According to the census bureau’s growth numbers for 2010-2019, San Antonio is one the fastest growing cities in the United States. The city covers 505 square miles with a population of 1.58 million (2021), and it is the seventh largest city in the U.S.
As the population increases rapidly, so do the requirements and expectations of its residents. There are a lot of moving parts to manage the community of 1.58 million residents.
Challenges are abundant in managing this many residents and complex services to larger communities. And, considering the pandemic, the city needed to make public participation as accessible as possible.
Like most cities, San Antonio needed a holistic solution that kept their community members in the loop. However, what makes this deal unique is that city officials needed a single portal to allow residents to initiate city services, communicate with elected officials, apply to sit on boards and commissions, and participate in city council or other public meetings virtually via a cohesive resident connection platform. The city officials were in search of a solution with the following five specific components: constituent management, boards and commissions, agenda management, survey management, and calendar management.
Plus, the city has 95 boards and commissions, leading to hundreds of meetings per year, an influx of 1400+ applications per year, and multiple workflows to satisfy the growing resident’s needs. Check out this city council briefing on the resident connection platform.
“Our current vendor’s approach was for us to keep the software that we already have, which were basically legacy applications, and build some new digital components on top of it. At the end of the day, that’s not the platform that we wanted. We wanted to move to a new digital integrated platform that met those requirements.”
-Craig Hopkins, CIO | City of San Antonio
THE BREAKTHROUGH IN STRATEGIC COLLABORATION IN GOV TECH
Figure 1: These SaaS leaders in government technology bring their expertise to create a holistic solution for the city of San Antonio.
Rock Solid Technologies and PublicInput came together in a strategic partnership to create a collaborative seamlessly integrated solution to provide a smooth experience for the city officials and their constituents.
Let's walk you through the discovery process.
Defining customer needs
Understanding the needs of our customers is always a top priority at Rock Solid; these are some of the primary requirements that the city was looking for in a solution:
- A cohesive resident platform for legislative management, citizen engagement, and CRM.
- A provider committed to support, client success and innovation.
- Committee management appointments.
- 95 boards and committees, multiple workflows and multiple processes.
Why they chose us
The city of San Antonio needed a partner with the right domain expertise and flexibility. Both key players (Rock Solid and PublicInput) brought a unique set of industry and product experience to the table.
OneMeeting (formerly known as PrimeGov) by Rock Solid brings in:
- Domain expertise: Our leadership team brings 20+ years of hands-on experience in building software for the local governments.
- Unrivaled platform: Our comprehensive, modern, and cloud-based platform enables local governments to manage their legislative processes – effortlessly.
- Flexible approach: Our flexible approach towards developing tailored functionality for our customers.
- Responsive customer support: Our customer-first support is there to provide any ongoing help for our clients.
- End-to-end functionality: We have designed a solution that allows for all the city’s legislative processes to be conducted in one, single platform. This eliminates the need to jump through separate modules, and therefore saves time for everyone involved.
How we fulfill their requirements
An overview of some of the features San Antonio uses to digitize their legislative process include, but are not limited to:
Meeting management
- OneMeeting by Rock Solid matches and refines their current processes with flexible templates and workflows that make collaboration and approval on items easier.
- This includes peer review and departmental review as well as the ability to change workflow processes on the fly.
- We provide an effortless process for meeting content and board applications to work within one platform - applications for board positions can be shared to their meeting packets without ever leaving the OneMeeting solution.
- Our solution allows them to share and publish content to their website with ease.
Committee management
- With 95 boards and committees, and over 1,400 applications per year, there is a lot for the city to manage. With our Committee Management solution, elected officials and their constituents can now benefit from transparency within one single solution. In addition, this will allow for future applicants to submit applicants from their mobile device.
Community engagement
- Our Citizen Management solution features a public portal for citizens to add text-based comment on individual agenda items and the request to speak functionality for community members.
Live meeting process
- We provide easy navigation during live meetings for members on any device – a mobile device, tablet, or computer; and is compatible with Windows and iOS devices. This interaction includes the ability to cast a vote, request-to-speak, and to view item-related materials.
Customizations for the city of San Antonio
We pride in our consultative approach towards our customer service and build custom features for the city:
Vote slip
- Staff can generate a report off the meeting data and could potentially export into single page report for each. A single document is produced for every vote which describes the Agenda Item Header, Members’ Individual Vote and Vote Result.
Post-meeting ordinance numbering
- This allows for one to assign ordinance sequential number post-meeting, automatically.
Request to speak for council members
- During meetings by elected officials and staff, all elected officials can see the ordered speaker list.
A strategic partnership between key players in the govtech sector paved the way towards successfully meeting the city of San Antonio’s needs. We are proud to work with city officials who take pride in transparency and technology for their community.
To the city of San Antonio: Welcome to the family, and we are looking forward to being a vital partner in this journey.
Thank you,
-Michelle Cooper
