Stearns County Sheriff’s Office Leverages Technology to Better Engage Community and Reduce Crime
The govDelivery solution, leading provider of cloud-based public sector communication solutions, had success with the Stearns County Sheriff’s Office in leveraging technology to communicate with, educate and better engage its community to reduce crime and increase quality of life in the county. The Stearns County Sherriff’s Office engaged citizens, through digital outreach, to submit tips and deter crime.
“We essentially had two key goals for this project: to increase the crime tip submissions coming in from the public and to increase the number of citizens receiving and engaging with information from our office,” said Sheriff John Sanner. “By leveraging the GovDelivery platform’s automation for this program, we streamlined our process, helping to increase the number of crime tips from the public by more than 500%, while significantly increasing public engagement.”
With the help of GovDelivery’s Program Services, the Stearns County Sheriff’s Office identified several key strategies to reach citizen engagement goals. After implementing a new digital communication strategy and solution, the Sheriff’s Office was able to increase the total number of crime tips submitted by the community by 522%, as compared with the previous year. Additionally, residents downloaded 143% more crime prevention and awareness documents than the year before and were actually twice as likely to open a message from the Sheriff’s Office, compared to the other top 10 Stearns County email subscription topics combined.
“The ability to effectively engage with citizens and then motivate them to take action is playing an increasingly important role in achieving overall mission results for public sector organizations,” said Scott Burns, CEO and co-Founder of GovDelivery. “The Stearns County Sheriff’s Office is a great example of GovDelivery’s clients leveraging innovative, scalable digital technology. These government organizations are using technology to connect with more people and then leverage those connections to drive action, increasing constituent engagement by delivering relevant messages where and when they are most effective.”
The Stearns County Sheriff’s Department was highlighted in a recent article by trade publication, Government Technology, which can be viewed at http://www.govtech.com/public-safety/New-Email-Program-Brings-More-Tips-to-Minnesota-County.html.