Milwaukee Innovates with Technology to Run City Business More Cost-Efficiently

Jim Owczarski has been the City of Milwaukee's Deputy City Clerk since October 2006. Before then he worked as Council Records Manager and as a Legislative Fiscal Analyst in the City's Legislative Reference Bureau. He previously worked as a metropolitan government reporter for the Milwaukee Journal/Sentinel which paid the bills while he worked on his graduate studies in early modern history at Marquette University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He also spent 14 years working at the Bristol Renaissance Faire which has prevented him from judging the hobbies of others.

Milwaukee, despite its sometimes staid reputation, is a City of innovation. It has been at the forefront of the machine tool industry and the “Milwaukee” brand is still synonymous among tradespeople with quality and performance. Corporations like Johnson Controls and Rockwell Automation (known to many as Allen-Bradley) have long been leaders in their respective fields. More recently, the administration of Mayor Tom Barrett, working closely with the Milwaukee Common Council, has been positioning the City to be a leader in freshwater technologies; symbolized only in part by the efforts to grow the School of Freshwater Sciences at the University of Wisconsin, MI.

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Webinar Recap – Discover Granicus Product Suites

If you’re interested in adding video and other citizen collaboration tools onto your existing Legistar® agenda management solution or if you’re just interested in learning about the variety of tools Granicus offers to help you increase transparency, efficiency, and citizen participation, we recently hosted a webinar to help you achieve this. We had Granicus customers attend from nearly thirty different cities and special districts from across the U.S. and Canada.

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Columbus, Ohio Advances Policy-Making with Legislative Automation

Shezronne Zaccardi has worked with the City of Columbus since 2007 as the city council's Legislative and IT Analyst. An IT specialist focused in Internet business solutions since 1999, she handles system administration, business analysis, project management and IT strategies for the City Council.

In 2002, the City of Columbus, Ohio, knew it was time for a change. We needed to move our workflows into the digital age to eliminate bottlenecks and speed up the delivery of information across our organization and to our citizens. Since implementing Granicus’ Legislative Management Suite, powered by Legistar, we've been able to automate our legislative process and save $2.4 million. I wanted to share our success story to help other organizations make their policy-making operations more efficient and transparent.

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Webinar Recap: Top 5 Tips for Agenda & Legislative Management

Yesterday, Granicus hosted a successful webinar for nearly 200 local government clerks to help them modernize the way they manage and track the legislative process. We showcased best practices that have helped local governments save millions of dollars in staff time and paper reduction.

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Granicus Introduces Complete Agenda Management: Top 3 Webinar Highlights

Here’s a quick recap of the webinar we just hosted to provide Granicus users with a new solution to manage the complete lifecycle of legislation – from its very inception to its final disposition and internet publication. The turnout to this webinar was incredible; over 250 local governments were in attendance. This tells us that government agencies are really looking for a better way to handle their paper-heavy, labor intensive agenda process.

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Coral Gables City Council Launches Legislative System for Increased Transparency

The City of Coral Gables, Florida recently went live with a new agenda management solution provided by Granicus to heighten government transparency and efficiency by automating their entire legislative workflow including agenda creation, approvals, minutes creation, and historical tracking for legislation. I recently sat down with Walter Foeman, City Clerk, to ask him about the driving factors in purchasing this solution. I thought his responses could help other cities and towns.

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Florida City Clerks Conference: Popular Topics & Trends

Looking back at a successful Florida Association of City Clerks (FACC) conference in Orlando FL, I can’t help but think about the lively discussions and interesting perspectives being shared from city clerks around the state of Florida. I wanted to summarize a few of the popular topics being discussed while at the conference to generate more awareness and to offer Granicus as a helpful resource to address some of these initiatives—particularly when it involves technology's role in shaping government transparency and the legislative process.

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