ST. PAUL, Minn., Sept. 29, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- GovDelivery, the leading provider of cloud-based software solutions enhancing the citizen experience, today announced the winners of the 2016 GovDelivery Digital Strategy & Impact Awards. These leading government organizations and individuals have clearly demonstrated effective and innovative digital strategy and excellence in the key areas of promoting services, enhancing awareness and improving citizen involvement.
“As government organizations work to create better lives for their citizens and stakeholders, the leaders are using a customer-centric, digital-driven approach to promote online transactions, drive behavior change by enhancing public awareness, and improve citizen involvement,” said Scott Burns, CEO at GovDelivery. “With a view into the digital communication programs at more than 1,800 public sector organizations, we’re proud to honor this year’s award winners who are at the forefront of an industry-wide shift toward improving the citizen experience.”
The GovDelivery Digital Strategy & Impact Awards recognize public sector organizations and individuals working to accelerate and streamline usage of online services, those who inform and engage citizens to drive changes in behavior, as well as those working to increase community contributions. All government organizations are eligible for participation and entries are reviewed by the GovDelivery Awards Committee and judged against all other nominations in the market and category. This year’s outstanding organizations and individuals selected for recognition include:
Capstone Award - GovDelivery’s highest honor of excellence for organizations leading the way in public sector digital outreach and engagement to transform the citizen experience. Acknowledging an organization dedicated to cohesive and integrated digital engagement with citizens and demonstrating the ability to reach out to citizens across multiple channels, driving citizen engagement or behavior change through effective digital campaigns.
- U.S. Winner: The Internal Revenue Service oversees IRS.gov, one of the most visited government websites in the United States, with 1.8 billion page views annually. The agency aimed to transform its interface with taxpayers on the web. Focusing first on content, the IRS implemented the Content Upgrade Project (CUP) program by using specialized teams across the agency to enhance the online experience for individuals, small businesses, large corporations, nonprofit organizations and tax professionals. Results show an increase in traffic to the services promoted, improved customer satisfaction for specific sections, and a decline in visitors immediately abandoning these areas of IRS.gov. By leveraging its internal partnerships and the momentum created by the success of the CUP program, the agency has set out to drive the massive project of transforming IRS.gov.
- U.K. Winner: The Stoke City Council set out to transform the citizen experience by implementing new engagement initiatives, including a digital newsletter that grew to over 40,000 subscribers in 10 months, a new website interface, an IT mentorship program and ongoing infrastructure improvements.
Communicator of the Year: Recognizing the individual communicator making a marked difference in the way their organization interacts and communicates with citizens.
- Joe Ellickson, City of Saint Paul Department of Public Works
Since joining the City of Saint Paul’s Department of Public Works, Joe has been working tirelessly to enhance the City’s internal and external communications. By leveraging mobile technology, in addition to innovative communications tactics like list segmentation, Joe helped the Saint Paul Public Works Department reach new audiences and better their citizen experience.
Creative Use of Digital Citizen Engagement: Recognizing organizations using digital engagement in creative ways, including a unique campaign purpose, unusual and effective content, or exceptional method of engaging citizens.
Winners:
- San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency: Recognized for creative use of text messaging to engage citizens in a local construction project overhauling a two-mile stretch of urban highway.
- Indiana Bicentennial Commission: Recognized for transforming the online presence of the Commission by combining social media and e-newsletters with timeliness and reach.
- U.S. Food & Drug Administration: To celebrate FDA's Year of Clinical Trial Diversity, the Office of Minority Health launched the #ClinicalTrialsChampion campaign in June 2016 to raise awareness about the need for diversity in clinical research.
- U.K. Winner: Southampton City Council: For an innovative technology-based approach to publishing statutory notices and driving up citizen engagement with them.
Enhanced Public Awareness: Recognizing organizations achieving significant success informing and engaging citizens with their digital strategy to drive changes in behavior or inspire action.
