muniBLOG Category Archives: Communications

The power of plain language in the ChatGPT age

Does it sometimes seem that no one is listening, or even reading? Do you have a sneaking suspicion that your work is being marginalized, or even ignored? Experience and research tells us that it’s not you, or your work. It’s how you’re saying it.
A recent study in the U.S. proves the point, with data to back it up. The aptly-titled The Effectiveness of Plain Language Proven by Data showed that 72 per cent of readers preferred plain language in disclosure documents. Why? The benefits of plain language include faster reading, quicker understanding, and better message retention. Sixty four percent of readers perceived the plain language text as well-written, making them more inclined to accept and appreciate the message in the document.
How can you take advantage of this in your work? The U.S. National Archives sums it up neatly: “Plain language is clear, concise, organized, and appropriate for the intended audience.” Their Top 10 Principles for Plain Language provide a clear road map to help anyone who writes (and isn’t that everyone?) improve their communication. Their list follows, with my own examples from many years of writing and editing for a variety of clients who will remain nameless.

1. Write for your reader, not yourself. Use pronouns when you can.
The first step here is to identify the reader. It’s not you. Is it your boss, your subordinate, your client or user base, or all three? As you write, picture them reading and understanding your message. Will they “get it” on the first pass? They will only be impressed with you and your work if they do. Use language and diction they will immediately understand.
Unless you are literally writing for a Grade 7 audience, don’t write for a Grade 7 audience, or any other arbitrary measure. A client recently told me that they wanted a Grade 7 reading level, for a public-facing document addressing some serious and complex societal issues. “How many Grade 7 students will be reading the document?” I asked. They understood immediately. The goal is to communicate with your audiences, not hit the magic number on an arbitrary (and often inaccurate) scale.
Needless repetitions of nouns bore and annoy the reader. Pronouns are your friends. Yes, they are your friends. Use them wisely and see readability and comprehension soar.

2. State your major point(s) first before going into details.
The “inverted pyramid” model of writing was invented to deal with the limited space on a printed page. Copy editors can always squeeze a story into a tight space by starting with the most important points and then lopping off the details from the bottom until the content fits. The reader still gets the salient points. Ironically, with the limitless space now offered by digital media, this principle is more important than ever. The short attention span of today’s readers ensures that many will only read the first few lines of your work. Make them count!

3. Stick to your topic. Limit each paragraph to one idea and keep it short.
Did I tell you about the time I had to edit this piece? I was having a bad day, because my dog had just run away with the circus, and then I started to write. Well, …
Some lucky people can simply start writing at the beginning, and know exactly where to start a new paragraph. Others among us need some sort of outline. Rather than spending hours outlining, take pen in hand and write out the key words for each paragraph. In writing this piece, I cheated a bit by using the structure of the Top 10 principles I referred to at the start. Either way, you always need some sort of structure, however minimalist.
As a speech writing teacher once told me, it’s a simple three-step process to write and deliver a good speech. 1. Tell them what you’re going to tell them. 2. Tell them. 3. Tell them what you just told them. (You may have to read that aloud to make sense of it.) In other words, your writing should have an introduction, a body, and a summary. This applies to the document as a whole, and also to each paragraph.

4. Write in active voice. Use the passive voice only in rare cases.
This is the one that many people either don’t understand, or ignore. Many organizations subtly encourage the passive voice to serve as an insurance policy for incompetence or timidity. Lawyers, bureaucrats, and accountants are especially susceptible to this. Here’s an example from an audit report.
Scope
The scope of our audit included a general review of the operating and reporting practices, together with analysis and assessment of the financial and other records, as we considered appropriate in the circumstances. It also included such tests and analysis as well as discussions and interviews as deemed necessary.
Here’s the plain language version:
Scope
We assessed operating and reporting practices and financial and other records. We also interviewed staff and management.

5. Use short sentences as much as possible.
Readers get lost in a long sentence. Be suspicious of more than one comma. Beware of “boilerplate” phrases that lengthen your sentences. Follow the natural English order of Subject, Verb, and Object.
Another example from an audit report:
Our observations lead us to the conclusion that the clinic is in default.
The clinic is in default.

6. Use everyday words. If you must use technical terms, explain them on the first reference.
Tailor your vocabulary to your readers. If you’re not sure whether the reader will understand a word, provide a short definition. I recently edited a document where the word “intersectionality” (where multiple forms of discrimination combine, overlap, or intersect) was prominent. With the rise of neologisms (new words, usages, or expressions) in every field, this is more important than ever.

7. Omit unneeded words.
Excess verbiage (too many words) is the bane of many writers, especially those with professional designations. You will not impress anyone with writing that forces the reader along a tortuous path to enlightenment. Get to the point!

