A blog about government-to-citizen digital communication and engagement, Government 2.0, GovDelivery, and other e-government issues
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The Mayors Challenge: Cities Compete for Innovation Prize

March 6th, 2013 | Posted by Mike Bernard for GovDelivery in Community Management/Engagement | Events | Government 2.0 | Government Success Stories | Local Government | Uncategorized | Usability - (0 Comments)

By Mike Bernard, Digital Marketing Manager, GovDelivery

Innovation in government is a hot topic these days. One of the ways innovation is being encouraged is through the Mayors Challenge. The Mayors Challenge, created by Bloomberg Philanthropies, seeks to “celebrate the creative problem solving and incredible innovation that is happening in the city halls from coast to coast”.

Here’s how it works:

Cities from across the country, who have a population of 30,000 or more, submit an application outlining their most creative solution to a major issue within the city. For this years’ challenge, 394 cities submitted a proposal. From there, submissions are reviewed and scored by a team of judges. The top 20 finalists are then announced. Those 20 finalists take part in an intensive two-day collaborative session focused on strengthening and stretching their ideas called Idea Camp. Once the Idea Camp concludes, finalists are given a few additional months to fine tune their ideas. Final drafts of the proposals are submitted and one grand prize winner and four runners-up are selected. The grand prize winner receives $5,000,000 to implement their plan and the four runners-up receive $1,000,000 apiece.

Plans are judged on the basis of boldness of vision, strength of planning, potential for impact, and replaceability of the idea.

Finalists:

Finalists have been chosen from all across the US. Here’s the full list of the 20 finalists for this year (in alphabetical order).

  • Boston, MA
  • Chicago, IL
  • Cincinnati, OH
  • Durham, NC
  • High Point, NC
  • Hillsboro, OR
  • Houston, TX
  • Indianapolis, IN
  • Knoxville, TN
  • Lafayette, LA
  • Lexington, KY
  • Milwaukee, WI
  • Philadelphia, PA
  • Phoenix, AZ
  • Providence, RI
  • St. Paul, MN
  • San Francisco, CA
  • Santa Monica, CA
  • Springfield, OR
  • Syracuse, NY

topfinalists_inpage_new

Highlights:

You might be wondering what ideas were submitted that got these fine cities to the finals. Well, allow me to highlight two examples I especially like.

High Point, NC – Offender Focused Domestic Violence Initiative “For the first time anywhere, High Point, NC is adapting the focused deterrence model to control domestic violence offenders to protect our mothers, daughters, sisters, and children, simultaneously changing the overall narrative on domestic violence.”

St. Paul, MN – Permit St. Paul “Permit Saint Paul will spur investment in our city by enabling developers, entrepreneurs, and residents to secure their licenses and permits through a user-friendly, web-based consumer portal.”

Congrats:

At GovDelivery, we love it when government organizations think outside the box by leveraging great ideas, technology, community partnerships and lots of hard work. Congratulations to all the finalists and good luck on winning.

Check out summaries of all the finalists for 2013 and winners from years past. What they’ve submitted might spur on innovation within your organization. Finally, be on the lookout for the winners being announced next quarter.

 

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We Interrupt This Broadcast – 4 Lessons from Tampa Water Boil Notice

March 1st, 2013 | Posted by GovDelivery in Community Management/Engagement | E-Government | Local Government | Mobile | Social Media - (0 Comments)

By Steve Ressler, Mr. GovLoop

This Friday and Saturday, there was a 48-hour boil notice for water in my area (City of Tampa).  Pretty simple- you were not allowed to drink tap water without boiling it first- otherwise there might be health issues.  It affected 600,000 individuals in the area plus the trickle-down affects of restaurants, coffee shops, laundromats.
And as a father of a newborn, it’s one of those items that makes you glad you heard about it as it affects everything- water the breast-feeding mother is drinking, water we are sterilizing his bottles with, and the water we are washing his clothes in.