Winners:
- City of Oakland Economic & Workforce Development Department: Recognized for enhancing digital communications and design and doubling its audience, which now receives important information on inclusive economic development, equity, arts and culture.
- Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources: Starting with few subscribers to their communications, the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources used strategic digital communications to reach an audience of over 400,000 citizens.
- VA Center for Health Equity Research and Promotion (CHERP): By using detailed analytics on its communications tactics, CHERP was able to grow its subscribers by nearly 4,000 percent. The new traffic brought more engagement with the work and greatly contributed to enhancing outcomes.
- U.K. Winner: U.K. Space Agency: Recognized for raising public awareness of astronaut Tim Peake’s mission to the International Space Station and inspiring a new generation of STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) students. With new digital platforms, including a series of e-bulletins and a microsite dedicated to learning resources, the campaign engaged around 10,000 schools and over a million young people, giving them a chance to explore career prospects in STEM fields.
Improved Citizen Involvement: Recognizing organizations achieving significant success in increasing community contributions with their digital strategy.
Winners:
- City of Sacramento Volunteer Program: Through the use of strategic digital communications, the program was able to increase volunteer hours by 29,420 hours with an estimated value of $693,135 in donated services.
- Minnesota Department of Human Services Office of Inspector General: By creating a new way to post important documents for citizens on programs it licenses, including licensing actions and maltreatment investigations, the department increased citizen awareness and drove new traffic to the website.
- U.S. Department of Agriculture: The USDA’s National Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) advanced a citizen-centric culture with two new innovative and efficient IT solutions: an online portal for farmers, ranchers and private landowners and a service developed to validate identity for the new portal.
- U.K. Winner: Foreign and Commonwealth Office: Ahead of the 2015 General Election, just 106,000 overseas British citizens were registered to vote. The Electoral Commission set an ambitious target to more than double the number of registered overseas voters in advance of the EU referendum. With a targeted and multi-channel global communications campaign, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office leveraged digital channels and monitored metrics for continual optimization, supporting the Electoral Commission to get 258,246 British expats to register online between January 2016 and the registration deadline – a 114 percent increase on 2015 figures.
Promoted & Transformed Services: Recognizing organizations achieving significant success via digital services as a part of their citizen experience-focused digital strategy.
Winners:
- Oakland County, Michigan Government: By initiating a “Map of the Month” program, Oakland County engaged the public in a unique way using the latest GIS technologies.
- Mississippi Secretary of State’s Office: By implementing new automated systems, the Agency immediately experienced a high volume of online filings and a decrease in paper filings. The Secretary of State's website experienced more than 10 million hits in 2015, which represents a 348 percent increase in website traffic since the Agency started moving toward becoming paperless.
- U.S. Census Bureau: The U.S. Census Bureau wanted to make its highly valuable data easier to use, so it rolled out the CitySDK, a software development kit. This initiative was in an effort to not only build a better product but also build a community to make data easier to use, and improve the feedback loop between the public and the Census Bureau.
- U.K. Winner: Nottinghamshire County Council: By implementing a digital portal for owners to register their vehicles to their address, the council has put digital measures in place to help reduce cross-border usage of recycling facilities. Out-of-county waste and recycling disposal is estimated to cost Nottinghamshire residents £1 million a year. With a multi-pronged approach to communications - focused on leveraging digital power - the council has already achieved over 60 percent of its online registration target for 2016-17.
About GovDelivery
GovDelivery empowers government to create better lives for more people. More than 1,800 organizations worldwide use the GovDelivery platform and network to inform and engage over 120 million people. GovDelivery is the only digital marketing platform built exclusively for public sector organizations in order to promote usage of services, enhance public awareness, and increase the contributions and involvement of citizens in communities. GovDelivery is an Actua (Nasdaq:ACTA) company. For more information visit www.govdelivery.com. Follow us on Twitter @govdelivery or facebook.com/govdelivery.