity work may not directly drive Google’s business, but it’s a crucial part of our responsibility to our users and to the democratic process. That’s why our teams are already looking at what's coming up next—including 2021 elections in the U.S., the Netherlands, Japan, Israel, Ecuador and many other countries.

Source: Search


Following the 2020 U.S. Election with Google

With just one week to go until Election Day in the U.S., we’re here to help you to navigate the voting process and follow results after the polls close. As they do every election, Americans are turning to Google to find information on voter registration, polling locations, election results and more.

As we look toward Election Day, we’re working with The Associated Press (AP) -- a trusted source of information on election results -- to provide authoritative results on Google. Similar to previous elections, when people come to Search and Assistant looking for information on election results they’ll find a dedicated feature with data provided by the AP. Simply search for “election results” and you’ll find real-time information on Google, for both federal and state level races, in more than 70 languages. You can also ask, “Hey Google, what are the current election results?” and Google Assistant will share information on mobile, smart speakers and Smart Displays.

AP Results Image

As we’ve done for previous election nights, we’ll feature real-time election night live streams from major news providers on YouTube and link to coverage from news sources on Google Search. You can read more here about how to follow the election on YouTube. You can also check out our 2020 US Election experience on Google News, which lets you follow national and local news, major interviews, and in-depth analysis so you can stay up to date and informed on Election Day and beyond.

In the many months leading up to Election Day, we have consistently focused our efforts on helping voters, protecting our platforms from abuse, and equipping campaigns. In advance of nationwide voter deadlines -- which varied significantly by state -- we helped make it easier for you to find your local deadlines, requirements and voting options. We were proud to partner with the nonpartisan National Voter Registration Day again this year to spread awareness about voter registration and make this information accessible and easy for you to find. On YouTube, we surfaced information panels to connect you with authoritative context about relevant election-related search results, including for searches about federal or presidential candidates, voter registration, and how to vote.

Through November 3rd, not only can you come to Google Search and Maps -- and ask Google Assistant -- for trusted information on how to vote; we’ve also made it even easier for you to find voting locations and ballot drop boxes near you. Just look for “voting locations near me” on Google Search or ask Google Assistant, “Hey Google, where do I vote?” and up-to-date results will surface.

Where to vote

Our global Trust and Safety teams and our Threat Analysis Group monitor our platforms around the clock for potential abuse. Over the past few years, we’ve made numerous changes to secure our platforms and the integrity of elections around the world. This year, we’ve further increased transparency around these efforts: we launched the quarterly Threat Analysis Group Bulletin to provide regular updates on our work to combat coordinated influence operations across our platforms; in June, we shared information about phishing attempts against the presidential campaigns; and just this month, we published the latest update on our efforts to thwart phishing attempts and disinformation campaigns. In addition to the work our own teams are doing, we’ve continued to meet regularly with law enforcement officials and other technology companies to share leads and threat information around suspected election interference. We will remain in close coordination in the days preceding and following the election. And given the possibility of delayed election results this year (and to limit the potential for ads to increase confusion post-election), we made the decision to enforce our Sensitive Events policy as soon as the polls close on November 3, which will temporarily pause ads referencing the 2020 election, the candidates, or its outcome.

In the many months leading up to Election Day, we’ve made it a priority to equip campaigns with the tools they need to strengthen their own security, protect themselves against digital attacks, and reach voters. When the 2020 primaries kicked off, we teamed up with the Defending Digital Campaigns to provide federal campaigns with free security keys, the strongest form of two-factor authentication. Even in the final days preceding the election, we will continue to educate campaigns about digital security and urge them to enroll in our Advanced Protection Program.

As our Election Cybersecurity Initiative with the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School comes to an end, we’re proud to report that the program’s nonpartisan trainers have educated nearly 4,000 participants in all 50 states -- including elected officials, secretaries of state, campaign staffers, political party representatives, state election directors and more -- on the importance of protecting their campaigns against cyberattacks. Moreover, we’ve seen campaigns use YouTube to reach voters in myriad ways over the course of this election cycle: through live-streamed press conferences and town halls, interactive conversations through Stories and Community, and interviews with creators across the political spectrum.

