RVA311

Case Study

GovTechReact NativeGIS IntegrationReal-Time Orchestration

Overview & Architecture

AvePoint Public Sector had built Richmond's 311 system, the one residents use to report a pothole or a broken streetlight, and its mobile app needed modernizing. They brought us in as the delivery partner, and we flew to Richmond and presented the mobile approach to the city alongside them. The contract was awarded and we built it. A pothole report has to resolve to an exact street address a crew can find, so every location is validated against the city's GIS instead of an approximate pin. If someone reports something already reported, the app shows them the existing request before they submit, so they upvote it instead of filing a second one. All of it stayed in sync with AvePoint's backend while the web portals were rebuilt in parallel.

Discovery & API Mapping

Mapped Richmond's legacy 311 backend APIs, identifying integration points, data formats, and synchronization requirements for the mobile platform.

GIS Integration Architecture

Mapped the location-aware service layer, so every request resolves to a valid city address against municipal GIS with duplicate detection.

Usability Validation

Tested the app with real residents across varying technical sophistication levels, ensuring reliable operation regardless of network conditions.

React Native Development

Built the cross-platform mobile app with offline-first architecture, photo capture for issue reporting, and real-time status tracking.

Municipal Launch

Deployed citywide in Richmond with real-time service orchestration for concurrent citizen interactions.

“

Their team was ideal for the niche collaborative software we were building.

Kaitlyn Faaland, SVP Client Services and Product Strategy

Technical Challenges

Municipal-Scale Location Intelligence

Civic technology operates under constraints that consumer apps don't face. Every location must resolve to a serviceable address. Every request must route to the correct department. Every failure mode must be graceful enough for non-technical users in emergency situations.

GIS-First Location Resolution

Consumer apps can accept approximate locations. Municipal systems cannot. A pothole report has to resolve to an exact street address that city crews can find. The app pairs Google Maps for the interface with the city's authoritative GIS for address validation and service routing.

Request Deduplication Engine

Duplicate reports waste city resources and frustrate citizens. Similar requests are clustered by proximity and surfaced to the user before they submit. The upvoting system channels citizen frustration into signal rather than noise.

Legacy API Orchestration

AvePoint's backend evolved over years of municipal deployments. The mobile layer needed to accommodate HTML-formatted alerts, dynamic iconography, and conditional field logic, all while maintaining performance on the density of requests a zoomed-out city map generates.

Platform Architecture

Four Stakeholders, One Request

311 platforms serve four stakeholders simultaneously: citizens who need problems solved, city workers who need actionable information, administrators who need operational visibility, and the municipality that needs efficient resource allocation. Every architectural decision had to balance these competing requirements.

Citizen-First Request Flow

Service request submission needed to be faster than calling 311 while capturing more structured data. We designed a progressive disclosure flow that minimizes friction while maximizing information quality: conditional fields, smart defaults, and photo capture that automatically extracts location metadata.

Anonymous vs. Authenticated States

Citizens need to report issues their neighbors might see, like abandoned vehicles or property code violations, without social consequences. Dual submission paths carry different data visibility, encouraging account creation for tracking without requiring it to participate.

Offline-Resilient Architecture

Cell coverage varies across any city. The app caches service categories, recent requests, and user drafts locally, so a request can be composed in dead zones with automatic submission when connectivity returns. Citizens shouldn't lose a detailed report to a network timeout.

Real-Time Request Synchronization

Citizens want to know their request was received and is being addressed. Status changes surface as push notifications as they occur, from submission acknowledgment through resolution confirmation.

Citywide in Richmond

The city coordinated a PR and marketing plan around the rollout, and Mayor Stoney recorded a walkthrough to demo the features.

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