8. Keep the subject and verb close together.
It’s almost always better to follow the natural English order of Subject, Verb, and Object.
Having ascertained the whereabouts of its perennial foe, the cat, which was known for a visceral dislike (possibly hatred) of virtually all of the rodents it encountered on its nocturnal perambulations, killed the mouse.
Or, “The cat killed the mouse.”
Showy consultant language as above puts a lot of distance between the subject and the verb and object. It does nothing to deliver the message.

9. Use headings, lists, and tables to make reading easier.
Short sentences are good. To shorten them where there is a long list, use a colon and bullets. Never add commas or semi-colons to bullet points. The bullet points are all the punctuation you need. In the editing business, these are known as redundant redundancies.

10. Proofread your work, and have a colleague proof it as well.
Spell check eliminates most errors, but even the best bot won’t notice if you miss word. Errors like the missing “a”in the previous sentence are very common. They are sloppy and harm your credibility. To avoid them, print out your work. Follow along with a “read-aloud” from your word processor. Asking a colleague to team up for a read-aloud proofing is usually not practical, but tech and paper get the job done. You will be amazed at how many errors you can find with this method.

What about the chatbot?
So what does this have to do with ChatGPT? Absolutely nothing. But if you have read this far, you have learned the power of a good lead. And you have also learned how to better communicate with your audiences.

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Change takes time. The Future is approaching.

So, our first piece of advice is to start thinking about it now. And yes, you can ease into the future; it does not have to happen tomorrow.

When organizations are planning out their new, or enhanced physical security needs we are often asked what are the trends that are likely to shape physical security in the future?

The same question is usually followed up with… “If we do this, or if we buy this, will this sustain us in the future?”

Which also can be interpreted to… “So, we don’t have to buy something else, and that this will last us a long time, right?”

Good questions, but always a challenge to answer. Many factors play out as resistance or even catalysts to these questions and their subsequent decisions. Risk exposure, budgets, actual realized events, change in the organization’s focus, change in the organization’s leadership, campaign promises, or even change in some environments, regulation or legislation “forcing” a change, all impact the ‘future’ question.

What are those future trends shaping physical security? Some trends outlined in the list below may be a surprise, some may appear too futuristic.

  1. Increased use of biometric security measures: Biometric security measures, such as fingerprint scanners and facial recognition technology, are becoming more popular as they offer a high level of accuracy and are difficult to bypass.
  2. Rise of smart security systems: Smart security systems are becoming more common, and these systems often use artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to analyze video footage and detect potential threats.
  3. Greater emphasis on cybersecurity: As more security systems become connected to the internet, cybersecurity is becoming an increasingly important consideration. Companies are investing in measures to protect against cyber-attacks that could compromise their security systems.
  4. Increased use of drones: Drones or Remotely Piloted Aircraft System(s) (RPAS) are being used more frequently for security purposes, such as patrolling large areas, inspecting high-risk locations or even in response to incidents in providing real-time surveillance.
  5. Greater use of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) in training: VR and AR are being used to train security personnel in simulated environments, allowing them to practice their skills and respond to potential threats in a safe and controlled setting.
  6. Integration of physical and cybersecurity: As threats evolve and become more sophisticated, it is increasingly important for physical security and cybersecurity to work together to provide comprehensive protection. This integration may involve integrating cybersecurity measures into physical security systems, such as installing firewall protection on security cameras.

Biometrics, smart security systems, cybersecurity emphasis and the integration of physical and cybersecurity have been on our radar for several years now and have been introduced into our past and current projects with great adoption by our client base.

The trend not mentioned here but remains a constant for us, is the due diligence required to ensure the “paperwork” is complete, up to date, used and enforced. Your policies, and procedures, training programs, guidance documents and standards are the backbones for all these physical security tools to work in the manner they were intended for your organization.

Of course, great planning and the execution of that plan is essential. Planning is a cyclical process that can start, stop, and reset when required. The future is changing. Be prepared.

Plan the Work. Work the Plan.

Reach out. We can help.

Should your Municipality need assistance, contact Michael White Group International today, and we will be happy to answer your questions. Visit michaelwhitegroup.com/contact/

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Efficiency: The Side Effect of Effective Citizen Engagement

Increasing efficiency can often be a challenging task and can come at a cost. Whether it be increased monetary costs to implement a new process in your workplace, or increased labour costs to train and bring on new staff, efficiency comes at a price. But imagine if you could implement a digital municipal citizen engagement solution for your community. One that looks to improve your residents’ engagement and overall satisfaction, and also benefit by handling more service requests with shorter turnaround times.

The Necessity of a Digital Solution for Municipal Citizen Engagement

In our increasingly digital world, properly implemented digital options are no longer a luxury. They are a demand. Consumers expect the solution to their problem to be solvable online – often without needing to speak to a person at all. This expectation has existed in private industry for quite some time and has now pivoted to government services as well.

