How Cities Can Get Back to Business Civic Engagement

Tyler Podcast Episode 14, Transcript

Our Tyler Technologies podcast explores a wide range of complex, timely, and important issues facing communities and the public sector. Expect approachable tech talk mixed with insights from subject matter experts and a bit of fun. Host and content marketing director Jeff Harrell – and other guest hosts – highlights the people, places, and technology making a difference. Give us listen today and subscribe.

Episode Summary

It's challenging to connect during a pandemic. There are resident services needs but many traditional channels are closed. In this episode, TJ Sokoll, Tyler's vice president of product strategy, shares some real world examples of how communities across the country are creatively connecting through civic engagement.

Transcript

Jeff Harrell: You know, we're at a time right now where things are starting to open up and it might be a street fair. It might be a farmer's market. They might now be allowing some parts of the park to reopen. So getting those notifications out and making people aware of when those things open are in turn, if they all of a sudden have to close, because there's a spike in COVID, they can let people know just as easily and deter the misinformation that is so prominent on social media.

Jeff Harrell: Welcome to the Tyler Tech Podcast, where we talk about issues facing communities today and do so in a way that's both entertaining and enlightening. I'm your host, Jeff Harrell, director of content marketing for Tyler Technologies. I am so glad you joined us. The issue we're addressing today is how cities and counties can get back to business quicker and smarter with civic engagement. It's challenging to connect during a pandemic. There are resident service needs, but many traditional channels or closed. In today's episode, TJ Sokoll, Tyler's vice president of product strategy is back to share with us several examples of how cities and counties are creatively connecting with citizens. I think you're really going to like some of the creative examples that TJ has to share. Here's my conversation with TJ Sokoll. TJ, I know during this pandemic, it's been hard for communities and citizens to connect. The last time we talked on the podcast, get some really good examples of ways that communities were connecting with citizens. Any other updates, any new stories that you've heard?

TJ Sokoll: Outside of the obvious stuff that we talked about on the last podcast, I think there's been some really creative ways that cities have started to use the app and really just engaging with citizen. Parks and rec departments have been, for all intents and purposes, been shut down at a lot of cities. We have a really cool story out of El Cajon, California, where citizens could request for the parks and rec department to come out to the house. They would actually go with chalk on a sidewalk and make a four square or a hop scotch, or in some cases, even make a little obstacle course for kids to ride their bikes through. Thought that was a really neat engagement tool and really showed the cities going the extra mile to reach out to their citizens. Especially those kids who've been locked up in the house, that don't have a way to get out and stretch their legs. I've got two of them at home myself, so I feel the pain there firsthand.

Jeff Harrell: I'm sure the parents were thankful as well.

TJ Sokoll: Most definitely. That's the kind of message that resonates throughout the neighborhood and throughout the community. It really bodes well for the cities themselves. Another thing where I've started to see a lot more of is city council meetings being broadcast on social media. The doors are closed, people can't go and attend them anymore, but now attendance is larger than ever because people are able to reach them on the platform they spend a lot of time at, especially since we're cooped up. Being able to watch a council meeting on your Facebook page, even if you miss it, they keep the recording up there so people can go back. It always hasn't been that accessible. They lived in city websites a lot but how often do we really go to our city's website versus spend time on a social media platform? I thought that was something that I really like seeing more of. My community did it. I've done some research and a lot of the communities that are going that route.

Engagement and Reopening

Jeff Harrell: I know cities are in the process of reopening, some have taken steps towards that. How do you think citizen engagement tools will play a part for cities that are successful in reopening?

TJ Sokoll: One, as they reopen and I used to reopen loosely because we're in a second and our third wave of COVID at this point, it's going to be touch and go for the next three, six months, who knows how long. This reopen and close, we're going to see a lot of going back and forth on. Every community is tackling it a little bit differently. Consistency with the tools is probably the most important thing. It shouldn't really be based on opening or closing, they really should make people aware that this is the new channel. This is a new way to communicate with your city. Outside of the website, social media and mobile apps, a non-emergency notification system that people opt into is important. We all can get message fatigue. Making sure that we're picking and choosing the topics that are important to us and we want to be notified on, I think is important. Whether that's through SMS, a voice call, email, or a mobile app and push notifications, we all like to consume our information a little bit differently. Giving them the options on how they consume it and what information they're consuming is important, especially when things can change day to day.

Jeff Harrell: When you think about leaders and elected officials, what are some quick wins that they can achieve? I know you said it's a little bit touch and go, but as cities do reopen, what are some quick wins that they can achieve?