Which got me thinking – what if we didn’t hear about the notice?  And how do we make sure we touch and notify all citizens in times of emergencies?  Here’s my 4 lessons:

cell phones1) We Interrupt This Broadcast – Everyone knows the common refrain “we interrupt this broadcast” which usually occurs if there is a major emergency (or plan).  This began with the concept that interrupting TV was the best way to reach the masses – now the answer is super simple.  ”We Interrupt this Text Message” – in times of emergencies.  I think it’d be great to send a mass text message to all cell phones GPS located in an area.  Technology is already there (& looks like Weather Service is already planning to do it).

2) Audience Matters – On the local news, the TV announcer mentioned City of Tampa had 12,000 signed up for emergency alerts out of 600,000 individuals.  That’s about 2%.  Not enough – that’s why it is so important to increase sign-ups during non-emergency times so you can reach more than 2% of folks in times of emergencies.

3) Relationships / PR Still Matter – Personally I heard about the water issue via AOL’s Patch local service.  My wife heard about it via a community listserve, and the information was also relayed by the university where she teaches to all her students.  And it was front-page news from the major daily papers to free weekly.  In times of emergencies, these channels still matter and you need to have these relationships (press, big institutions, employers, services and shelters, etc).

ScreenShot20130225at8.43.13AM4) Social Media matters – I’d give City of Tampa a B- job on social media.  My wife kept on wanting to know if the ban had been lifted or if there had been any “new” news.  I periodically checked Twitter but it seemed the City was only updating once every few hours.  22 Tweets over 3 days – it’s not a terrible number, but in time of emergency I would have hoped for a lot more (even if it is repeating the same information).

Have you been in an emergency lately?  How did your city react?

 

See the original post on GovLoop.

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How to Reach 400% More Audience

February 11th, 2013 | Posted by Mary Yang for GovDelivery in E-Government | Email Communication | Government 2.0 | Government Success Stories | State Government - (1 Comments)

Michigan_DNR_logo

This post was revised to include updated information on the webinar.

As a government communications professional, being able to reach your stakeholders is possibly the most important part of executing your responsibilities. If you need to send out communications to a specific group of people, being able to reach them is critical. It doesn’t matter what how well-written your communications are if they aren’t read.

So how do you increase your reach? Some recent posts can give you a tip or two: Let it snow! and Are you sitting on a pot of gold? But why not hear directly from a government agency that increased its outreach by 400%, growing their digital communication subscriber list from under 240,000 stakeholders to nearly 1 million.

Tomorrow, Christine Schwerin, Marketing Account Manager for the Michigan State Department of Natural Resources (DNR) sat down with us and offered up best practices, lessons learned, and tips on how to increase your communications reach. View the webinar recording on our website.

Still, for many, outreach is just the beginning. Engagement and customer satisfaction is often the elusive “true” goal. In reality, you’re competing with other communications (from businesses and friends and family). How do you increase engagement and customer satisfaction despite all the other things competing for your audience’s attention? You have to deliver information that is pertinent and resonates with your stakeholders. To that end, Christine is going to share how their communications strategy and execution has led to a 95% satisfaction rate with the DNR’s digital communications.

Webinar details

Topic: Best practices & successes from Michigan Department of Natural Resources

Duration: 1 hour

View the webinar online now.

 

 

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How to Get Citizens to Dig Each Other Out After a Snow Storm

February 8th, 2013 | Posted by Joseph Porcelli for GovDelivery in Community Management/Engagement | Current Affairs | Government 2.0 | Social Media - (0 Comments)

On December 26, 2010, a #snowpocalypse dumped a ton of snow in the tri-state area of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. As a result of the storm, something very cool happened in Newark. Mayor Booker’s (@CoryBooker) constituents began tweeting requests for help with shoveling at their homes. He responded by taking action, and surprised many when he began digging people out. What was even cooler was the fact that others started showing up at the requested addresses to help him. Reading this story gave me an idea.