Not providing a digital option has some very negative consequences. The customer will be significantly more dissatisfied or even worse, will choose not to engage at all. What this means for a municipality is that there is a large subset of your population that will avoid interacting with their local government if there is no digital solution provided for them.

Of course, providing this option for your residents will be a primary benefit. In fact, there is evidence showing that having a properly developed citizen engagement tool online can lead to improvements in the municipality for both citizens and leaders. However, there is another added benefit that isn’t as frequently discussed when looking at implementing a citizen engagement solution – the benefit of getting more done without needing to increase resources.

The Cost of Efficiency

Efficiency is something that is constantly strived for, whether it be private companies or government operations at any level. By definition, increasing efficiency allows you to get more done with the same or fewer resources. In a business, this might allow you to deliver your product or service more quickly or decrease the overall cost of creating your product. For a municipality, it might mean decreasing the time it takes to close a resident’s service request ticket.

On this topic, you might reasonably ask if a citizen engagement program might have a downside of decreasing efficiency. You are opening your staff to more communication with citizens and therefore increasing the volume of service requests coming in, and both staff and citizens both have to learn a new system. In other words, better citizen engagement could come at a cost to your department. Now imagine if you could increase the volume of service requests handled by your municipality AND at the same time increase the overall efficiency with which these are addressed. Let us look at how that’s possible.

We recently went through our customers’ usage habits to figure out basic information on how our customers are using AccessE11. Almost by accident, we discovered clear and direct links between engagement of citizens and increased efficiency within the municipality. To understand this better, let’s look at how staff and residents are using AccessE11 to submit service requests.

Some Data

The first piece of data is quite simple – submissions of service requests using AccessE11 over the past five years. Although this is straightforward, it is a very good sign. It shows that the longer a municipality has been a customer of AccessE11, the more frequently they are using it to streamline their service request process.

Growth over year
And this is not just the case for larger municipalities. In general, smaller municipalities might think that there is less need for digital solutions to meet the needs of their communities, but our customers are living proof that it is often the residents of smaller municipalities who crave engagement with their local government. One of our current customers, Hastings Highlands, is a wonderful example of how a well-executed digital solution can positively impact a small municipality.

Growth by population

So, this is all great, albeit somewhat expected data. However, you might be asking “what does this have to do with efficiency?” Well, that’s where a third set of data sheds some light, and this was discovered entirely by accident. Analyzing the usage data and looking at trends, we discovered something amazing. Given the first two charts, it’s easy to see that usage of AccessE11 by staff and citizens is increasing year over year. However, this data doesn’t address efficiency and simply focuses on total usage. But let’s look at this next chart.

Days to complete

This is a chart that takes all service requests raised over the past six years and looks at how long it takes for each service request to resolve and be closed. In aggregate, time to close is VASTLY decreased year over year.

What Does This Mean?

So, what does this mean for your municipality? It means that adopting a strong digital solution for municipal citizen engagement and managing service requests not only increases community contribution and overall satisfaction, but it also increases efficiency internally. Increasing efficiency leads to a direct savings of resources for your departments. Whether that be time, money, or a combination of both, your municipality can see a significant increase in service requests and still decrease the time it takes to manage these requests. Best of all, because AccessE11 is designed specifically for small to medium municipalities, it is created with your specific challenges in mind.

Don’t wait any longer to implement a solution for your municipality. The demand for digital services increases year over year. It is quickly becoming a requirement for every facet of business and life. Signing up for AccessE11 will give your community a strong, adaptable solution to manage service requests, increase your efficiency, and end up saving money rather than costing money.

 

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Processing FOI Requests Off the Corner of Your Desk

 

Many public sector entities process FOI requests using generic applications such as Microsoft Excel.  In this article, Vayle guest blogger Else Khoury discusses how workflow automation software can streamline FOI processing and mitigate compliance risks. 

In an election year, municipal staff have a lot on their minds: hiring support teams, organizing polling stations, counting votes, and onboarding new council members; not to mention keeping the regular machinery of municipal programs and operations running – more or less – smoothly. Throw the processing of freedom of information (FOI) requests into the mix, and things can go sideways quickly.

Many municipal entities reported an increase in FOI request volume during an election year, often related to candidates’ positions on hot-button issues (mask mandates, anyone?), but also for answers to the questions that decide votes: meeting attendance and voting records, to name only two. Processing FOI requests can prove especially challenging for smaller municipal entities that lack the resources or expertise that larger municipal entities, which often process hundreds of requests every year, have. The FOI request process can be difficult, even at the best of times and even for the most seasoned municipal staff.

