"Administrative," labour-intensive," and "complex" - are just some of the words that come to mind when many think of the council meeting process. However, technology has come a long way. These days, the ability to manage meetings, connect with communities, and track meeting actions and resolutions is right at your fingertips, thanks to digital meeting management solutions.
But is your council meeting platform future-proofed? Will it keep up with the increasing demands of your community and other stakeholders to increase efficiencies and transparency?
Here are some questions you should ask to determine whether your solution can keep pace with the changing nature of local government.
How do you navigate large documents?
Agendas, business papers, and attachments uploaded into your meeting management platform can sometimes be substantial in size. The process for your team to upload and manage large PDFs should be easy, and the last thing they should have to worry about is your system being able to handle the file size.
Stephanie Papadopolous from Tweed Shire Council explains how her team experienced this with their previous system.
“Our papers can include thousands of pages, and within those, there’s large attachments and files made up of plans and diagrams,” said Stephanie. “We found our current system would regularly not cope with the large and diverse attachments.”
Future-proofed council meeting solutions should support large files and allow your team to quickly compile all supporting documentation into bookmarked PDF packets with minimal bandwidth consumption. Administrators should be able to easily make last-minute changes, set up email notifications, and choose what they publish with minimal effort.
Are your meetings automatically bookmarked for on-demand viewing?
The viewing experience of recorded videos and content should be effortless and allow the community to engage with issues that are relevant to them.
Platforms that provide bookmarked video recordings automatically timestamp agenda items corresponding to the discussion held in your meeting. This means your community can quickly access topics of interest to them making it more inviting for them to engage with your meetings. Information is instant, and finding content about issues that matter to them can be achieved without having to sift through mountains of irrelevant information.
There’s no doubt that this feature enhances the online viewing experience. And with streaming technology and online video content ever-evolving, your council meeting platform must provide a solution that allows you to automate the process. Bookmarking recorded meetings should be automatic to remove the burden from meeting administrators and reduce tasks once the meeting is over.
Is your voting process integrated?
Electronic voting has many advantages over traditional voting methods. It increases accessibility, participation, provides an audit trail, and allows you to report and publish results much faster.
The benefits are amplified when your meeting management platform enables members to vote from any device.
Governance Subject Matter Expert, Matthew Pearce, explains how an integrated voting process can improve meeting efficiency.
“For council meeting voting applications to be future-proofed, they need to impact the entire process, not just the voting action itself,” he says. “Modern Meeting Management systems should allow Minutes Takers to record motions and votes instantly and initiate voting when they choose to. Likewise, your motions and votes should seamlessly integrate with agenda items and minutes. It’s really about creating an end-to-end experience.”
Do your councillors have access to an easy-to-use portal?
A future-proofed meeting management platform should help councillors feel more prepared and supported to participate – before, during, and after the meeting.
Online Councillor Portals provide ultimate accessibility. Many meetings contain thousands of papers. Councillors should be able to navigate to current items for discussion or search past, and future meeting content in a few simple clicks. This allows them to work faster, manage well-organised meetings, and eliminates the risk of them getting lost in the sheer volume of pages to navigate.
A best-practice solution ensure Councillors can join meetings anywhere and participate in the meeting, including built-in voting that integrates directly with council minutes.
About Resolve Meeting Management
Resolve is a responsive web-based agenda and meeting management solution that improves communication, collaboration, participation, and engagement. You can now streamline, automate and execute your council meetings from one central portal and enhance the experience for all stakeholders. Discover more about Resolve here.