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Sacramento, Calif., Startup Streamlines Access to Public Records

The company, called Vigilant, provides users with a research and intelligence tool, designed to help streamline access to public records.

A Sacramento, Calif.-based startup is looking to help open up public records and make government more transparent.

The company, called Vigilant, provides users with a research and intelligence tool, designed to help streamline access to public records. Those who sign up for the service can utilize Vigilant’s search engine, which includes state, county and city data, such as property records, business filings, licenses and contracts.

Co-founder Mike Phillips presented the Vigilant solution Wednesday at the 1 Million Cups Sacramento event, a program that offers learning opportunities to local entrepreneurs. In his presentation, Phillips broke down how Vigilant works and how his experience in public affairs inspired him, along with co-founder Zac Palin, to create the service.

“I used to run a public affairs consulting firm and do a lot of competitive intelligence and research for folks,” Phillips said. “I hired a lot of researchers and they’d spend the vast majority of their time going out to load databases, searching those databases, pulling together records from those databases. Basically spending their time doing what robots could do.”

In addition to manual searches, customers can sign up for Vigilant Alerts to receive information on a schedule. Vigilant also offers a Lobby Intelligence program that enables users to review up-to-the-minute lobbying data from all states, federal government, and major cities and counties.

1 Million Cups is a program designed to engage entrepreneurs across the U.S. The organization's next Sacramento event will take place on Feb. 8 at >Impact Venture Capital

This story was originally published by >TechWire.