Citizen engagement solutions the key: Ranga Shetty, General Manager, Granicus India

The Covid-19 pandemic has made it essential for governments to adopt new innovative online solutions for bringing their residents together on local projects, says Ranga Shetty, General Manager, Granicus, India

Elaborate on your smart governance initiatives.

Well-informed and highly-engaged citizenry are the hallmarks of smart governance. Granicus empowers modern digital governments to transform the resident experience with solutions to better connect, engage and serve them. Our solutions platform spans a broad spectrum of technology domains including – digital communications (email, text, social), video (streaming, recording, indexing), workflow management, online services (management and fulfillment), compliance monitoring, website (design, content management, hosting), digital records management and more, all purpose-built for smart governance.

How are you using technology to facilitate and support better planning and decision-making?

Granicus’ leverages state-of-the-art technology to enable governments to engage citizens and gain deeper insights to support better planning and decision making. Here are a couple of examples – (1) our solutions embed feedback opportunities into all online interactions with government – for example, web pages, email, public meetings - thus powering data-driven decisions and opportunities for fine-tuning operations with input from the whole community, not just a vocal few. (2) our live meeting streaming and public meeting automation solutions provide easy, online opportunities for citizens to engage in the legislative process thus ensuring citizen participation in planning and decision making.

How has been the government-citizen collaboration so far?

Granicus has numerous success stories of how connections forged through digital engagement result in rich feedback, data-driven project decisions, and a more cohesive government. Our solutions deployed in many cities across the US have resulted in exponentially higher resident response rates than could be achieved through open houses or in-person meetings in the past. The Covid-19 pandemic has made it essential for governments to adopt new innovative online solutions for bringing their residents together on local projects. Governments that use our citizen engagement solutions are seeing big wins by fostering community collaboration on local projects. Here’s what one of our customers has to say:

“We were blown away that we were actually meeting people where they are. That’s been a big part for our community — they’re seeing that we are being transparent, that we’re open, and that we’re responding in a timely manner that’s helpful for them.” –Sabrina Martin, Community Engagement Coordinator, City of Baytown.

How are you achieving integrated goals of citizen happiness, making life easier, and promoting economic and competitive activity?

Granicus’ messaging and communications solutions have helped improve relationships of government bodies with both residents and vendors and continue to change lives for the better. Businesses and residents are more engaged in town events, meetings, and other engagement opportunities. Our digital redesign solution for cities gives governments a digital makeover with effective engagement tools. Easy integration with social media channels enables a more impactful connection with broader audiences. Furthermore, Granicus’ Host Compliance solutions simplify digital permitting, automate compliance monitoring, and collect critical tax revenue thus enabling governments to promote economic and competitive activity in compliance with community needs and preferences, transparently and equitably.

How are commitment, responsiveness, and operational management being taken care of?

Deeper citizen engagement can only be effective when government staff is more responsive and accountable. Our compliance suite of solutions automates workflow rules and assigns requests based on information provided by a requester. Staff members receive automatic reminders as a request due dates approach, ensuring no requests slip through the cracks without a proper response. Our solutions platform ensures data sharing across departments and hence staff in various departments communicate and collaborate with each other efficiently. One of our customers in San Antonio, Texas reduced request completion time by 66% while experiencing a 673% increase in request volume during the same time period.

What have been the outcomes, so far, of sustainable urban development?

When it comes to sustainable urban development, the decisions required are often emotive and there are non-negotiable parameters within which decisions must occur. One such issue is in the area of housing development where community members have strong views on how much and what type of housing development is acceptable in their neighborhoods. An innovative approach to this challenge is the Housing Simulation tool which allows community members to develop hypothetical housing plans for a targeted number of additional homes in the community with flexibility for choosing a housing mix of their choice.

The customized tool incorporates information about each dwelling type, scale, and potential impact on existing neighborhoods. Participants are able to identify what they feel are an acceptable housing mix and have the opportunity to explain why they make those choices. The simulated housing plans submitted by the community help build a picture of what residents consider acceptable in terms of housing density moving forward.

They also can shift community attitudes when there is a greater understanding of options and impacts. This fresh approach to dealing with sustainable urban development issues enables governments to deliver strategic urban development programs in line with the preferences and expectations of communities while also meeting local and state government priorities.

What steps have you taken to gather trust from citizens?

There are a number of ways in which our solutions foster trust and confidence in government services. Here are a few examples –

Intake of service requests online, with no wait and with video sessions if required.

Configurable request workflows with rules to ensure the validity of request and availability of all mandatory information upfront to ensure no delays or obstacles in delivering quick and accurate results

Programmed routing of requests to the right person/department in the right sequence and regular updates on request status at every stage of the process to ensure government staff accountability

Sharing of data across departments so that citizens don’t need to interface with multiple staff members/departments to get their requests fulfilled

Audit logs to track the activity of every service request that provides visibility into service performance and also enables process improvement initiatives.