I wondered if I could coordinate a crew of my own neighbors to go out and shovel others in need. I also wanted to solve the bottleneck Mayor Booker created by having to physically be at every location that needed to be shoveled out. Consequently, in 2010, I launched the first pilot of what is now called #SnowCrew in Boston. It was successful in getting both shoveling requests and volunteers, but the process was directly dependent on me handling the requests and directing crews to locations. I was proud but not satisfied.

I wanted to see if I could create a system that did not require the intense facilitation required to plot shoveling requests and coordinate volunteer teams. It turned out that this could be accomplished using SeeClickFix.com, which was implemented in 2011. It worked and required much less coordination. I still needed to work on getting the word out and provide support to those who could not plot their own needs, but it took me about 80% less time.

Fast forward to present day. Beginning this morning, Boston is expecting a “historic blizzard” with up to 3 feet of snow.  Yesterday I re-activated #SnowCrew and already elderly, disabled, and sick neighbors have begun posting their shoveling assistance requests.

Here’s how it works:

Neighbors who need shoveling assistance can go to the website NeighborsForNeighbors.org (a social network for Bostonians that I founded) and click on the page entitled SnowCrew. Neighbors can add assistance requests, notifying nearby users on SeeClickFix that a neighbor needs help. I also tweet out new requests using the hashtag #snowcrew. It works, and it’s awesome!

snowcrew

While we’ve been able to prove this works on the neighborhood level, this storm (called #NEMO) will provide an opportunity to see what can happen at the city level. Wish me luck.

I hope my post sparks your interest and expands what you think is possible using technology that is readily available to any organization or citizen.

What problems do you envision that could be solved utilizing this kind of technology to empower citizens in partnership with government?

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Taking an Entrepreneurial Jump on the Cloud

February 6th, 2013 | Posted by GovDelivery in Cloud Computing | Current Affairs | E-Government | Government 2.0 | Tech - (2 Comments)

By Lance Horne, General Manager, GovDelivery Federal Team

entrepreneur definitionHas anyone ever encouraged you to act more like an entrepreneur? If you’ve been given well-meaning advice about being more nimble and agile in your federal agency, then you probably know what I’m talking about. The Merriam Webster definition of entrepreneur is “one who organizes, manages, and assumes the risks of a business or enterprise.” And while most entrepreneurs have a clear vision of what they want to accomplish, they may not have all the core skills to achieve their goals.

Within government, you are mission-driven. That means that you’re placed in a position to perform a vitally needed service to the American public, whether you work in the Department of Defense or the Federal Emergency Management Agency. I think we can all agree that your ability to reach the right audience, measure your efforts and provide a forum for citizens to consume and respond to information is vital to your agency’s success. Like an entrepreneur, it’s understandable that agencies might not have the time – or the expertise – to figure out how to manage every aspect of their organization or service, such as on-premise technology that facilitates and manages government-to-citizen (G2C) communications.

With the mandate to do more with less continuing into the foreseeable future, your agency might not have the bandwidth to set up appropriate systems for outreach and communication. But that’s where an entrepreneurial spirit can be used to your advantage. You may be relying on a variety of disparate systems that are daisy-chained together to reach citizens. Or, you may simply lack appropriate funding for a complete system overhaul. But you have an entrepreneurial option that can help – cloud computing.

Cloud

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) defines cloud computing as a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.

Leveraging industry providers with cloud computing capabilities that have the capacity to effectively reach millions of recipients can be a better, more cost-effective approach. Cloud services help you achieve greater efficiencies much more quickly than trying to piecemeal technology together on your own. And instead of lengthy implementation cycles, cloud-based solutions help you implement a better solution in days or weeks rather than months or years

Further, cloud computing isn’t merely an option any more. The Office of Management and Budget issued a “cloud first” policy nearly two years ago to federal agencies and departments. This policy was put together to achieve operational efficiencies by adopting “light” technology and shared services. Many agencies have used email-as-a-service as the entry point for cloud computing. But they could do so much more. For example, look at how the General Services Administration (GSA) has dramatically expanded outreach through an aggressive roll-out of cloud-based enterprise digital communication platform.

