because its not a big enough data pool to make an informed decision. This is where technology and social marketing comes
November 2012
Local Gov. & Community Engagement Links Over Coffee
GIS Enterprise Specialists! LGS Inc. is a GIS tech firm that is fully specialized in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software products, services, and applications. LGS Inc. provides unique products and services to a wide variety of clients in many industries. LGS Inc. has the ability to service their clients from their GIS Spatial Data Centre reducing client cost, securing their geospatial data, and have all applications managed by a team of GIS and IT professionals.
Connect to us: @LGSINC Trevor Robar Geomapix Gateway
Moving you forward with the latest in GIS server technology.
Cell: 1 902 840 1695 E-mail:
[email protected]
Visit Us At: www.gissolutions.ca www.geomapix.com
Local Information
Geomapix
Corporate
Utility
Gateway
Site
Previous
Community
Pothole
Newsletter
Mapping
Plotter 2012
COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT: 2012 ASSOCIATION OF MUNICIPAL ADMINISTRATORS CONFERENCE This month’s article highlights our activities within local government and particularly our visit to the Association of Municipal Administrators conference held in Halifax, on November 6-9. The conference brought together the community of administrators, directors, and managers in a variety of departments of Nova Scotia local government.
groups and people struggle with on a day to day basis. For me, as a private business its engaging potential customers and I wish I had Facebook’s problem of too much engagement. For local government it may be that it’s issues like funding, technology gaps, human resource, or the community’s perception of local politics is there is no transparency or trust.
Within the conference halls and exhibits there were several buzz words that I noticed in conversations. These were community engagement, information services, and the Cloud.
For rural municipalities in particular the emphasis and importance is keeping the water running or determining what projects are important in the growth of their community. So it is more important than ever that administrators and politicians know what their public is thinking, what they want, and what there tolerances are in making big decisions. Can the decision makers determine what they want when attendance to public meetings are low?; or an opinion from a individual calling or visiting the office to voice concerns? The answer is no because its not a big enough data pool to make an informed decision.
The conference lectures were centered around community engagement and gave several good examples on how local governments are building strategies to better engage citizens by building key indicators and using social media to gauge and determine strategies on building citizen engagement at all levels, not just when it’s time to go vote. In today’s economy and community everyone needs to be connected and have information at their fingertips. Whether this is at the desktop, tablet, or smartphone level its all about Big Data. Endless amounts of data can be interpreted from consumer or public interactions with your website services or mobile app. Understanding website content and where the traffic is moving can have a big effect on your engagement. An example, a web service called survey monkey, combined with an email sign up, citizen’s can bring you a wealth of information on what peoples opinions are, what they like and dislike, and even target specific issues to get some real data to make factual decisions. This is obviously easier said than done. There is couple of elephants in the room when it comes to digital community engagement. Engagement is something that all
This is where technology and social marketing comes into play. Local government should be taking a page from social media giants and engage their communities. Citizens are already engaging with each other within these mediums, so why not local government? It’s not good enough to post information in the local paper or on your website. In 10 years you may not be able to buy the paper at the local convenience store. Personally I do not get my news from traditional paper only when I am out for breakfast and it seems right to. There is a host of free online services for local governments to get connected with their citizens. I am not saying its cheap, you will have to invest in server and web technologies to get started and it will take some time to produce results with regards to engagement and collecting data. But the great thing about technology is that once you
have the basics, its virtually endless to build tools that give you data that you can analyze. Look at the 2008 and also this years, US election. President Obama’s campaign strategy has always been about engaging citizens using technology which returns data that can be analyzed to create strategies. They used technology and derived data to build strategies and gauge community opinions. It really is a fascinating topic and one that could fill many pages or even become a full time business. I encourage people to research this within their organization whether its government or private industry. We showcased our Local Information Utility (LIU) webGIS platform as a starting tool for developing innovative technologies for rural local government in Canada. Within our platform we use a private cloud computing datacenter, located in Kingston, NS, Canada tat streamline services and securely manage our clients servers, data storage requirements, and disaster recovery. This local datacenter is run by our partner Annapolis Valley Computers and has a capacity that is world class and cost effective. Our focus is on providing new technologies within rural Canada understanding that local services are better served at a local level, not in a perpetual cloud. We have created our own community cloud that is built for rural communities. We provide a host of GIS and IT services that allows local governments not only to engage in new GIS technologies like our LIU but provide a host of new generation hardware, software, and web technologies that become the framework to begin a new era of community engagement. AMANS Conference web link Trevor Robar, Landmark Geographic Solutions Inc.
