TurningPoint Case Study

City of Vancouver, WA

BACKGROUND

The city of Vancouver, Washington is located on the north bank of the Columbia River and offers its visitors and residents the experience of metropolitan life wrapped in the charm of a small-town. City representatives work closely with internal and external stakeholders to ensure Vancouver remains an attractive area that provides a comfortable atmosphere for its citizens. City employees have been tasked with the long term responsibility of transforming the city from a municipality that budgets and spends like a normal government to a business-based organization that makes decisions based on customers, products, costs and funds.

In order to create the best environment for residents, many government decisions are based on community feedback. Just as a business seeks input from its customers, government entities in Vancouver reach out to citizens regarding issues such as service levels, budget and spending preferences. Gathering citizen opinions is a difficult task when dealing with a wide range of communications styles within the population. In order to expand how they gathered live opinions, City Performance Analyst Tom Nosack began to investigate a way to electronically collect input.

THE CHALLENGE

During community outreach meetings, the city used a variety of methods to capture what participants had to say. From utilizing sticky notes on blackboards to dots on sheets of paper to people literally moving around the room, all previous solutions for gathering opinions were time-consuming and only moderately effective. Nosack and his team were in search of an automated solution that could accomplish goals of easily capturing participant data when they attended the International City/County Management Association's (ICMA) annual conference.

Turning Technologies was exhibiting at ICMA and giving demonstrations of their TurningPoint audience response system in action. The newer response systems have a number of characteristics that appealed to the team, including the ability to integrate directly into PowerPoint, install on multiple computers without purchasing additional licensing and accomplish various functions easily and intuitively. He was especially enthusiastic about using the new technology after using an older model available to local city offices.

"A regional association had some devices available to borrow from a central source, but each voting device was nearly the size of a paperback book," said Nosack. "The software associated with the devices is a proprietary program that can only be attached to one computer at a time. You also had to pay shipping to and from your location which could become costly due to the size of the devices. The learning curve for the software was also high - someone would have to be thoroughly trained on it. The concept was great, but the execution was not cost effective for us."

THE SOLUTION

The city purchased the first set of keypads with a small grant from an organization that drives community outreach. Since its implementation, the system has been used in more than town-hall meeting environments, but also for neighborhood meetings, internal sexual harassment training as well as community-based meetings with various other outside groups that have an impact on life in Vancouver. Nosack notes that the anonymity that the technology provides is its most popular feature.

"In most of our meetings, there is a segment of the population who will not communicate unless they are anonymous. Participants don't want to be 'labeled' based on one or two views. When we begin, we always let them know that there's no way for us to identify who made a response if they chose the 'clicker' they used. It's been extremely helpful in sexual harassment training to ask questions and receive honest answers without fear of being identified or retribution or embarrassment. It works really well," said Nosack.

In addition to voting with keypads, the city has used web-based polling solution ResponseWare to gather opinions. Most recently, a meeting was held to discuss city priorities for the 2011 budgeting process. Interested participants were invited to a live, on-site meeting using keypad hardware. The meeting was also broadcast on a local Cable TV station as well as streamed as an online webcast. Participants wanting to partake from an off-site location could easily view the broadcast or webcast and answer questions in real-time using any Internet-connected device.

"We wanted to try and reach out to those we don't like to come to live meetings or don't think they have the time, but might be interested in the technology of using a phone or computer while watching it on television or streaming. We were really pleased with the results," said Nosack.

CONCLUSION

The city has seen great success with the technology. In its ResponseWare event, a total of 73% of participants answered the question "What did you think of using the new technology?" with a high or very high approval rating. A few attendees personally noted the use of the technology as a positive step. Nosack explains that people love using the system and it keeps everyone alert and engaged - from a crowd of 10-15 in smaller focus groups to over 60 attendees at a time. With its growing popularity, the system was so popular that they had to treat it as a city resource that was reserved and booked centrally through Outlook, much like a meeting room. The city even has agreements with other organizations to mutually loan devices if a meeting has more attendees than they have keypads, since they are all interchangeable.

"The technology gives a voice to the people who normally won't say anything because they are non-confrontational. It gives an equal voice to everyone in the room and allows for conversations, discussions and drill downs to be controlled, yet everyone is represented," said Nosack. "We want to understand what our customers, shareholders and stakeholders need, feel and think. Audience response systems like these are great tools to get that information effectively and gain trust in the process."