One of GSA’s first moves into the cloud was its implementation of a citizen-centric email update service in February 2006 to enhance citizen access to government information.  The agency’s existing “one size fits all” newsletter was replaced with a service that offered the public updates on over 140 specific topics.

From 2006 to 2010, the agency’s reach expanded from an active base of less than 50,000 to over 260,000 – a total increase of more than 500 percent. Even more notable, the amount of direct communication with the public increased from under 250,000 to over 1.4 million digital touches per month.

Let’s face it – the prospect of doing this on your own is daunting. And that takes me full circle to functioning like an entrepreneur, which really means focusing on what you know best: taking care of citizen needs. I encourage you to jump on the cloud and leave the G2C heavy lifting – a more cost-effective approach – to industry experts.

I’d like to hear about your experiences with cloud computing. Where have you had success? What have you found challenging?

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Let it snow! Inclement weather drives engagement with the public

January 28th, 2013 | Posted by GovDelivery in Analytics/Data | Email Communication | UK Government - (1 Comments)

By Kathy Kyle, Digital Communications Consultant, GovDelivery UK

The whole of the United Kingdom experienced a week of widespread travel disruptions and school closures due to unusually inclement weather.  The extended forecast promises additional wintry, blizzard-like conditions – with as much as seven inches of snow, rain and ice over the next week. One of the worst incidents reported was last Wednesday, when 30 people were forced to spend the night in a shelter after becoming stranded when the A39 between Bridgwater and Williton in Somerset became impassable.

More than ever, it is critical that government agencies at the national and local level efficiently and effectively alert local residents about floods, school closures, and road and mass transit disruptions.

At GovDelivery, we are finding that the snow has had a tremendous impact on the uptake of subscribers to government services and information, with increases in local authority subscriptions topping 3900% this past week. In one day, West Sussex received 1,447 new subscribers interested in receiving alerts. As we expected, there was an upward trend in subscriptions to the Highways Agency (HA) and the Met Office, with increases in alert subscribers of up to 180%.

West Sussex County Council website

More compelling than the expected increase in subscribers to weather and transit-related services was the surge in citizens subscribing to central government organisations, whose missions are completely unrelated to the impact of extreme weather. For instance, the National Audit Office (NAO) experienced a 16% increase new subscribers over the latest snowy three-day period, and the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) saw a 114% increase over the course of the same week.

This demonstrates the power of the GovDelivery Network, a bi-directional relationship formed between government organisations that use our integrated, seamless digital communications platform. Visitors have the opportunity to opt-in to alerts regarding a variety of government services. This cross-promotion of government services drives subscriptions, helping organisations reach dramatically more people, especially those who may have never known about or thought to search for a specific government topic.

Derbyshire County Council, who is using GovDelivery to reach more residents regarding school closures, experienced an increase of 956 subscribers in one day. Other councils – Sheffield, Herefordshire, and Crawley Borough – all experienced increases between 575% and 752%, with the majority of traffic to their websites coming from HA, the Met Office, and Department of Health.

With nearly 1.5 million subscribers in the UK alone (41 million worldwide), the GovDelivery Network not only drives engagement, but connects citizens to potentially life-saving information in an efficient, effective way through a simple, opt-in subscription process.

With pending severe weather across the country, it is more important than ever to leverage the GovDelivery ecosystem to maximise direct connections with citizens.

Learn more about how central government and local authorities are reaching more people.

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Global leaders tweet towards a more open world?

January 23rd, 2013 | Posted by Mary Yang for GovDelivery in Compelling Content | E-Government | Federal Government | Government 2.0 | Social Media - (0 Comments)

By John Simpson, Business Consultant, GovDelivery Federal

Just after the new year, the Washington Post advertised a recent study showing that an increasing amount of world leaders are taking to Twitter to increase their reach to the public. While this new report from the Digital Policy Council does show a significant upward trend in the number of leaders that are leveraging Twitter, a 75% increase from 2011, the more revealing graph is the one below that highlights which country’s heads of state have the largest amount of followers and supposedly the larger trend towards open government.

