Citizen Engagement: Tools for Bridging the Gap

During yesterday’s launch webinar, I presented the positive effect of putting public feedback at the fingertips of government staff and elected officials with our new version of iLegislate. Based on the quantity and quality of the questions that were asked, it seems government innovators are eager to make mobility and community engagement work together.

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Government Innovation: New Tools for the Next-Gen Elected Official

Innovation is nothing new. Certainly, we create new methods or tools to achieve our goals, but these creations are always based on the tools and materials we already have before us. Real innovation is often simply asking the question, “what if,” and answering how it can happen with spectacular results. Granicus’ most recent innovation came from the question: What if government leaders always understood what their community is thinking?

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Civic Expectations for Digital Government Leadership

It is incumbent upon government to be technologically in sync with the people. Unfortunately, that sync is a perpetually moving target that requires regular recalibration. That sync is never achieved when a government’s philosophy is to merely cater to the lowest common denominator. From the time of town criers to today’s websites, citizens expect government to be on the same page technologically, using the best tools available.

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Granicus Releases iLegislate 1.4

Today we’ve released a new version of iLegislate. The past few years have proven that the iPad is a tranformative platform for government. Governing on the iPad has never been easier, nor more empowering, than it is today with our complete digital agenda solution for the iPad: iLegislate.

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4 Achievable Ways to Update Your Old Legislative and Citizen Workflows

It’s easy to get stuck in old ways of doing things. It doesn't matter if it takes longer or requires more work; it’s familiar and gets done almost completely out of habit. Tom Spengler, Granicus CEO, led a great session at IIMC which showed municipal clerks how to break old habits and work smarter. There was clearly a lot of interest in this topic. The room was packed with 80-100 people!

Since the session was two hours, I’ve summarized below 4 ways to help government work smarter. Additionally, we’ve published a few short video clips from the session. 

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City Council Meeting Prep: There’s an App for That [VIDEO]

LaTricia Woods serves as Public Information Officer for the City of Maricopa, Ariz. Previously, she served as Assistant to the City Manager in the City of Scottsdale and Public Information Officer for the City of Wichita. Her career expertise includes public relations, strategic and crisis communications and marketing for government, nonprofit and media organizations.

Embracing New Technology

The Maricopa City Council has always looked to technology as a way to enhance the way it meets the needs of the community. With the growing success of the iPad, many Council members wanted to turn in the laptop and try the new device. In a relatively short amount of time, the entire City Council had asked to switch. Once that happened, they began exploring different apps that would help them carry out their responsibilities.

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Webinar Recap: Introducing iLegislate & Governing on the iPad

Today, we held a webinar about Governing on the iPad. It was an introduction of our iPad app, iLegislate, designed to replace agenda packets, offer more instant information and move governments toward paperless governing. The response was ASTOUNDING. Within a couple weeks, we had around 1200 registrants, and that was before we told them all the cool stuff!

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