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Event Recap: Making Meetings More Efficient at Alaska’s Fisheries

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Compiling, distributing and managing large quantities of agenda materials is strenuous on government staff at all levels. With Granicus’ Legistar and iLegislate, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council (NPFMC) saves dozens of reams of paper and more than $30,000 annually in meeting-related costs.

February 13’s Seattle World Tour fireside chat with Granicus’ Director of Sales Jeff Schaefer and NPFMC’s Communications and IT Specialist Maria Shawback opened the discussion with the impact of efficient, paperless agenda tools on the daily and yearly operations of the organization.

“This solution really helped us,” Shawback said. “People can download documents onto their iPad and just take their tablet onto their boat, where there might not be internet access, wherever they are in Alaska, and have everything there. They can be more prepared for our council meetings. It’s been a game changer for us.”

NPFMC’s five annual council meetings can last up to 10 days, and previously required agenda packets averaging 750 pages each to accompany the meetings. The cost of distributing the information to the right people was cumbersome and time-consuming, especially when meeting information notoriously changes last minute and can require prolonged attention to detail.

By compiling information in Legistar and distributing it to members on the go via iLegislate, the agency is able to keep all meeting information accurate and accessible to the 80 to 100 council attendees who would have otherwise have used upwards of 60,000 sheets of paper per meeting.

“We have been mostly reliable with the web platform we use and I think as council members and the engaged public or even people who stop in for one issue in 10 years – they can get their information right online,” Shawback added.

Shawback also emphasized the impact of a thorough public record and how constituents benefit from having simplified access to voting records, upcoming meeting agendas and archived meeting information on multiple channels.

“Our audience is everybody,” Shawback said. “We wanted our information to be available and accessible to everyone, no matter what platform they choose.”

With the continued rise of smartphones, the importance of a multi-channel approach going forward takes precedence in digital engagement campaigns. Shawback’s advice to the dozens of agency officials in attendance was to remain nimble in their approach to distributing content. Constantly learning from different attempts to share meeting information has differentiated her agency from many others. After seeing low engagement on Twitter, Shawback said the NPFMC was quick to capitalize on different methods. For their organization, the simple presentation of downloadable documents best met constituent needs, allowing the agency to focus their approach for an optimized public portal to maintain engagement.

“The biggest takeaway we’ve learned is that it’s a constantly evolving process. We think we have it perfected, but things change,” Shawback concluded.

Want to learn more about how you can use Granicus solutions to improve digital engagement with citizens? Contact us at info@granicus.com.

This post was originally published on Granicus.com

Granicus’ World Tour is Coming to Seattle

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Granicus’ World Tour kicks off in Seattle on February 13. With leaders from the Granicus team paired with established clients who have successfully developed their public engagement processes and created a more efficient government, the Digital Engagement Day promises to deliver effective options for government organizers seeking to improve their day-to-day methods and messaging.

Attendees can learn from successful colleagues on harnessing the influence of channel shift-a strategy that involves moving away from analog technology and into more transparent, easier-to-manage digital tools. Proactive communication and government efficiency are key themes of the event, with thought leaders offering both examples of their methods and also driving attendees to action by finding ways to implement better, paperless government communication methods.

The event starts at 8:30 a.m. with a networking breakfast and will continue until 3:00 p.m. with networking opportunities for speakers, organizers and attendees. Lunch will be provided halfway through the event.

Granicus has long been a cloud solutions leader for the public sector. Thousands of agencies and over 150 million citizens rely on our services to simplify communications efforts and create an accessible and transparent government experience for all users.

Part of Granicus’ mission to improve the technology and lives of its users is a dedication to ongoing education through regular events around the United States and United Kingdom. These World Tour events give agencies the opportunity to both learn from Granicus leaders and from each other to build a strong, efficient and transparent government while building citizen engagement and strengthening software accessibility for all citizens.

Are you ready to improve how you engage with the public and network with other govies? Register now for our free event in Seattle today!

This post was originally published on Granicus.com

Webinar Recap: Public Sector Transparency Through Video

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In the digital era, the effectiveness of the public sector increasingly relies on transparency with constituents. As younger generations start partaking in the political process, all levels of government face uncertainty with how to adapt.

Granicus’ Video Webinar on November 15 focused specifically on this issue and highlighted how governments can modernize their digital communications with little effort and manageable cost.

Reaching Young, Mobile Audiences

Recorded video that is available live and archived online for any medium—mobile or desktop—is demanded by the modern constituent.

Connection stats

In 2016, nearly 25 percent of households surveyed said they did not have cable streaming in their home, meaning the days of cable access and the popularity of watching local meetings live on television are waning. On-demand video is slowly replacing live television and cable subscriptions. Granicus Video indexing supports the ability to choose which parts of a program are most relevant and important, allowing citizens to start watching video where they feel compelled—much like a consumer can jump to any spot on their favorite Netflix show.

While videos are streaming and when they are later archived, they can be searched by agenda items from the automated indexing Granicus Video provides. Rather than watching a multiple-hour meeting to find a specific 10-minute clip, viewers are able to search the video for the point where their agenda items of interest are mentioned and simply watch on-demand.

Governments should take advantage of this technology by cross-promoting their meetings on personal or official social media sites to allow citizens, the media and internal government employees to have access instantly. This allows an increasingly tech-savvy audience to watch on their own time and frees up space in the meeting chamber.

