Driving Efficiency and Effectiveness

Explore the crucial role of advocating for your school district in the realm of education. This article offers actionable advice and strategies for individuals to effectively engage with policymakers and drive positive changes within their local education system.

Local government budgeting decisions will have an impact on multiple entities and individuals.

Protecting communication between elected officials and administrators requires a different level of security. Board, council, and administrative team members are among the most attractive targets for hackers, given the sensitive information they possess. When board or council members and administrators regularly use personal email to share agenda materials and communicate about their organizations most sensitive topics, they put their organizations information at significant risk.

Through our interactions with public governing bodies, we’ve learned a few things: Good governance is dynamic—it can look a little different from one organization to the next. Yet, there are a few modern governance principles that hold constant.

Modern communities face unprecedented challenges such as public safety and misinformation. To address these, and meet constituents where they are, communities must implement technology that helps engage their community. Here's how.

What comes to mind when you think about community? The roads you drive on, the churches and schools family and friends attend, or the parks and stores you visit on weekends? Whatever your specific images, these elements form an interconnected web of people, structures and organizations that offer a shared place and set of goals to build our lives. Communities today look much different than they did even a few years ago. Today’s communities — and the organizations that govern them — are facing a tectonic shift caused by the pandemic as well as cultural and civil strife.

General managers in special districts are facing a greater set of demands and challenges than ever before. Tight budgets, consequences from state governments, conflicts around planning and development, strained relationships with union groups, and managing conflicting priorities top the list of complex issues that general managers face every day. Using research and insight from the community, general managers serve as advisors to the board and other community leaders.

For many cities and towns, the staff who support local governments are the ones who do the real work of supporting a community. They are now making a concerted effort to better engage citizens and to streamline local government operations. The ability of council to operate effectively and to make decisions is central to improving overall quality of service to citizens.

Diligent asked many of its local government customers to give their thoughts on partnering with Diligent. Here's what local leaders had to say.

With unprecedented challenges faced by local councils and boards, keeping in touch with your North Star is more difficult than ever. This workbook will help you draft a personal mission statement, create a roadmap and rediscover your purpose.

The amount of data that municipalities deal with has grown exponentially. Local governments are particularly invested in keeping things secure because of the high level of sensitive information they store and the number of systems they use to share data with state and federal government programs.

Robert’s Rules of Order is a manual of parliamentary procedure that governs most organizations with boards of directors. Most public boards follow these procedure guidelines. Making a motion is how to introduce new items to the agenda. Here is our quick guide to the types of motions and the steps to making a motion.