Successful Citizen Engagement Tuesday, September 30th, 1 p.m. – 1:45 p.m. EST

image courtesy of lee wright via flickr

There is a growing trend of involving the crowd in public decision making. This practice has already been proven out in the private sector, where crowdsourcing has been used to solve longstanding issues, ranging from suggested feature improvements for mobile applications to reducing maternal mortality with technology.

The idea of involving the public isn’t new, But with the changing role of a public town hall, one has to ask “How can the engagement of the town meeting scale up from a couple thousand people standing in one location to many more than that?” or “How do you hear from the many people who can’t show up for meetings, but will show up to vote on election day and decide who’s doing a good job?”

To answer these questions, IdeaScale is offering a webinar on September 30, featuring Norm Jacknis, Director of Program Development, to review:

8 key reasons to engage citizens:

• Strategic things to consider to ensure a successful citizen dialogue
• Some interesting and thought provoking examples of citizen engagement
• The webinar will be followed by a live question and answer session.

Join us and register for this complimentary webinar today!

Want to Get Re-Elected? IdeaScale Introduces the Government Starter Package for Local Government

IdeaScale, the leading open innovation platform provider for federal government, is pleased to introduce a new solution for local government organizations that are interested in citizen engagement or city-wide innovation: the Government Starter Package.

The government starter package is a combination of software and services that help cities and municipalities launch their first citizen engagement initiative with confidence. It includes one online campaign aimed at solving a city issue or gathering feedback, an unlimited number of ideas, votes, and comments, mobile optimization, and social integration, as well as a workshop with IdeaScale’s Director of Program Development who will help ensure program success.

This is an exclusive offer only available to local governments that want to launch their first innovation or citizen engagement campaign. It is possible to sign-up for this specially-priced package on the IdeaScale website here.

“Our software was born in government, matured in government, and has solved numerous large-scale problems that save the government and taxpayers millions of dollars ever year,” said Josh Folk, Director of Government Solutions at IdeaScale, “That’s the kind of scalable solution that we want to offer to local government – the ability to engage and innovate with large groups of people in order to deliver real solutions to their constituents before election day.”

IdeaScale’s crowdsourcing software is one of the most customizable open innovation solutions available to government. It’s robust evaluation and analysis modules empower decision making on the back end and offering the highest-rated level of support services to users.