TJ Sokoll: I think citizens more want to be engaged in the process and the decision making process. Implementing surveys and making sure there's a two-way line of communication with citizens, I think is very important in this day and age. I was talking about message fatigue, but information fatigue as well. There's so much just being pushed at us, but we have opinions and sometimes we're seeing more of that misinformation is the biggest problem that's out there right now. People being able to communicate back and forth and have a dialogue, as well as, feel like they're a part of the decision making process, I think goes a long way.

Jeff Harrell: TJ, I know I've heard you say before, it's important that communities make these kinds of tools aware to their citizens. Any advice that you have or success stories you've seen and how they've been able to spread the word about these citizen engagement tools?

TJ Sokoll: There's the obvious social media and your city website, but that's kind of like preaching to the choir. People are already going to tools and they're looking for information there. How do you reach out to people that maybe don't go to those particular tools and don't use those? Inserts in your utility bills and property tax bills, if there are ways to pay those, letting people know about that. They can do that from their phone, they can do that on the website. Local media is always looking for a good story. Very often, cities don't leverage the local newspaper and the things that are out there to get their messaging out, that can hit an audience that might not be in any of those other channels. We've had a city in Utah that actually took, we're seeing them all over place right now because it's an election year, but those yard signs that people put in their yard to promote something. We have cities that a city in Riverton, Utah, that actually put those out in front of every City Hall, Police Station, at parks, things like that. When people saw them, when they were about to engage it in action that they're maybe looking for information about. Their first week, I believe they had 5,000 downloads of their app in a 25,000 person city. That's pretty impressive and very cost effective way to do it as well.

Jeff Harrell: TJ, while we're recording this we're about a week away from the national election. I know as new officials take office, they want to get some quick, easy wins for the public to see right away. Do you see civic engagement solutions? Do they lend themselves to this kind of quick, early wins?

TJ Sokoll: We've got quite a few use cases and we saw an uptick, probably in about 2016, of newly elected officials really championing the app and coming in and showing that they wanted to engage with the local community. Our mobile app can go to market in about six weeks, on average. You talk about quick wins. There's a real opportunity for someone who's just come into office and have kind of stumped on a platform where they, they want civic engagement, they want to include the community and things for them to go out there and implement a tool like that. Cities go out, they purchase all this stuff and most of it, the citizens don't see. When you buy new financial software, you buy new code enforcement software, that's behind the scenes stuff. A small handful of people notice the difference when that's done. When you update your website or you put a mobile app out there, those are things that citizens are going to use. Those are tools that they can get a real quick win and continuing wins if they continue to add to those products, really make sure they're on brand for that city and continue to push the messaging that they're looking for.

Jeff Harrell: I know cities are really interested as they introduce new tools and return on investment. What's some of the ROI that comes with implementing some of these tools?

TJ Sokoll: One of the favorite parts about this on day one of these tools was the reported issue. There's two ROIs in that. First, there's going to be the reduction of calls and walk-ins into City Hall. And we've got stats on that, where it's going to reduce the calls and walk-ins by 20%. That essentially is going to give that staff member who's handling that, or in some larger cases, multiple staff members who are handing those incoming requests, an extra day a week to work on things. There's also the fear initially that you're going to get bombarded with all these issues coming and being reported. Sure there might be a surge on day one when it's a new tool. You've got a streetlight that's been out in your block for a long time and you want to get that reported. Where the real ROI comes in is when they're reporting things that are small problems, before they become large problem. A sprinkler that maybe goes off only at night, that's causing erosion and getting underneath the sidewalk, that's causing a crack that someone you can trip on. The sooner that something like that gets fixed, it might save you a big landscaping cost because it's eroding and flooding this area. It might save you from the sidewalk ever being cracked. Worst case scenario, somebody trips on that sidewalk, and it gets to a litigation point. That could be pretty expensive at times. Those are two examples from the report issue side of thing. Utility bills, people being able to pay their bills when it's convenient for them. Not having to walk into the city, there's a huge expense in going off and shutting off someone's utilities. More often than not, that person's going to get out there, shut off the utility and someone's going to run and pay that bill right away. Now they're going to have to come and turn that on. Now the cost of that is even more than the utility bill was. Those are few quick examples of how you can see an ROI on a tool like this.

Different Generations and Apps

Jeff Harrell: I think when you think about a mobile app, you make the assumption that perhaps it's the younger generations that are a little more comfortable with using an app. What have you seen? Have you seen mainly being attracted with younger generation or do you see the older generations using it as well?

TJ Sokoll: There's going to be the younger generation, the people with their noses down in their phone all the time. One of the big surprises for me early on, when we started getting analytics back, was the number of senior citizens that were using the app. Not from their phones but actually from tablets. They're engaged, they're a generation that was used to being engaged and making a difference. They're accessing that information when they're sitting at home in the LazyBoy. They pull out the tablet, it's got the bigger screen for them to navigate and they can go into one spot and cycle through all the different news channels at the city, or all the different services that are available.