Volumes are increasing

Although the number of FOI requests across Ontario dropped somewhat in the first year of the pandemic, requests in 2021 were back up and approaching pre-pandemic levels. According to the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner (IPC) of Ontario, over 60,000 requests were filed in 2019, while in 2020, that number dropped to around 44,000. In 2021, more than 55,000 FOI requests were filed across provincial and municipal entities in Ontario. Some have seen a surge in activity, particularly when implementing online FOI request forms and e-payment options.

So many requests, such little time

Initially, upon receiving a request under the Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (MFIPPA), municipal entities are bound by the 30-day response period. Once the request has been received and confirmed, the real work begins: finding records. This task can be particularly challenging for municipal entities that lack electronic records management solutions.

The search for e-records, including emails, in and of itself can easily extend the response timeframe outside the established 30-day limit. This is followed by the inevitable review, sorting, copying and redacting of records, at the end of which 30 days rarely feels like enough time. Of course, time extensions are always an option. Still, since requestors can challenge them by going directly to the Office of the IPC, the designated Head must carefully consider the risk of employing this option.

Next comes exemptions. As is the case with all legislation, the devil is in the details. With a laundry list of mandatory and discretionary exemptions to choose from, MFIPPA is rife with options. And because exemption descriptions can be complex and verbose, it is sometimes difficult to know which one to apply and when. When making a disclosure decision, the best option for the Head (or their delegate) is to review IPC orders related to the request in question to see how the IPC has ruled in the past. However, this approach often takes more time than is allowed when you’re in the position of processing FOI off the corner of your desk; and when IPC decisions on a particular issue are numerous (consider that a search on IPC orders related to “dog bites” yields 27 orders!).

Legacy tools are inefficient

For most municipal entities, processing FOI requests is still a manual exercise. Microsoft Excel and other software applications are often used for this purpose: Requests are logged and tracked in spreadsheets or databases, which lack the ability to track timelines and schedule each step of the request. It usually takes a day to send a confirmation to the requestor, a week for the department to send files to you, and about two weeks to collate, redact, etc. Without a means to track these timelines, municipal staff are forced to manually track each part of the process in addition to their core job duties.
All public sector organizations in Ontario that are subject to either FIPPA, MFIPPA or PHIPA must submit annual statistics to the IPC. Reporting requirements account for the number of requests received and processed, how long it took to respond, total privacy breaches, and the number of appeals filed with the IPC. Processing inefficiencies only add to the workload.

The benefits of FOI automation

Some municipal entities utilize purpose-built software to simplify and track FOI processing and annual reporting tasks. There are several benefits to this approach:

  1. Save time when inputting and tracking requests, fee calculations, maintaining records, addressing appeals, and publishing reporting statistics.
  2. Mitigate risks associated with missing response deadlines, improperly calculating fees, and publishing inaccurate reports.
  3. Improve insights through advanced reporting, tracking everything from total requests to year-over-year performance comparisons.

Assess your FOI program

If you are unsure about whether FOI automation will benefit your organization, consider conducting a simple three-step analysis:

  1. Map your workflow using a simple document to identify each step of your FOI processing system. Identify areas which are creating bottlenecks.
  2. Estimate the time required to fulfill each stage of your FOI processing system, starting with intake through to the appeals process.
  3. Overlay the benefits of automation into your current workflow, estimating the time saved by automating each task multiplied by the number of FOIs processed annually.

An FOI automation solution purpose-built for Canadian public sector entities 

If you believe FOI automation could benefit your municipal entity, consider Vayle FOI (formerly Nordat), a software application that streamlines the end-to-end workflow for FOI requests. While Vayle FOI provides many of the benefits mentioned above, some clients have reduced their workload by as much as two weeks through the application’s automated annual reporting feature alone. Vayle is currently offering complimentary assessments to help public sector entities estimate the amount of time and money that can be saved by utilizing their FOI automation solution.

Customers range from small municipal entities to large police services agencies processing over 1,000 FOI requests annually, some of which have been users of the software, and its modernized versions, for over 15 years. Built and hosted in Canada, Vayle FOI was designed specifically with the Canadian public sector in mind.

Guest Blogger: Else Khoury

Else Khoury has worked in the municipal privacy field for almost 20 years, and currently provides training and advisory services in the areas of Records and Information Management and Access and Privacy. She holds a Master’s of Information Studies degree from the University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies, an Information Access and Privacy Protection (IAPP) certificate from the University of Alberta, as well as the designations of CIP and ERM Master (AIIM International).

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Are you practicing SITUATION AWARENESS?

Situation Awareness is a skillset that should be practiced daily and is a valuable tool for staff.

Increasing situation awareness, through constant development and use increases security, protection of staff, protection of assets and overall resiliency of staff and the organization.

Training Situation Awareness benefits every department across the organization.