Closed Captioning and ADA Compliance

Federal law protects people visually and audibly impaired so they can partake in public services, particularly with video. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) requires all internet video initially shown on television with captions be captioned when uploaded online. At the state level, these restrictions can be more stringent and specific around Section 508 standards, leaving organizations vulnerable if they don’t consider additional accessibility services for their content.

Closed and live captioning is available as an additional service for Granicus Video through meeting services. Captioning makes searching through indexed video easier for citizens and employees as it searches all spoken word captions for appropriate terms along with agenda items associated with pieces of the video clip. Most importantly, Closed Captioning makes video completely accessible for hearing-impaired individuals, who make up about 15 percent of American adults.

Streaming companies have been required to offer closed captioning on all programming since April 2014, and while the laws haven’t been applied to all online video streaming services, organizations who use captioning are able to implement it as a safeguard for themselves against future changes and to better serve their communities.

Building a More Efficient Government

Although video has clearly demonstrable benefits for citizens, employees who can’t attend meetings regularly and elected officials also benefit from live and archived online meetings as research tools.

For example, if one topic spans two different meetings, elected officials are able to go back to the first archived discussion and, with index tools, find the original conversation to use as reference while they prepare for the second half of the discussion. For employees who can’t attend late meetings or are restricted by the number of seats in the conference space, utilizing video can be an excellent way to stay abreast of important information or decisions.

Implementing captions with Granicus Video can also simplify post-meeting minutes creation, as all caption transcriptions are available to users after video is recorded.

The Technical Explanation

Granicus Video uses encoders that are currently available for almost any existing audio/video equipment. As a nearly universal service, Granicus’ servers work with both digital and analogue cameras and microphones to capture meetings as they happen and stream them in an iFrame on your organization’s website.

Granicus Video Image

Backed by a content delivery network (CDN) of more than 400 sites, Granicus’ streaming is backed up across hundreds of sites, allowing servers to access local data centers (the bread and butter of web-streaming) rather than rely on sites hundreds or thousands of miles away.

Granicus Video has extensive configurability and applications for local, statewide and federal agencies. If you missed the Granicus Video webinar on November 15, you can watch it on demand here. For more information on Granicus Video, be sure to connect with us at info@granicus.com.

This post was originally published on Granicus.com

Webinar Recap: How Targeted Messaging Increases Engagement

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Getting information in the right hands at the right time can be critical to the effectiveness of a message. Granicus’ Targeted Messaging Service (TMS) balances the delicate “signal versus noise” issue many communications teams struggle with: how to keep people informed on what is relevant without overwhelming them with “noise,” or extra information that clogs the messaging pipeline.

During the TMS: Transactional Messaging webinar on November 7, Granicus Technical Implementation Consultant Richard Fong and Solutions Engineer Shawn Pillow highlighted how personalized messages, or one-to-one messaging, expands an organization’s reach, whether it’s through routine updates or in the case of critical information dissemination. One-to-one messaging is tailored to the recipient through GovDelivery Communications Cloud, even in cases of high volume messaging like during a large scale crisis or when trying to reach groups of license holders about upcoming expirations.

How does it work?

TMS is a pure Application Programming Interface (API) product that facilitates the exchange and integration of data. “It can and does provide a richer and better user experience,” Fong said. “API is everywhere, and you, as a consumer, encounter it every day.”

Powerhouses like Google, Twitter and Amazon use APIs to embed features on their sites or make products more accessible. TMS uses APIs to provide access to Granicus’ sending and processing infrastructure.

TMS’s scalability and metric reporting sets it apart as an industry gold standard. As an automated messaging system, TMS can be scaled for a small handful of readers or millions of recipients. Afterwards, the software collects data on how many inboxes were successfully hit, along with open and click data to paint a picture of how efficient the messaging style was.

Who does it serve?

“Being able to connect with an audience consistently at a huge scale lets [organizations] make a real impact,” Pillow explained.

As an example, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration wanted to increase the number of citizens taking action on recalled vehicles. With only 70 percent of recalled vehicles ever being repaired, it became a critical matter of life or death. By implementing TMS through GovDelivery Communications Cloud, the NHTSA saw a 1,700 percent increase in subscribers to recall notifications in August of 2017 alone. Since implementing the Communications Cloud software, the NHTSA has continued to see 10 times more subscriptions to updates per month.

“Getting the right information in the right hands can be a life saver,” Pillow said. And, while some information can be the difference between a safe drive home and becoming another statistic in road collisions, TMS has obvious email, voice and text messaging applications for everyday activities like appointment reminders, license renewals and bill payment reminders.

Making life more automated through targeted messaging not only improves business processes, but simplifies consumer’s lives, making them more likely to trust the companies and governments that serve them.

How is TMS implemented?

Improving the customer and employee experience requires no extra work with Granicus’ Communications Cloud TMS implementation. With ReST (Representational State Transfer) architecture, developers can implement TMS into their framework of choice (Python, Java, Ruby, etc).

Template features help define the body and subject of the message beforehand, decreasing bandwidth requirements and improving high volume send rates. “We’ve updated our template capability to allow for smart templates which include if/then branch logic,” Fong added.

API Graphic

TMS’s success relies on its deliverability and security to be considered a reliable resource for organizations. Messages sent through TMS are not sorted into a promotional or spam folder, but head directly to the recipients inbox, making it a priority to be seen. As a FedRAMP-compliant software, the data in Communications Cloud used for TMS is protected from malware.

Targeted messaging has multiple applications for local, statewide and federal agencies. If you missed the TMS webinar on November 7, catch it on demand here. For more information about targeted messaging, be sure to connect with us at info@granicus.com.

This post was originally published on Granicus.com