Award-Winning National Housing Locator System (NHLS) Being Used to Support Hurricane Victims

CHANTILLY, Va., Sept. 23, 2008 —The U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development’s (HUD) National Housing Locator System (NHLS) was recognized among the 2008 CIO 100 Award winners chosen by CIO Magazine. These awards honor 100 organizations that are creating new business value by innovating with technology.

NHLS is a Web-based system for federal, state, and local agencies to rapidly identify available housing for people displaced from their homes by a disaster. The system contains vacant housing data from more than 100 government and commercial data sources, including ApartmentTime.com, Socialserve.com, Gosection8.com, and dozens of local public housing authorities.

“It is a great honor to be recognized with a prestigious CIO 100 award,” said Alba M. Alemán, president and co-founder of Citizant. “NHLS exemplifies the innovative use of technology to leverage a partnership of public and private resources to better serve the citizen during times of emergency. We continue to work closely with HUD to expand our data provider relationships so that we are prepared for the overwhelming hurricane activity threatening our country at this time.”

“On behalf of my entire company, I want to personally thank our newest data providers – ForRent.com, HotPads.com, TenantPlus.com, and RentLinx.com – for stepping up in a time of a national disaster to share their data. It is because of cooperation from organizations like these that we are able to operate a system that plays such an important role in the lives of our fellow citizens,” concluded Alemán.

Citizant, one of the Washington region’s leading providers of government professional technical solutions, began working with HUD in 2006 to develop NHLS. Leveraging a data-centric SOA strategy, Web services, mashups, and other Web 2.0 technologies, NHLS was deployed within two months and saved the government millions of dollars over traditional application development methods.

The 2008 honorees are profiled in the August 15th CIO 100 special issue published by CIO Magazine. The awards were presented at the CIO 100 Symposium and Awards ceremony held at the Broadmoor in Colorado Springs, Co., on Aug. 26.

Citizant’s work on NHLS was also recognized with the prestigious 2008 Intergovernmental Solutions Award from the American Council for Technology.

About Citizant

Citizant partners with government organizations to develop forward-thinking business and technology solutions that create a better future for all citizens. Citizant specializes in enterprise architecture, custom application development and program management support. Citizant is ISO 9001:2000 certified and has been independently appraised at SEI CMMI Maturity Level 2. Citizant is a fast-growing, woman-owned 8(a) business headquartered in Chantilly, Va., with an office in Washington, D.C. More information about the company is available at www.citizant.com.

Contact Citizant:
Marcie Cheney
703-667-9420 Ext. 140
mcheney@citizant.com