Map: Heads of State on Twitter

The Washington Post continues that “the numbers sound like a big win both for Twitter and for open government, which have gone hand-in-hand since even before the Arab Spring uprisings popularized social media as a form of civic participation in 2010.”

participation medalWhile it is undeniable that Twitter holds enormous outreach potential to a global population that is only increasing its use of social media tools, the assumption that “more leaders tweeting equals a more open society” is a misguided notion. Simply because a member of a leader’s staff maintains a regular presence on Twitter does not mean that anything being communicated is new or the government is becoming increasingly transparent. Having a large amount of followers does not automatically mean that a government is lending itself more to the idea of an active dialogue with its citizens. Without proactive engagement and real participation in public discussions, social media simply becomes an avenue for leaders to spam their followers. It is also not much of an accomplishment to tout a large base of followers over other global leaders when your country already has a large, social media savvy citizenry.military connection mobile

Many organizations that leverage social media, both within and outside of the government, use these tools as simply a device for re-purposing the same, old information. Having a bare bones social media policy does not mean an organization can boast about being more open to the public. Tools like Twitter and Facebook were not conceived as a one-to-many tool, but as a means to connect people across the world and discuss issues relevant to them. Whether it’s talking about your cousin’s ugly baby photos or the organization of a protest against a tyrant, Twitter is about proactive engagement and conversations. A steady and sizable increase in global leaders communicating to their population through social media is a positive trend, but progress cannot stop there. A country’s leader having a large following online doesn’t mean that the country itself is moving towards a policy of open government. It’s what a leader does with his or her social media megaphone that matters.

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What an entrepreneur can teach us about public sector communications

January 18th, 2013 | Posted by Mary Yang for GovDelivery in Compelling Content | Events | Government Success Stories - (0 Comments)

play from scratch logoJeff Freeland Nelson, a local Twin Cities entrepreneur, took hard-earned lessons from his former career in public affairs and service and built his company, Play From Scratch, with a simple mission in mind: raise kids who are creators. Play from Scratch believes that “creative kids become adults who thrive” and seeks to inspire families through open-ended, problem-solving play with sustainable materials.

Government communicators can learn from Jeff’s crossover expertise in the public and non-profit sectors, public leadership, and education that have led to Play From Scratch’s innovative approach to business and playtime. Here’s an overview of the company’s key tenets and how you might be able to take his lessons and turn them into government magic:

1.  Find Raw Materials

Play From Scratch encourages families to use recyclable materials like newspaper, boxes, cardboard tubes and tape as raw materials for playing. Communicators in government organizations with limited resources (and who isn’t?) can apply the same mindset. You should identify basic resources and information that may be taken for granted around your department or office. Then tease out creative ways to invigorate and transform that content.

Source: Uploaded by user via :: Play From Scratch /:: on Pinterest

 2.  Create a Challenge

How do you tease out ways to be more creative? Create a challenge! Creative people are motivated by challenging problems. Play From Scratch drives enthusiasm and inspiration through fresh ideas for kids like a “Go Creative” card game or building giant cardboard structures. Adults can jump start their imagination by adding challenging elements to project initiatives and organizational goals. Putting a goal out there that is bigger than anything ever tried before inspires innovation and motivation.

3.  Build Big Ideas

Jeff built a toy company by expanding on the idea that the world is full of exciting challenges and available resources that make solving problems fun. Government communicators with a mindset of “go big or go home” open up a whole new level of opportunity. Highly successful campaigns such as the CDC’s Zombie Apocalypse campaign, which we just talked about in our last post, are brought to life through agencies willing to seek out interesting challenges; looking for ways to build those ideas into something bigger; and identifying what makes the idea resonate and “stick” with the public. This doesn’t mean that you have to max out your limited budget, though. Jeff’s company is built on reusable cardboard, boxes and newspapers — the stuff most people toss out at the end of the day. Don’t underestimate how big you can go using the small stuff. Leverage sparks of creativity by noting out-of-the-box ideas as they come to mind and working in teams to stretch the limit of what is considered possible.