Whether you’ve already voted, are searching for a drop box, or plan to vote in-person at the polls next week, we’re here to help you find authoritative information, vote, and follow live results as soon as the polls close on Election Day.

Google Play is helping to safeguard elections

At Google Play, our policies are designed to promote transparency for our users and help protect against misinformation. This work is critically important when it comes to safeguarding elections as people use apps to research candidates, register to vote, or find a polling place. As mobile apps disseminate voting information and increasingly support voting activity, we’re ensuring safety and transparency for app users. Recently, we’ve updated some policies to improve election safety and have committed additional resources to help safeguard elections.

Preventing deceptive behavior 

We don’t allow apps that enable people to distribute misleading information, such as altering media clips or sending fake text messages. While this policy applies broadly, addressing this content is particularly important as manipulated content increasingly appears in political discourse. To date, we’ve removed thousands of apps for engaging in deceptive behavior, generating manipulated content without the appropriate transparency measures or promoting demonstrably misleading claims. Read our deceptive behavior and manipulated media policies for more information. Additionally, our misleading claims policy prohibits demonstrably deceptive content that may interfere with voting processes, such as listing incorrect polling location information.    

Transparent government information

Whether people are looking for information on paying taxes or how to register to vote, they should have reliable and clearly-sourced information. In November 2019, we implemented changes that require any app that shares official government information to be clear about the source of that information and the app’s affiliation with the government. This information should be apparent from the app’s description. We also work with governments to verify their apps so people can be confident when reading and engaging with government information. Read this articlefor more information on communicating government information. Governments and any app communicating government information can visit this site for new information on keeping their apps secure.

Minimum requirements for news apps

To promote transparency in news publishing, we’ve recently introduced minimum requirements that apps must meet in order to be classified in the News category on Google Play. These include transparency requirements about the source and ownership of in-app news content, requirements applicable to news subscription services, and requirements regarding the use of affiliate marketing and ad revenue. These changes don’t make judgements about the content or the quality of the news itself. You can find more information about these requirements here.

Dedicated election support

We’ve also created dedicated teams across Google Play solely focused on elections to provide additional support and adapt to the changing landscape. This includes additional support for government agencies, specially trained app reviewers, and a safety team to address election threats and abuse. 

As part of Google’s work to prevent abuse on our platforms and help voters, Google Play and Android will continue to promote transparency for users, fight abuse on our platform, and equip developers with information and training resources to secure their apps. For more information about Google’s support for democratic processes around the world, please visit elections.google.

An update on our 2020 U.S. election efforts

As we approach the US election on November 3, we’re helping voters access authoritative information about the election, enhancing our efforts around election security and transparency, and connecting people to the democratic process. We wanted to provide an update on our work.

Helping voters access authoritative information

We just launched two features in Google Search with detailed information about how to register and how to vote. We know election deadlines and requirements vary by state, so no matter where you live, you can search for “how to register to vote”—and you’ll find information about voter registration in your state. That includes deadlines, registration options, and an easy way to check the status of your registration. 


When you search for “how to vote,” you’ll find details about how you can vote in your state—such as ID requirements, registration and voting deadlines, and guidance for different means of voting, like in person or mail. We work with non-partisan, third-party data partners, such as Democracy Works, which aggregates official data directly from state and county election administrators, and we link to your state government’s official website for more information.

HTV HTR MOCK - FIXED .jpg

Enhancing election security and transparency

As we’ve detailed, we’re making a very significant investment in election security. Our Threat Analysis Group (TAG) and our Trust and Safety teams work together to identify and prevent government-backed attacks against Google and our users. The Threat Analysis Group has flagged phishing attempts we’ve identified against campaigns and continues to share regular updates about actions we take against coordinated influence campaigns on our platforms. 

To stay ahead of threats, we meet regularly with government agencies responsible for election integrity and other technology companies to discuss trends. As we reiterated yesterday, this coordination is critical and will continue through the election. 