TJ Sokoll: The middle aged people, the places where you and I fall in there, that 30 to 50 year old bracket in there. We've seen an uptick in their usage. Since COVID, where a lot of these people are at home, they've got a little bit more time on their hands. They might be going to their devices a little more than they have in the past. Traditionally, they were kind of go, but you're at that stage in your life where it's go, go, go. You're going to work, you're taking the kids to practice, you've got things going. They were a demographic that we were missing out on, but they've kind of had an uptick in 2020.

MyCivic in Use

Jeff Harrell: I'll be back with my conversation with TJ in just a moment. Do you want the latest in public sector insights drop straight into your inbox? Well, you can sign up for our monthly email at our resource center. Just go to Tyler Tech.com, click on the resources at top of the page, and you can sign up for our monthly recap from any of the content pieces that you find there. I think you'll find a monthly recap email, very helpful. Now, back to my conversation with TJ Sokoll. TJ, I heard about a use case. It was related to utility billing and how using the civic app benefited all involved. Can you tell us a little bit about how that worked?

TJ Sokoll: I touched on just the simple bill payment stuff is always a plus, but the real benefit that comes with that living on your phone is being able to track your consumption and identifying a problem early on when it does happen. There's a lot of individuals out there that money is tight right now, we had a pretty hot summer, we're getting into winter and the heaters are going to be going. Being able to kind of gauge your consumption verses last year, or watch the dollar amount of your bill as it goes. Maybe cut back in places when it, when it seems to be getting a little bit too high. Another big plus to it is, if all of a sudden you notice something that's irregular, you might have a leak somewhere in the piping. You might be filling up a pool and not realizing you left the water on too long. That can kind of send a red flag. You can set alerts to go off when consumption goes over a certain level, making you aware of something. While again, it's a small problem before it becomes a big problem, can be a big benefit, especially when money's tight.

Jeff Harrell: Any examples of where this app has helped with community safety?

TJ Sokoll: The mobile app from a community safety standpoint, I think it was 2015 when the term porch pirate started to become pretty prominent. I think that's when everybody kind of tipped over onto Amazon Prime and that two day and now one day delivery of packages started happening more and more. The problem with that was the quote unquote porch pirate, the people that were stealing boxes off someone's doorstep. We, at that time developed a surveillance camera registry. We called it Civic Eye at the time. What it was is really just a database that allowed businesses and residents to register that they have surveillance cameras and they're willing to share them with law enforcement. It does not give direct access to the cameras. Big brother is not watching you when you go out to pick up your mail. It's just letting police know, Hey, there's an issue in an area, someone's getting packages stolen in a lot. Sure, that thief thinks they're smart and they didn't go to a house with cameras, but the odds of them having walked by a house with cameras in this day and age are pretty high. So kind of a new flip on neighborhood watch. They can make people aware of it. That was our intention. When we started testing this with Police Officers and Public Safety Officials, they got excited because when there's even more severe crimes, they, most of the time have to go walk door to door and look for that footage. We all know there are shows out on TV, The First 48 and all those that tell you how important it is to get information fast. When you can have someone back at dispatch, that has a database, that can call people directly, these officers say, Hey, we walk door to door.

TJ Sokoll: 80% of the time no one is home. We leave a card to the door and hope they get back to us. When people register for this registry, they're putting their cell phone in nine times out of 10. Who has a house phone anymore for that matter? A lot of this footage is living in the Cloud so not only can they get ahold of the person but a lot of times, they can go get a clip for you and send it over in real time without being home. When there is something severe, the time is spent solving the problem, not walking door to door. We talk about ROI, that's another instance of how there could be a solid ROI from a product like this.

Jeff Harrell: Does it connect? I know ring doorbells and things like that are really popular right now. Does it connect into to that as well?

TJ Sokoll: Ring has some programs on their own where they will actually allow for some direct connection with public safety. Every city kind of takes that on a case by case business. I know their legal usually gets involved if they want to open up that channel. This is really there because Ring is just a small percentage of the surveillance cameras that are out there. Ring and Nest are bigger names but there are still some businesses out there that have the tape, the VCR and the tape in the back. We did it because we wanted to be all inclusive to any way people were collecting the footage out there.

MyCivic and Public Opinion

Jeff Harrell: I know when cities want to gauge public opinion, if they got a big project, they may hire a company to do surveys. It can be a lengthy and expensive process. Any way to use My Civic in a way to judge public opinion?

