With help from ZenCity, officials are managing a tarnished reputation following Hurricane Katrina relief in 2005.

Investors in the company, which trawls social media to measure local sentiments, include the venture arms of Microsoft and Salesforce.

Zencity, the Israeli software firm used by local governments, has acquired an analytics and polling firm to expand its repertoire.

Local officials say tweaks in how they encourage residents to complete the census, like recruiting community groups, are yielding higher response rates.

The CIO for Aurora, Illinois, says an AI-powered platform crawls Facebook, Twitter and other sources to help officials understand sentiment and spot problems as they arise.