Socrata, Inc., the cloud software company that's leading the shift to data-driven government, today announced a strategic investment and technology development agreement with In-Q-Tel (IQT), the independent strategic investment firm that identifies innovative technology solutions to support the missions of the U.S. Intelligence Community.

Under the agreement, IQT will make a strategic investment in Socrata, and the two entities will work together to further develop Socrata's data consumerization platform for internal business analysts in data-rich organizations. Users of Socrata's technologies can transform raw data from multiple sources into more sophisticated and useful resources, such as apps, reports, maps, visualizations, dashboards and application programming interfaces (APIs).

'The Socrata data platform is quick to deploy, easy to use, and can be adapted to a wide range of applications, allowing business analysts to do what data scientists have historically done,' said Robert Ames, Senior Vice President of Information and Communication Technologies at In-Q-Tel. 'The company's innovative analysis and visualization technology addresses important requirements in the government market and we are pleased to help facilitate its continued development.'

Kevin Merritt, CEO and Founder of Socrata, adds, 'We're excited to partner with In-Q-Tel to enhance and extend our platform to give internal business analysts simpler, easier ways to discover, visualize, and share mission-critical data. Our focus with open data has always been to develop innovations that make enterprise data useful for the other 99% of users who are not data scientists by training. This partnership expands our ability to help more customers bring that same level of data access and usability to their analysts.'

Founded in 2007, Socrata has raised $25 million to date. In June, it closed an $18 million Series B round of financing, led by OpenView Venture Partners with participation from existing investors, Frazier Technology Ventures and Morgenthaler Ventures.

About Socrata

Socrata is the cloud software company focused exclusively on democratizing access to data in government. We help government leaders improve transparency, modernize citizen and developer access to information, and bring facts into every decision, with unprecedented speed and cost savings.

Delivered as turnkey cloud services, Socrata's data consumerization products unlock data in enterprise silos and transform it into useful information that everyone can easily access, visualize, share and reuse. Innovators like the World Bank, Medicare, Data.gov, EnergyStar, New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, Oregon, Montgomery County, and Maryland have all chosen Socrata as the data sharing platform for their open innovation initiatives. To learn more about Socrata, visit www.socrata.com or follow us on Twitter @socrata.

About IQT

In-Q-Tel is the not-for-profit, strategic investment firm that works to identify, adapt, and deliver innovative technology solutions to support the missions of the U.S. Intelligence Community. Launched in 1999 as a private, independent organization, IQT's mission is to identify and partner with companies developing cutting-edge technologies that serve the national security interests of the United States. For more information, visit www.iqt.org.