Oakland County, Mich., Uses GovDelivery to Save Money and Keep Residents Up-to-Date

By Zach Stabenow, Executive Vice President & Co-Founder, GovDelivery

We like to highlight innovative agencies that are using creative ways to “Reach the Public.”  Today, we are showcasing how Oakland County, Mich., uses GovDelivery’s communication platform to enhance costs savings, as well as keep citizens informed during a challenging public health scare: the H1N1 flu epidemic.  When news of the epidemic was dominating the news cycle in late April and early May, many citizens clamored for information about the disease and its impact on their local communities.  Oakland County realized that posting information on a static website would not be a sufficient enough means for communicating urgent updates to concerned citizens.

As this Government Technology story highlights, Oakland County relied on the GovDelivery digital subscription service platform that allowed citizens to sign up for notifications via email, RSS feed or text message when it updated its website.  And, our platform allowed Oakland County to give citizens options as to how they wanted to receive the information. 

As Phil Bertolini, deputy county executive and CIO of Oakland County, noted in the article, Oakland County decided that allowing citizens to choose how they would receive the information was critical when dealing with these urgent H1N1 alerts.  The county’s website has 25,000 pages of content with 170 different content managers providing updates.  GovDelivery provided an automated process for sharing information that did not overburden these information managers. 

From an overall ROI perspective, by using GovDelivery’s platform, Oakland County has been able to save $268,000 in annual mailing and printing costs.  Also, check out this video interview of Mr. Bertolini discussing actual ROI from using GovDelivery.  Finally, if you are based in Michigan, we recommend you check out Bertolini’s presentation Mi-GMIS Fall Conference next week, where he will discuss how the county’s is improving service to the public through collaboration and innovation, and saving money during tough budget times.  

Comments

[Lsmith]

Very interesting post. The "GovDelivery" digital subscription is a great way to keep citizens informed about the swine flu and other national/local issues. Few people realize the importance and effect e gov services have on their community. Online and interactive applications are a great way for government dollars to be spent.