We’ve seen incredible engagement in our election security trainings with USC’s Annenberg School. In fact, the nonpartisan trainers have already trained over 3,000 campaigns and election officials on how to prevent digital attacks, phishing campaigns and hacking attempts—and they plan to complete sessions in all 50 states by September. 

Additionally, to help people involved in campaigns, we recently launched enhanced security for Google accounts to complement our Advanced Protection Program, offering additional safeguards for G Suite and Gmail users during the election season. People can easily self-nominate to receive additional security checks for active threats and suspicious activity, like hacking and phishing.


Last year, we introduced new policies for election ads and limited the ways political campaigns can target their ads—taking more steps to eliminate micro-targeting of voters. To build on these efforts, we recently expanded our policies - such as prohibiting ads that disseminate illegally obtained materials. We also enforce policies to prohibit content on our platforms that undermines trust in the democratic process, like calls to participate in voter fraud or false claims around the U.S. census or election results. We’re also updating our Political Ads Transparency Report to include more information about the election ads that run on our platform, new ways to sort campaign spending, and more frequent updates—giving people detailed insight into the political ads that run on Google and YouTube.

Connecting people to the democratic process

With both the Democratic and Republican National Conventions set to be virtual, we want to make sure you can still follow these historic events at home. You can watch next week’s Democratic National Convention live on YouTube, and you can tune in to the Republican National Convention on YouTube the following week. This continues our longstanding tradition of live-streaming major political events—including State of the Union addresses, debates and conventions. YouTube aims to keep you virtually connected to the political activities this election season, which you can read more about here. 

We’ll also be updating our2020 Elections experience on Google News, to include extensive coverage of major issues, live streams of major events, and reminders of registration and voting timelines.

As we approach November’s election, we will continue to ensure that all of our products are built -- and our policies are enforced—in a fair, objective, and nonpartisan way, without regard to political ideology. Our platforms have empowered people and organizations from across the political spectrum, giving them a voice and new ways to reach their audiences. We’ll continue to keep you updated on all of our work to support the 2020 U.S. election and other elections around the world.

Increasing transparency through advertiser identity verification

We’re committed to giving our users transparency, choice and control when it comes to the ads they see on our platforms. That’s why we’ve long offered tools like Ad Settings which allows people to control how ads are personalized or even opt out of personalized ads altogether, as well as features like Why this ad? which helps explain why a specific ad is being shown. Now, we’re working to bring additional transparency into the advertiser behind the ads people see.

In 2018, we announced a new identity verification policy for political advertisers. The policy requires all advertisers that want to run election ads on our platforms go through a verification program to confirm their identity. We display that identity in the ad unit so that users can learn more about the election ads they see on Google’s platforms. Since introducing this program, we’ve verified political advertisers in 30 countries. And now, to provide greater transparency and equip users with more information about who is advertising to them, we are extending identity verification to all advertisers on our platforms.

As part of this initiative, advertisers will be required to complete a verification program in order to buy ads on our network. Advertisers will need to submit personal identification, business incorporation documents or other information that proves who they are and the country in which they operate. Beginning this summer, users will start to see disclosures that list this information about the advertiser behind the ads they see.

Identity Verification.png

This change will make it easier for people to understand who the advertiser is behind the ads they see from Google and help them make more informed decisions when using our advertising controls. It will also help support the health of the digital advertising ecosystem by detecting bad actors and limiting their attempts to misrepresent themselves.

We will start by verifying advertisers in phases in the U.S. and continue to expand globally. Because we are working closely with our advertising partners to scale the program while continuing to ensure we are surfacing helpful information to our users, we expect that this process will take a few years to complete. Advertisers can learn more about the identity verification program here. 

At Google, our goal is to make more information about the ad experience universally available and accessible. Broadening our verification policy is the next step in reaching that goal. We’ll continue to look for additional ways to increase transparency in ads for our users. Stay tuned for more updates on our blog.

Source: Google Ads