TJ Sokoll: We have a surveillance module that we actually call Opinions. It's was baited about two years ago. Our roadmap is really right now to expand that because we've gotten great feedback on it. Initially, it was kind of a yes, no, thumbs up, thumbs down, on how you felt about something. We're in the process of expanding that to multiple choice and a lot of different options so you can really refine the information you get back. You couple that with push notifications and a non-emergency notification where a topic can come up at a council meeting and a council member say, we'd like to get some feedback from the community on this. They enter the topic, they send out a push notification saying, we'll have this up for the next two weeks, come in and let us know how you feel. They can give the thumbs up or thumbs down and actually leave the comment or a little bit more information if they want as well. All that goes into the backend, they get the pie charts, they get a list of all the comments, and now they can start making educated decisions when they're made. Again, I can't stress enough, the two way communication with citizens and them feeling involved in the decision making process, goes a long way.

Jeff Harrell: You mentioned notifications. That's got to be one of the big benefits of this app as well. People getting notified on certain things. Any examples you can share?

TJ Sokoll: The non-emergency side of it, I think is important. The emergency stuff we highlight. We've seen so many natural disasters. I got a notification this morning. I'm in Southern California. We have heavy winds today. A fire broke out at six o'clock in the morning, and now it's over 200 acres that have been burned. A few miles from my house and they're letting us know about that. But, there are other ways to use it too, you can geo locate the messaging. If there was flooding in a neighborhood, they can come in and create a polygon around the area that's affected and make sure they're only hitting those people. Notification fatigue is a real thing. You want people to take these seriously when they come across. Making sure that when you're getting that hyper local information, it's relevant to that person and not necessarily spamming people that are taking their time to look to the phone, even if it's just for a few seconds to something that's not relevant to them. Then getting ROI on community events, through notifications. We're at a time right now where things are starting to open up and it might be a street fair, it might be a Farmer's Market. They might now be allowing some parts of the park to reopen. Getting those notifications out and making people aware of when those things open are in turn, if they all of a sudden have to close because there's a spike in COVID, they can let people know just as easily and deter the misinformation that is so prominent on social media.

 

Jeff Harrell: I would imagine too, having notifications on all these great services, is an ROI almost for communities as well.

TJ Sokoll: Most definitely. Communication directors love it because their job is to get people to show up to these events, if you can send something out in a timely matter. I fall victim to it all the time. We're sitting at home, even before COVID, it was like, oh, there's nothing to do. We'd like to get the kids out, they're bored and then you find out the next day that there was a Halloween event that just happened or tree lighting ceremony when the holidays come around. Or just that simple Farmer's Market or food truck event. There's so many things that cities work hard to get those services out there but often they go unnoticed. It's a great way to get ROI and increase the attendance at places like that. One of the things that cities have been doing a lot of recently is shutting down street. The businesses are now putting their chairs on the sidewalks and sometimes closed streets. Making citizens aware that's even happening. We're all Uber Eats, DoorDash, Postmates, getting things delivered right now. You can still go out, have a safe meal and some of these designated areas in downtown districts that they've set up and eliminated the automobile traffic. That's a great way to notify people about those as they open up.

Jeff Harrell: You mentioned Uber, that made me think of an example. I heard about a story where, I think it was Kyle Texas, partnered with Uber to solve a transportation problem that they have. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

TJ Sokoll: It's actually an interesting idea and I'd recommend any city look into it. They partnered with Uber on this and now if you're a resident or even a tourist that's in Kyle, Texas, I think it's $3.14 and you get $10 credit for riding with Uber. You can do that through that app, you can get a voucher from them through that partnership. You download the Uber app, you download the city's app, your ride costs $3.14 regardless if it's an eight dollar ride, a $10 ride. It's always a welcome savings and a great way to promote both the local app and it works in Uber's favor. That's why they're willing to kind of swallow that initial fee.

Jeff Harrell: I guess Kyle didn't have public transportation so it was really a way to serve their citizens, right?

TJ Sokoll: They were a little bit more challenged on the public transportation side and people needed to get around to doctor's appointments, to the grocery store and things like that. It made sense for them definitely.

Jeff Harrell: TJ, if people want more information about My Civic and this app that you guys have developed, what's the best thing for them to do?

TJ Sokoll: There's quite a bit of information on the TylerTech.com website. You can just go into the search and hit My Civic and it'll take you to there. You can feel free to reach out to me directly. I'd be happy to have a conversation with anybody that's interested. My email address is TJ.SOKOLL@TylerTech.com.

Jeff Harrell: TJ, thanks so much for joining us. Really appreciate it.

TJ Sokoll: Always a pleasure, Jeff.

Jeff Harrell: Well, TJ has such great enthusiasm for helping citizens and communities connect. I love the sidewalk chalk example in El Cajon, California. Hey, thanks so much for joining me today and listening to the podcast. We have episodes dropping every other Monday and lots of great information headed your way. So please subscribe and until next time, this is Jeff Harrell for Tyler Technologies. We'll talk to you soon.