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Accela Honors 2016 Civic Tech Trendsetters with Award Recognition Ceremony

Innovation and Technology Integration Showcased at Annual Industry Conference

 

Accela, the leading provider of cloud-based productivity and civic engagement solutions for government, honored 13 of its most innovative customers as recipients of the Accela Trendsetter Awards during its annual industry conference, Accela Engage. This year’s conference, held this week at the JW Marriott Los Angeles L.A. LIVE, brings together more than 1,000 Accela customers, government leaders, business partners, thought leaders and Accela staff for product training, networking and civic technology inspiration.

The Accela Trendsetter Awards recognize government agencies and individuals that are making the greatest strides in civic engagement through the aid of technology. This year’s winners were selected from a pool of customer nominations based on interesting and unique use cases and non-traditional customers, compelling data points/ROI, and the impact of a particular technology solution on the community.

Each award winner embodied one of Accela’s civic engagement solutions, with additional awards presented for the best technology integration story and “Civic Superhero”, honoring an individual who brought about positive change in his or her community.

“The Trendsetter Awards were created to recognize those government agencies and individuals at the forefront of civic engagement,” said Maury Blackman, CEO and President of Accela. “From tackling new regulatory issues in their jurisdiction to embarking on transformative ways to increase transparency in their communities, we continue to be impressed with the innovative ways government agencies are working to improve government-to-citizen interactions. We salute the efforts of all of the 2016 winners on their commitment to breaking down the barriers and creating a better government for their communities.”

The following cities and individuals were recognized during the evening’s festivities:

• City of Pittsburgh, PA (Accela Right of Way Management)
  Resolved 50+ conflicts in one season and entered into cooperative agreements with utilities to further their goal of reducing single lane pain.

• City of Reno, NV (Accela Legislative Management)
  Simplified meeting management and follow-up, integrated video management with time stamp features, and enhanced the City’s image through online citizen engagement.
• City of Tallahassee, FL (Accela Citizen Relationship Management)
  Demonstrated savvy marketing around launch of mobile app to citizens and staff, resulting in 67% usage of the total submitted requests within two years after launch.
• Livermore, CA (Accela Land Management)
  Reduced solar permitting time from 4-6 weeks down to less than one week resulting in greater customer satisfaction.
• Stockton, CA (Accela Land Management)
  Reduced the over-the-counter solar permit issuance from two weeks to same day for planning to approval time, minimizing plan paperwork and inspection time.
• City of Berea, KY (Accela Utility Billing) 
  Moved from on-premise to the cloud in five months, enabling the city to save time and money.
• City of Auburn, WA (Accela CivicPay)
  Added an online portal and IVR system, reducing calls into the office by 30 percent in one month.
• Valley Center Municipal Water District (Accela Utility Billing)
  Currently implementing the full suite of Accela Finance and Administration software, enabling the utility to meet all due dates for fiscal year end while relocating their finance offices.
• City/County of Denver (Accela Licensing and Case Management)
  Leveraged existing marijuana licensing technology to address emerging sharing economy regulation needs.
• Salt Lake City, UT (Accela Asset Management)
  Embarked on a self-implementation program of Accela Asset Management to increase transparency and reporting capability on city park maintenance costs.
• Contra Costa County (Accela Environmental Health)
  Modernized processes and software configurations to more easily track and collect data on active water wells and septic systems, with less paper.
• Peter Pirnejad, City of Palo Alto, CA (Accela Civic Superhero)
  Created analytics dashboards that leveraged Accela data to measure service counts, speed of delivery and timeliness.

• Town of Framingham, MA (Accela Integration Story)
  Leveraged Accela’s open architecture to create unique integrations for electronic document review, payment services, GIS and license validation.

For more information on Accela Engage and the Trendsetter Awards, visit https://www.accelaengage.com/.