4.  Share What You’ve Created

Play From Scratch encourages families to share imaginative experiences with neighbors and friends. Their website offers many channels for sharing online, including using social media channels such as Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and YouTube. Their perspective is that sharing what you’ve created with others fuels creativity and only helps people learn from each other. Social media and the web have made sharing efforts and accomplishments easier and more fun than ever. New and existing social channels can be used as a forum to talk about big ideas, what has worked, and what doesn’t work. The knowledge gained from trying something new and asking for public input – whether the idea is successful or not – can only help the next time around.

5.  Recycle Raw Materials and Start Over

“Raw” materials don’t have to be brand new. Just like kids playing castle can re-use couch cushions over and over again to build new forts, communicators can break down existing content to digestible pieces. Smaller components broken out from previously created content can be used to brainstorm new ways to use the material. Communicators can use previous successes as a foundation to tackle new challenges, build big ideas from the ground up, and create content that helps you meet your organization’s mission goals in an innovative and engaging way.

Want to hear more? You’re in luck. Jeff will be joining us as the keynote speaker for the Minnesota stop on our Digital Communications Tour.

Register now to join more than 100 of your colleagues from around the state – the event is free for all government employees!

2013Tour

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Zombies and Buzzwords – Communication Strategy That Gets Inside Your Brain

January 16th, 2013 | Posted by Mary Yang for GovDelivery in Compelling Content | Government 2.0 | Government Success Stories - (0 Comments)

As your organization fills the fresh slate of 2013 with a new communications strategy, consider the issues and topics that make you squirm. Many government agencies struggle year after year with the same topics that are either uncomfortable for the org or are avoided by the public. Citizens shy away from topics that make them nervous, afraid, or even bored, while organizations skirt issues that are difficult to explain or to present in an engaging way.

Misinformation circulated by journalists on the particle physics work performed at the international laboratory CERN suggested that the lab could destabilize and cause apocalyptic reactions without warning (you can see information about the safety of the lab’s particle accelerator here). This has led to widespread misconceptions about the research and a general fear of “radiation” by the public. PhD students working in the lab decided to try and provide education on the public’s long-standing misunderstandings in a new and entertaining way… with a zombie movie.

zombies

Image credit: http://www.decayfilm.com/category/media.html

Researchers with little film-making expertise and a $3,500 budget created a gory flick called “Decay” that takes place in CERN’s real maintenance tunnels. The film showcases brain-eating, undead lab workers in bloody detail but also sneaks in scripted informative snippets on the Large Hadron Collider (the world’s largest particle accelerator), how it functions, safety features of the lab and the “God particle” discovered by CERN researchers. The creators wanted the film to “[appeal] to a wide-ranging, science-savvy audience, as well as to zombie enthusiasts as a new approach to the genre” and took the chance to “do some satirical commentary on various aspects of people’s perceptions of science.” The film sold out its premiere at the University of Manchester, was released for free on YouTube and has been over 400,000 times, and has gained a Twitter following of over 700 users.

CDC also played on the past few years’ zombie trend with their 2011 campaign, “Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse.” CDC director Dr. Ali S. Khan explains, “If you are generally well equipped to deal with a zombie apocalypse you will be prepared for a hurricane, pandemic, earthquake, or terrorist attack.” The initial blog post includes information on how to build an emergency kit, creating an emergency plan with your family, and the services provided by CDC. The post went viral in May 2011 and the increase in traffic crashed the blog website. The campaign has been so successful since its launch that it has been expanded to include lessons plans for educators, t-shirts, posters, and a graphic novella.

These examples of clever campaigns demonstrate the benefit of sharing information with the public with a “wink and a nod” that is accessible and entertaining. Dare your organization to take a hard look at the keywords and themes that have historically been off-limits and confront them in the New Year. Building a communication strategy around them can provide a fresh boost to your organization’s approach and increase public outreach and education in surprising ways.

What is the biggest issue or idea has your organization been avoiding? Share with us in the comments about how your organization takes on tough topics in out-of-the-box ways!

 

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