Granicus Recognizes 13 Government Organizations for Excellence in Digital Services

Granicus’ annual Digital Government Awards honor transformational achievements improving civic engagement, service delivery, and government efficiency and effectiveness  

Denver, CO— Granicus, the premier provider of government experience cloud tools, today announced the winners of its 13th annual Digital Government Awards. In the face of unprecedented adversity, this year’s winners have risen to the challenges presented by ongoing uncertainties as communities across North America return to normal operations. These winners have embraced modern technologies that drive awareness of community programs, improve resident experiences, transform outdated processes, and inspire civic action.  

“The 2022 Granicus Digital Government Award winners represent some of the finest examples of agencies and staff dedicated to serving and engaging their communities in inspiring, innovative, and effective ways,” said Granicus Chief Customer Officer Gabriele “G” Masili. “These organizations, teams, and individuals are leaders in the digital government space, and we are thrilled to recognize their hard work.” 

Granicus recognized winners across nine award categories, including the Tech Trailblazer Award, Digital Efficiency Award, Website of the Year and Innovator of the Year. Winners were selected by an internal Granicus advisory board and were evaluated based on a number of criteria including: government efficiency and effectiveness, program performance, customer satisfaction, and overall customer experience. 

The full list of Digital Government Award winners is below:  

Tech Trailblazer Award

Local: Coquitlam, British Columbia — Moving from a manual system of email and Excel to a new process of storing data in the Granicus AMANDA tool reduced the city of Coquitlam‘s processing time by up to 20 hours per cycle — approximately 6,600 hours per year! View success story >

State: Minnesota Department of Natural Resources — Wolf management is an important topic for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, but preparing for and conducting the in-person public meetings was resource intensive and reached a narrow spectrum of Minnesotans. The team implemented Engagement HQ, and participation in the wolf plan update was widely accessible for the first time ever, generating more than 4,500 responses.

Innovator of the Year Award

Marlin McDaniel, Jefferson County, CO — Marlin McDaniel founded and manages the Resilient Jeffco program, leading a team of innovation analysts and interns. The program focuses on innovative process and technology improvements that result in measurable outcomes for county departments and their customers. Marlin’s projects have saved millions of dollars, improved service quality, and created efficiencies that help deliver an exceptional digital customer experience to residents. View success story >

Website of the Year

Village of Orland Park — Orland Park, Illinois, implemented the rule of three when developing their new website. Information should be no more than three clicks from the homepage, what once required and in-person visit should now take under three minutes to do online, and the most popular information should be findable in three different ways. Today, the Village’s website is exactly what the team set out to achieve: A visually appealing, user-friendly, and streamlined site that is a natural extension of the Village services and style. View success story >

STR Compliance Award

Washoe County, NV— Washoe County‘s STR Ordinance has become a model of fairness and innovation among differing opinions in this new emerging shared economy. The County took a multiphase approach to research, plan, and adopt an ordinance, incorporating extensive public engagement into the process. View success story > 

Digital Efficiency Award

Lewisville Municipal Court – In the past year, the Lewisville Municipal Court has launched a host of online tools to court users to answer their questions, provide instructions, and offer defendants the opportunity to resolve their cases in a more convenient and efficient manner. A new website, online forms, digital workflows, an online courtroom, live chat, and text messaging were just a few of the digital improvements that allowed the court to take huge steps toward accomplishing its mission. View success story >

Difference Maker Award

Local: Madera County Department of Public Health, CA 

Over the course of the pandemic, Madera County developed an entire subsite for COVID-19 information to inform the media and protect the public, including two GIS dashboards for case and vaccination information. The public could leave information or ask questions via a community feedback form, helpful when the county’s phone system was so inundated with calls, and businesses could report outbreaks to the contact tracing team. The Communications Team also received several grants for messaging campaigns that brought attention to the website. View success story > 

State: Oregon Department of Environmental Quality 

The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality launched a podcast, GreenState, with a three-part series about wildfire smoke. GreenState goes far beyond a press release, diving deep into environmental topics of interest in Oregon. Each episode averages 250 listeners, and the audience keeps growing. View success story > 

Digital Government Experience Award

Local: Carlsbad, CA  

The City of Carlsbad‘s Automation, Compliance, Tracking, Inspection and Owner Notification (ACTION) System is an innovative, comprehensive asset management platform that improves data collection, increases the City’s ability to respond to public inquiries, decreases staff time, reduces paper documentation, streamlines compliance tracking, and creates better situational awareness between the City, TCBMP community, and regulatory agencies. View success story >  

Federal: National Cemetery Administration 

The Veterans Legacy Memorial is the only online memorial that honors 4.3+ million Veterans with an interactive memorial page for each Veteran. VLM is a Federal/State/Tribal partnership led by NCA that currently includes more than 280 cemeteries. More than 31,000 pieces of content have been posted to Veteran pages, allowing their legacies to extend beyond the borders of those physical cemeteries. The outpouring of emotions from VLM users – grief, laughter, memories, historical facts, and more contribute to the unique storytelling of those patriots we’ve loved and lost. View success story > 

Federal: Communications Resilience Award

HHS, Health Resources and Services Administration, Bureau of Health Workforce, Division of External Affairs, Internal Communications Team — When internal communications was identified as a KPI for the Bureau of Health Workforce, the Division of External Affairs was tasked with overhauling and consolidating communications. The resulting BHW Vitals weekly e-newsletter is a timely, informative, and easy to scan resource with key bureau and agency updates. Since its launch, it has received overwhelmingly positive feedback, high engagement, and a weekly average open rate of over 70%. View success story > 

Federal: Digital Communications Innovator of the Year Award 

Food and Drug Administration CDER hand sanitizer campaign  

During the COVID-19 public health emergency, the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) Office of Communications, Division of Drug Information, used social media listening to determine knowledge gaps and areas of misinformation related to hand sanitizers. Staff used that information to create posts and develop stories, quizzes, and other engaging formats to educate the public and serve as a trusted source of truth in the midst of pandemic over-information. View success story >

DHS S&T Office of Industry Partnerships  

The mission of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) Industry Partnerships is to engage industry and facilitate partnerships with private sector innovators to advance commercial technology solutions that address homeland security challenges. In the face of the pandemic, Industry Partnerships proactively shifted in-person events to digital platforms, producing an 11-month webinar series called “Insights Outreach” and began engaging under-represented private sector organizations and other industry associations through webinars, targeted email promotion, and an enhanced social media presence.  

For more information about each of this year’s awards recipients, visit the full list of winners here. To learn more about how Granicus can help your agency embrace technology to transform the resident experience, visit https://granicus.com. 

About Granicus 

Granicus connects governments with the people they serve by providing the first and only civic engagement platform for the public sector. Over 5,500 federal, state, and local government agencies and more than 300 million citizen subscribers power an unmatched Subscriber Network that turns government missions into quantifiable results. With comprehensive cloud-based solutions for communications, government website design, meeting and agenda management software, records management, and digital services, Granicus empowers stronger relationships between government and residents across the U.S., U.K., Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. By simplifying interactions with residents, while disseminating critical information, Granicus brings governments closer to the people they serve—driving meaningful change for communities around the globe. 

Media Contact 

LaunchSquad
granicus@launchsquad.com