Louisville-Jefferson County Metro Government To Use Technology To Streamline Legislative Processes
"The City of Louisville and Jefferson County recently merged to create a community of 386 square miles and 700,000 residents," said Kevin Kramer, President of the Metro Council of Louisville/Jefferson County. "This consolidation gave us the opportunity to develop a more responsive and efficient local government. The new agenda management program will bring the government and citizens closer together by making it easier for citizens to learn what is going on and to have a say in the decisions that impact their lives. We anticipate that more citizens will now re-engage with their local government thanks to the system's ease of use."
Streamlining the legislative process will be accomplished by bringing several procedures online, including the large bi-monthly council agendas that are currently completed manually on paper. This automation alone will save the Metro Government a full day's labor of printing the actual agenda packets and upwards of $25,000 a year on paper for the council meetings. The new voting system will enable the voting record of the 26-member Metro Council to be instantly recorded and disseminated appropriately.
The Metro Government conducted a search for a team to create the solution. A request for proposals (RFP) was issued in March of 2006 to find a world-class software firm that could create a customized solution that would meet the demands of this new government.
"This is an extraordinary opportunity to contribute to the success of an exciting and innovative government organization," said Kris Painter, President of SIRE Technologies. "We will leverage the strengths of our SIRE Agenda Plus solution, which has seen tremendous success in other cities and counties to save the clerk's office time and money and to make it easier for the council members to receive the information they need to make the vital decisions that they were elected to make. SIRE takes the Metro Government to the next level of efficiency and provides the tools they need to reach their aggressive goals."
Per the provisions of the RFP, the SIRE solution will provide an automated system for creating several different types of reports including voting reports and summaries by council member, meeting action reports, enacted legislation reports, and several others. The Metro Council currently uses a tailored application that allows the council to vote on legislative items appearing on a meeting's agenda. Committee and Floor Amendments are also voted on. SIRE Technologies will use its partner Granicus to actualize an integrated electronic voting system. Furthermore, SIRE is able to help users more easily navigate the Metro Government's complex agenda item approval process with its workflow technologies.
SOURCE: Louisville-Jefferson County Metro Government