Posted: July 21, 2009
Port St. Lucie—The City Clerk’s Office of the City of Port St. Lucie has won the national 2009 Digital Governance Award for Excellence in Government Efficiency for its use of webcasting technology as a cost-efficient vehicle for distributing public information.
The city’s webcasting services include streaming of PSL-TV20 programming for public meetings going back two years, and digital record archives of Agendas, Actions, Meeting Minutes, and the Backup for those items that can be used to view specific discussions at each meeting.
The City Clerk’s Office uses the Granicus MediaManager program to upload all meeting documentation so that it is available to the citizens, on their home computers, prior to each meeting. Simply click on the agenda item and view the backup. The actions taken are then uploaded the morning after the meeting; this allows viewing the outcome, as well as the ability to jump right to that section of the video to view the discussion with just a simple click. It provides the residents easy access to government meetings in a timely, user-friendly manner.
The citizens of Port St. Lucie have benefited from this technology because they now have an additional information resource easily accessible from any computer to stay in touch with what’s happening in their community. Everything is available before and after the meeting. No more traveling to City Hall days before a meeting to view the agenda and backup, no more phone calls trying to find out the result of a vote; just go online and catch up when it’s convenient for you. During the first six months of 2009 there were over 8,000 hits viewing governmental meetings and their related documentation.
The 2009 Digital Governance Awards program is presented by Granicus, Inc., which manages the world’s largest government-exclusive webcasting network, streaming an average of 200,000 government webcasts, with over 600,000 hours of archived content, on a daily basis.
It recognizes government agencies for using digital technology in innovative ways, making local government available to the public. The winners represent best practices in improving government-to-citizen relationships.
The highly competitive Digital Governance Awards honors agencies that use technological solutions to:
A record number of applications were submitted. The winning jurisdictions demonstrated the most compelling use of video streaming technology and public record presentation, accomplishing measurable results.
For more information, contact:
Lauren Alexander
Granicus, Inc.
(415) 357-3618