This training can take many forms. The focus however should always be the same. Elevate the staff member’s capability of being aware of their surroundings and the different influences, factors, items, and people that make up the environment they’re in. Situation Awareness is a mental image of what is happening all around you. Hearing, seeing, feeling for information and the various cues and clues that those influences, factors, items, and people are making in that environment and piecing them together so that they can have a good idea of what is happening and then using that information to predict what happens next.

There are many reasons why we need to be situationally aware.

  • Personal Safety & Security
  • Crime
  • Workplace Safety

 

Personal Safety & Security

Situation Awareness training can greatly improve an individual’s personal safety and security, regardless of if they’re at work, home or at play. Being aware of the environment you’re in reduces the risk of placing yourself in harms way or removing yourself from harms way. Being aware of the individual that wants to or is about to cause you harm or steal some of your personal belongings, unfortunately in some locals, environments and situations is much needed. Unfortunately for most, we traverse through many different environments on a daily basis that vary in degrees of safety.

 

Crime

Levels of crime or criminal activity vary geographically and from environment to environment. Unfortunately, criminal activity affects many of us, especially crimes against a person, theft, verbal abuse, physical abuse all the way to the far end of the spectrum of terrorist events. In efforts to be continuously aware, individuals should keep themselves abreast of local news and events and equally important when travelling, their destinations local news and events.

Workplace Safety & Security

It is everyone’s collective and individual responsibility to make and improve workplace safety and security. Law enforcement organizations, Crime Stoppers chapter always encourage us to “See something. Say something”. This very same message applies equally from our personal lives to our working environment. “That’s not my job” just doesn’t cut it anymore. Situation Awareness training assists organizations in bettering the safety, security and overall resiliency of their employees resulting in a more safe, secure and resilient organization.

 

Situational Awareness Training Delivery

There are options for organizations when seeking out Situation Awareness training.

  •          In Person
  •          Virtual Classroom

 

In Person Training

It has been said that In Person training is the best delivery method and most beneficial for the participants. It can create an environment of interactivity between the instructor, the participant and with the other participants also. Our delivery of this training will only take up to half a day.

 

Virtual Training

The recent and ongoing pandemic also allowed us to pivot the training and provide it in the virtual world in the varying platforms of virtual meeting spaces. Virtual training offers benefits also in that, we can bring together staff from geographically challenging locals where costs to bring them together is prohibitive making an even larger training group more feasible.

Benefits

The benefits of Situation Awareness training are many for al individuals. Increased personal safety and security, increased security culture in the workplace and increasing the individual’s knowledge of the environment around them. Whether it is a high or low risk environment, situation awareness belongs there.

The value of the training, the value of the results shouldn’t be overlooked or underestimated.


Should your Municipality need assistance, contact Michael White Group International today, and we will be happy to answer your questions. Visit michaelwhitegroup.com/contact/

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What is Boolean Logic?

Girl encircled by search icons and AI

What is Boolean Logic?

Have you ever wondered how a computer can do something like balance a check book, or spell-check a document? If you want to understand the answer to this question down at the very core, the first thing you need to understand is something called Boolean Logic.   [i]

Why do you need to understand Boolean Logic?

Well, as the use of artificial intelligence (AI) increases, it will be important for us all to understand it.  I am no expert on it by any means, but here’s my take on what I understand to be the very basic fundamentals of it, in the simplest and broadest of terms.

The term “Boolean” refers to a system of logic developed by the mathematician and early computer pioneer, George Boole.

A Boolean search is a query technique that utilizes Boolean Logic to connect individual keywords or phrases within a single query.
Boolean searching allows the user to combine or limit words and phrases in an online search in order to retrieve relevant results.  Boolean searching includes three key Boolean operators: AND, OR, and NOT which are used to limit, broaden and define the search results.
When these “operators” are used between two keywords, the search will result as follows:
  • A Boolean search for “Cats AND Dogs” will retrieve all documents that contain both words
  • A Boolean search for “Cats NOT Dogs”, will retrieve only documents that contain the word “Cats”
  • A Boolean search for “Cats OR Dogs”, will retrieve documents that contain either the word “Cats” or the word, “Dogs”
Wildcard Characters (? and *) are also used in Boolean Logic. 
  • “?” matches a single character (i.e. the search string “re?” will match both rest and rent)
  • “*” matches multiple characters (i.e. the wildcard search “res*”, will match rest, rested and resting.[ii]
Quotation marks require words to be searched as a phrase, in the exact order you type them. For example, when searching for posts about Asset Management, using the quotation marks will search for the phrase exactly as it appears (i.e., “Asset Management”).  It would not return  documents that contain both the words, Asset and Management, in any other combination.
There are other elements to Boolean Logic, but I don’t want to get you too far into the weeds.  
The main thing I wanted to achieve with this article is; a) to provide an introduction to Boolean Logic, for those of us who are new to it and, b) for you to understand that combining Boolean strings with AI-powered search filters to conduct a search, utilizes a search engine to its fullest, most comprehensive potential for optimum search results.
Susan Shannon, CEO
muniSERV.ca

[i] How Boolean Logic Works, by Marshal Brain, Science Direct

[ii] Gnowit Guide to Boolean Logic – Boolean Primer

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UCaaS is critical for any authority service improvement

what is UCaaS?

Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS)  is a network of cloud-based telephone system that controls the flow of calls coming in and out of your organization. We replace your on-premises PBXs, as well as your SIP, PRIs, and POTS lines. UCaaS enables you to use a variety of hosted programs and services (including instant messaging, video conferencing, file sharing, and email) over the Internet from any location and at any time.  In addition, UCaaS provides security, allows flexibility, and integrates well with your other software applications including MS Teams. UCaaS systems are updated frequently by the provider ensuring that your communication methods will always be up-to-date in our ever-evolving world.

Why UCaaS is critical for all customer-guided corporations?

 
GUARANTEES YOUR BUSINESS CONINUITY & SECURITY

Experteers can easily answer this for all municipalities and companies who care about their customers.

First of all we have to emphasize about the importance of continuity in all circumstances, UCaaS provides the best option to avoid your business any hiccups along the road because of any reasons. UCaaS is available on any communication device, laptop, or PC anywhere at anytime to be able to efficiently communicate with your customers.

Security is another crucial requirement for all connected networks, voice calls, video conferencing, and instant messaging are parts of all departments communications to enable them to work properly and deliver services. Experteers, as part of security provider, enable first layer of security by having all our servers in Canada, maintaining 100% availability by having four communication centers in main four cities in Canada in Montreal, Calgary, Vancouver, and Toronto, and to maintain the second layer of security by having all SOC certified centers.

INCORPORATES THE LATEST FEATURES

When you have UCaaS, you’ll be able to use all the latest functions and features without any additional cost. You’ll also have the assurance that your information is kept safe and secure in a reliable data center. Having the ability to keep your communications up-to-date allows you to remain competitive and helps to increase your overall performance.

 

OFFERS FLEXIBILITY AND SCALABILITY

UCaaS allows organizations to add and remove users (for example, temporary employees) without any significant infrastructure changes or capital investments. UCaaS also provides seamless work experiences for your employees since they are cloud-based and accessible from any location – great for those working remotely.

 

PROMOTES PRODUCTIVITY

By using a UCaaS system, your productivity increases. All of your employees have unified communications support that is sharable amongst all departments, and UCaaS integrates well with your other software applications (like CRM). UCaaS keeps communication lines open and provides ways for your employees to log into various devices to access their information (such as voicemails).

 

LAST BUT NOT LEAST

SAVES YOU MONEY

When switching to UCaaS, there are minimal upfront hardware costs – you only need phones. You will also have the ability to choose the services you need (and not waste money on the ones you do not). UCaaS allows you to concentrate on growing your business by decreasing your dependence on capital investments.

 

UCaaS

 

We at EXPERTEERS are helping municipalities, utility companies, and medical centers increase employee productivity by adding a state of the art Unified Communications Solution, enhancing collaboration and increasing employee efficiency.

  • Enable your team to work remotely (hybrid)
  • Train employees more efficiently with sentiment analysis
  • Monitor key performance metrics with automated reports
  • Boost company performance through detailed analytics & collaboration
  • .. and more

Let us help you improve your client experience, call us at EXPERTEERS to learn how we can help enable your business for success in 2022.

 

Experteers is a system integrator SI and managed service provider MSP for the following services:

– SASE / SD-WAN: to secure all ur networking between all branches.

– NGFW: Next Generation Fire Wall centralized to keep all networks secured in almost real-time updated system.

– NMS: Network Managed System to keep your visibility on all network elements and servers to improve your systems availability.

– Cyber-Security on all endpoints and servers

EXPERTEERS CORPORATION

WWW.EXPERTEERS.COM

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Can Public Service Access Be as Easy as Online Shopping?

For all levels of government, including municipalities, on-line services are no longer something to be considered for some unspecified future date. The private sector has set a new standard for a streamlined customer experience, and this has translated to much higher expectations for access to public services as well. This speaks to a demand to digitize citizen service request processes, from reporting concerns through to requesting permits or making payments. An increasingly tech-savvy population, continued evolution in technology, and the realities of the pandemic are all contributing to an accelerated need for this to be underway now and to happen quickly.

