How Govstack enhanced Parry Sound’s online presence and improved its resident engagement

“Govstack gave us the freedom to design what we need, without sacrificing responsiveness, accessibility, or an editor-friendly user experience.” Callin Belchamber, IT Manager, Town of Parry Sound

Imagine this, you are a municipal employee who is responsible for providing up-to-date information to the public about important news and events happening in their community. It is late Friday afternoon, a pack of coyotes have invaded a local park where many young children play, and you need to get that information out as soon as possible. But you are using a digital tool that makes it difficult for you to add a news bulletin, edit a previous post, or change your layout to get the message out in a timely manner. What you need is technical support. But it is a long weekend and tech support has gotten an early start on their celebration. 

You are probably thinking, “the likelihood of a pack of coyotes taking over a local park is far-fetched, at best!”. You might be right. But beach closures due to bacteria counts, local area campfire restrictions or some other emergency is well within the realm of possibility and needs to be communicated to your residents with all possible haste.  

Now, imagine you are using a digital platform that makes it easy for you to share critical information with your residents and give it prominent positioning on your website. A platform that provides flexibility, requires no coding experience, and gives you complete easy control of website content and layout and makes any time sensitive scenario easy to handle. Such a platform would eliminate the need for third-party intervention and added costs. It would make it easy for you to upload the information to your site and provide your residents with a timely heads-up. 

The good news is, such a platform exists, it’s called, Govstack and it was built for government to put control of your content back in your hands. It takes the familiar features of our i:Create product and transforms them to put you in the driver’s seat, informationally speaking. It is flexible, scalable, and easy to use. It grows with your needs and enables you to better connect with your residents. 

Since its launch earlier this year, several municipalities have already made the move to Govstack. Many are in the process of migrating and still more are considering migration. A recent addition to the Govstack family, is the municipality of Parry Sound who have recently migrated their online presence from i:Create to the Govstack platform.  

The Challenge 

The municipality was primarily motivated by the desire to gain control of their CMS so that they could better serve their residents. They were looking for a solution that offered a user-friendly interface and one that would maximize their ability to showcase their community initiatives. As Callin Belchamber, Parry Sound’s IT Manager, puts it,

"Govstack gave us the freedom to design what we need, without sacrificing responsiveness, accessibility, or an editor-friendly user experience. Moving away from iCreate's templated design is scary at first; thankfully, Govstack's guardrails have allowed our staff to be safely creative while we provide up-to-date info to the public, highlight our municipality's big efforts, and integrate cloud services." 

They also understood the myriad ways in which technology has benefitted and transformed society, especially in the wake of the pandemic. The residents of Parry Sound, like many throughout the globe, have come to expect online services as a matter of course, (the “Amazon effect”). In fact, it is how a large segment of society prefers to access government services in 2023. But there is a significant drawback to the widespread adoption of all things digital—the need to keep up with the rapid pace of technological evolution. It can be a daunting task, not only because of the expense required to acquire modern technology but also the need to learn, maintain, manage, and upgrade that acquisition. 

The Govstack Solution 

Public sector organizations like Parry Sound need to invest in technology that can grow with their needs, is easy to use, enhances the automation of repetitive tasks, can help optimize staff and has built-in security features. All these competing demands require a multifaceted solution like Govstack. It scales with the needs of your organization and can easily integrate with other third-party solutions to widen the scope of your online services. It is securely hosted in the Microsoft Azure environment and is fully compliant with WCAG 2.0 accessibility standards. 

If you are a government organization, looking to enhance your digital presence with a flexible solution that is intuitive, requires no coding knowledge and will enable you to provide a superior user experience for your residents, why not take a closer look at Govstack.  

Reach out to us today to book a demo and see how Govstack can help your organization create a better digital experience for your residents.