MISA ON Redux – Golfing, an Amazing Race and digital breakthroughs

By Madeline Weber - June 20, 2023

Pictured: Team members who attended MISA ON include (left to right): Mira Sanita, Catherine Crofton, Colleen Colbeck, Ali Carden, Honey Mehra and Alan DiCiantis from our product, customer experience, sales, and leadership teams.

At the beginning of June, we had the pleasure of returning to MISA ON Conference 2023 in Collingwood, Ontario. As a long-term member of MISA, it’s always great to return each year to see how municipalities are evolving and adapting technology to better the lives of their residents.

A major highlight for us was hearing Govstack mentioned in a keynote session by City of Kingston’s Scott Tulk, on Digital Transformation. He also gave an in-depth demo on their new services portal developed by their talented technical team. And he showed how their new website, with Govstack, will integrate with their platform to streamline their city services and be a main mechanism in gathering service data to better serve residents.

During our interactions, we learned about some of the defining challenges municipalities are facing and we had the opportunity to showcase Govstack and demonstrate the ways in which it helps to solve many of these challenges.

Digital conversations and challenges with municipalities

The biggest takeaway from talking with the IT professionals was obtaining a better understanding of some of their more pressing concerns. The need for better control of their websites, content and navigation, and the need to improve their service delivery to customers and make their digital platform meet the demands of their residents.

Municipal Challenges:

Smaller municipalities who had 3-to-4-year-old websites have typically doubled their webpage count, making it challenging to keep their content sorted, audited, and up to date. With changing resources and lack of time to focus on their website management, municipalities need a content management system that helps facilitate control on their content which will keep their website intuitive and up to date.
The need for responsive and actionable support. Digital transformation requires strategic planning, expertise, data management, access to digital infrastructure, policy guidance, evaluation and monitoring.

It was gratifying to share with them how Govstack can help them meet these challenges with a robust CMS that gives them the control over their content that they are seeking. Not only that, but it also provides them with technology that is scalable to meet their evolving needs.

We also heard many municipalities talk about their desire for better support from their current vendors – the need for more responsive and proactive solutions. Our answer to this is Microsoft Azure hosting and monitoring along with a dedicated support team that listens and is willing to help them meet their challenges and ensure that online services are always on to meet the needs of residents.

Swinging into some fun and games

During all the serious discussions, we managed to squeeze in some fun. Our team hosted a mini putt golf game with award prizes distributed at our booth. Our grand prize winner, Lisa Wallace (Kitchener Public Library), took home a lovely gift basket made by the local Collingwood Sweet Shoppe and some sweet AirPods to add to the mix 😉.

We had a few laughs and some good conversations with clients like Wendy, leader of the County of Essex, who shared with us some of the difficulties they are facing and discussed how we can help them meet their goals. Our team also relished the opportunity to meet existing clients face to face for the first time in years, while introducing themselves to some new friends along the way.

What’s next?

With a renewed sense of purpose and the excitement resulting from the overwhelmingly positive response to our products, we have solidified our commitment to further innovation and empowerment. The journey continues, and we eagerly anticipate the next conference, where we can once again showcase our transformative solutions.

We’re off to the NACo Annual Conference this July to learn how other municipalities across the globe are digitally transforming their communities.

If your municipality is brewing new technology in-house that requires a website powerhouse that will support your digital transformation, check out our resource page to learn more about Govstack.

Make Govstack your breakthrough technology in your quest for digital transformation.