During the COVID-19 outbreak, it is more important than ever for local governments to communicate with citizens. Granicus, a company providing SaaS solutions for government agencies, is responsible for distributing many of these communications.
Granicus is headquartered in Denver but established a Twin Cities presence after merging with local startup GovDelivery in 2016. Today, Granicus has around 150 employees in its St. Paul Office. It also has an office in the U.K.
Many businesses and organizations have shut down during the coronavirus outbreak, but governments have kicked into high gear. Granicus hopes to help them run as normally and efficiently as possible in a time that's been wildly unpredictable.
"We're seeing a lot more interest in information coming from the government," Granicus Cheif Marketing Officer Susan Ganeshan told Minne Inno. "There can be so many posts that provide misinformation. The best way to combat that is to put government news and government information into citizens' hands."
Granicus has 4,500 customers and operates in every state and every federal agency. It helps agencies with things like setting up websites, email systems, social media and text tools to effectively communicate with citizens.
Ganeshan said that 200 million people in the U.S. subscribe to the free government bulletins issued by Granicus, and millions of these are in the Twin Cities. Granicus has pushed out nearly 951 million COVID-19-related bulletins since Jan. 15.
During the outbreak, the company is also helping agencies create tools to search for government news. This includes working with individual school districts to provide families with updated information. It also recently created a newsfeed widget for agencies to place on their sites.
Ganeshan said that it usually takes an average of several weeks to a month to implement new government software. But during the current crisis, Granicus is doing so in just a few hours.
"We want to get these things into the hands of customers faster than ever," Ganeshan said. "This is usually quite a lengthy process, but we're fast-tracking delivery."
Granicus is also offering a suite of services that allow governments to go virtual. Representatives can run public meetings, document agenda minutes and post everything online for public transparency.
One of the most important things governments are trying to digitize are public hearings. In some places like California, a hearing cannot go forward unless citizens are present. But in a time when everyone is forced to stay at home, these meetings need to find a way to continue. Granicus created an e-comment section that allows locals to comment on topics before and after the meeting and remain involved from a distance.
The company also created Gov Community, a Slack channel that consists of 1,200 government workers sharing ideas for local initiatives.
Still, Granicus says, they're far from done. The company plans to continue creating new services that benefit governments and citizens alike.
"If there's something that can be digitized, we want to support that," Ganeshan said.