Benefits of digitizing citizen service requests

The benefits of digitizing public services are numerous. At the core, citizens who are satisfied with how they are served are far more likely to trust in their local governments, and far more likely to remain engaged the process of making their communities better. But there are more tangible benefits as well. For example, unlike brick & mortar service offices, online services make it easy to offer the convenience of 24/7 access from anywhere.  Studies have also shown that time spent by citizens or businesses interacting with public employees can be reduced by 50% or more. And furthermore, automation has the potential to reduce service request handling effort by as much as 60% resulting in a far more productive and satisfied workforce, shorter turnaround times, reduced backlogs, and more time to focus on innovation.

But there are challenges

Government agencies have considerable ground to make up in building a more citizen-centric culture and, in recent years, satisfaction with government agencies has actually declined. According to the 2021 American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), satisfaction with local government agencies ranks last in customer satisfaction among the 10 sectors and 47 industries included. Much of this can be attributed to differences in the degree to which services can be transacted online, but also to the fact that the private sector continues to raise the bar on online service expectations quicker than the public sector’s ability to keep up. Adding to this challenge is that the number of customer journeys requiring attention and automation within the public sector is typically greater than is the case for private businesses, while access to internal technical talent to execute is often in shorter supply.

Thoughts on How to be Successful

Given these challenges, digitization of public services can seem daunting, and will surely take time to fully realize. But to be successful, there are some key elements that need to be part of any transformation effort.

Clear Intent

Positive change through digitization will happen more quickly and will be more sustainable if there is clear intent from the outset, common and well-articulated goals, and genuine excitement and confidence on what the transformation team can accomplish together. This needs to start with committed leadership. To be successful however, there needs to be a collective sense of conviction and purpose that is shared by all parties responsible for implementation.

Keep the citizen at the forefront

Efforts to bring government services online must start with and maintain focus on the complete experience a citizen has with a local government, as seen from the citizen’s perspective. Each journey will have a clearly defined beginning and end, spanning a progression of touchpoints, and citizens don’t really know or care about who owns each individual step in the process. From their perspective, these are all part of one journey. And it shouldn’t be assumed that because some individual touchpoints are performing well, the overall citizen experience is meeting the need. By making the citizen’s experience as seamless as possible, operational efficiency and employee satisfaction will naturally follow.

Look for quick wins

Digitization plans of any scale will often fail if there is a sense that everything needs to be done at the outset. It is advisable to build momentum within the team and across stakeholder groups by prioritizing a small number of particularly painful journeys and adopting an agile approach to make these journeys better. This means releasing improvements iteratively in smaller, more manageable sprints, and making refinements continually based on feedback from the field. To quickly demonstrate value, it often makes sense to start with the front-end experience and to gradually introduce backend automation and integration over time. And yes, this may require internal teams to adopt a new way of working.

Manage citizen expectations within each journey

When you make a purchase online, as part of a digitized process it is customary to receive an indication of when your purchase will be shipped. And once shipped you receive additional notification of estimated delivery date along with a tracking number. As long as the communicated expectations are met you are likely to be left with a feeling of being well served independent of the amount of time taken, and will be more likely to use the same channel for future purchases. Public services should be no different. As an example, a citizen request management system should acknowledge receipt of a reported concern, set service level expectations, automate communication to the citizen for key updates, and confirm when the concern is resolved – all of this within a timeline that can reasonably be met. Trust and citizen satisfaction are sure to benefit when such an approach is adopted.

Measure and communicate results

One final thought relates to an imperative to establish KPIs that reflect how well any investment in digitizing services is paying off.  We suggest that a measure of citizen satisfaction always be included, but others such as staff hours spent per citizen service request, percentage of requests received through digital versus other channels, abandon rates, and others will also come into play. These metrics can be used to reinforce strategies that should remain at the forefront of any ongoing digitization efforts, and highlight areas that need further refinement or rework. Of equal importance, this will provide a basis for communicating value and success to stakeholders including city council, CAOs, departmental managers, the transformation team and, of course, the citizens that stand to benefit. This is critical to build momentum towards the ultimate goal of making citizen service requests as seamless as on-line shopping.

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2022 Security Risk Budget Outlook

Moving on up

At the onset of the pandemic, Security Risk budgets decreased as organizations shuttered their doors and employees left the office, and organizations under duress looked for places to cut costs. Many found their savings in the Security budget. But now, the potential to double or triple budgets in 2022 maybe a reality.

Our research shows approximately two-thirds of security budgets increased in 2021 from 2020, but still have yet to reach or return to 2019 levels. 2022 has the potential to change that.

As organizations are set to come back to life in 2022 security risk events have not gone away. In fact, the COVID-19 pandemic created new security challenges. The new challenges have yet to be solved, and as schools and businesses reopen / remain open during potential future surges, the security risks of the past return as well. In order to protect themselves from past, current, and future threats, organizations need to reinvest in physical security.

Really watch

Real camera surveillance and real-time monitoring integrated with a uniformed security guard force that is properly trained may be for some organizations the order of the day. High-caliber uniforms security guards and training necessary to protect against threats to an organization cost more than $15-20 an hour. Challenges will emerge to protect your organization, your information, your IP, your personnel. All of this may lead to an explosion of security requirements, and the budget.

Another factor contributing to budget increases in 2022 is executive protection. According to the Ontic 2021 Mid-Year Outlook: State of Protective Intelligence Report, 58% of CEOs and senior leaders who expressed a stance on political issues received physical threats. Senior Public Officials and local health department leadership who encouraged health measures like vaccination or mask-wearing have also become targets of physical threats. Against the backdrop of this increased threat landscape, executive protection has grown in importance among physical security professionals.

An inner look

These aforementioned types of threats could also come from inside an organization. Leadership will either take a stand, or not take a stand. The personnel of an organization expect their leaders to take a stand, whatever that might be, for or against a particular issue or concern. Unfortunately, pent up frustration surrounding decisions may not even be pandemic related, and at times still result in leaders being threatened. In many areas of the country, threats against “leadership” is foreign territory for many organizations.

Integration

The threat landscape has always been uncertain and rapidly changing. With many advancements in approach, strategy, and technology, organizations can protect themselves with integrated security risk strategies.

As both physical and cyber threats compound, organizations are tasked with protecting themselves on all sides. With increased and realized threats there is one unfortunate downside. Higher security costs as risks to supply chains, cyber and physical security risks increase. During this pandemic many organizations have unfortunately learned that their security profile may not be or has been at a level they had hoped it to be. New gaps have been found, existing weaknesses have become even weaker and due to other impacts of the pandemic, organizations may have struggled to get the necessary supplies, purchases and even personnel in a manner to which they were once accustomed.

Plug it

Identify your shortfalls, your gaps and plug the holes. A comprehensive risk assessment will assist in that process. If organizations fail to plug those holes, and as they begin to re-open even more, they unfortunately will remain or fall back into a vulnerable position.

Proactive hard work

Technology enhancements, uniformed security, executive protection, education, and plain old attentiveness and proactive behaviour towards security risks to quickly address existing and newfound challenges brought forth because of the pandemic will require increases in security budgets in 2022.

Now more than ever we need to move beyond reactive, and proactively secure our organizations.

It all simply starts with a plan.

We can Help.

Plan the Work. Work the Plan.

 

Should your Municipality need assistance, contact Michael White Group International today, and we will be happy to answer your questions. Visit michaelwhitegroup.com/contact/

 

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Tips to Run a Successful In-Person Meeting

Over the last two years, many of us had to learn how to connect differently than we were used to. Instead of putting on our best suit, we’re still in our jammies from the waist down. Instead of shaking hands we’re pushing unmute.

Slowly but surely, the world is beginning to open back up. Where it’s safe to do so, many meetings are returning to an in-person format. Since we’ve all become accustomed to doing things virtually, it may take a little time and effort to get back into the swing of the face-to-face meetings. Here are a few tips to help make your meetings run as smoothly as possible.

Set the Agenda:

Municipalities know this, but meetings always run more efficiently when there is an agenda to follow. Having a clear agenda helps set the expectations. If the conversation starts going off track, you can always point back to the agenda items to steer things in the right direction. Setting out estimated times each agenda item should take for discussion, will also help provide direction and keep folks on track.

Start on Time. End on Time.

While it may seem polite to wait for some late arrivals to join, there’s a bigger downside to holding off until everyone is in the room. First and foremost, this sets a bad precedent. Accommodating the latecomers shows the others that arrival times are lax. This can spiral out of control quickly. Secondly, the attendees who’ve prioritized arriving on time are now feeling frustrated that their time isn’t being seen as valuable.

Set Ground Rules:

Having a few basic ground rules around meeting etiquette can help provide great flow in your meeting. Some solid rules, or expectations, can be something simple like; participate, get focus, maintain momentum, and reach closure. If you list these rules at the top of your agenda, both new and returning attendees will understand the direction of the meeting.

End with an Action Plan:

We’ve all been in meetings where the conversation seems to go around in circles without resolving anything. It’s important to establish a plan of action for the agenda items that need follow-up. Assigning certain people to particular tasks and plotting out a course of accountability will ensure that your meetings have purpose and value to all of those involved. We’ve conducted meetings by video teleconference for so long, (and honestly, we’ve become pretty good at them), it will be an adjustment for everyone to start attending again in person. But a well-organized meeting, and Chairperson with good leadership skills, will get us all back
in the swing of things soon.

Oh, and one more thing – dig out that suit again. Things may have changed over the last couple of years, but it’s still not considered socially acceptable to wear pajama bottoms to an in-person meeting.

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