Congratulations to the Town of Bradford West Gwillimbury, Ontario for officially launching CivicWeb - iCompass' new automated open government web portal.  The announcement has been met with great fanfare as local papers and other publications across North America have featured stories about this breakthrough in government transparency.  It's really exciting when you consider CivicWeb was launched only a month ago and our development team continues to receive feedback from our Pilot Program as we plan further improvements. 

Have a look at some of the local coverage:

Simcoe.com - Read
Bradford Times - Read

Want to learn more about CivicWeb?  Click here or contact sales@icompasstech.com for more information.

It's an exciting day for iCompass and the Town of Bradford West Gwillimbury as it becomes the first local government in North America to launch CivicWeb.  The automated online web portal is being used to engage with the community and share information in a variety of groundbreaking ways. 

The big wins according to Town Staff and Council are a greatly improved meeting process and a new platform for citizen engagement that opens up all sorts of new opportunities for the public to communicate with government officials.  

“Our new CivicWeb solution has greatly improved the efficiency of the Clerk’s Division however we are even more pleased with how quick we can get information out to the public and how easy it is to find information about Council and Committee meetings” says Director of Legal Services/Clerk, Rebecca Murphy.

Read the official release

iCompass Technologies is excited to announce 3 agreements with Saskatchewan municipalities as the Towns of Outlook and Hudson Bay have purchased Agenda SE.  In addition, The Town of Rosthern is implementing iCompass’ Meeting Management Solution.  This comes in the last few weeks of a group-buy program iCompass has initiated to help smaller local governments in Saskatchewan deliver ‘Big City’ services to their public while streamlining their internal meeting processes. 

If 10 municipalities provide signed agreements for Agenda SE to iCompass before April 26^th, then they will all receive a reduced sales price.

“It is exciting to be taking a positive step into the future by using iCompass Technologies' Internet based solutions for paperless council meetings,” says Town of Rosthern CAO Nicole Lerat.  “I'm also looking forward to seeing how FilePro and Action Tracking will help streamline our day-to-day operations, creating a more efficient, more cost effective organization."

Municipal governments typically receive a full return on investment in about 6 months through saved paper and overtime expenses once implementing a solution from iCompass.

iCompass was a proud sponsor of the Kamloops Innovation Centre’s Official Launch April 4^th.  The new organization is one of several popping up in British Columbia as the province’s tech sector continues to gain momentum.   Young entrepreneurs with ideas come to the Kamloops Innovation Centre looking the get their business going and many actually rent space at their facility.  They get access to mentorship from some of BC’s most prominent tech entrepreneurs in the fields of business development, marketing, networking and partnership building.

As a growing tech company that’s been around since 1999, we’ve had our fair share of experiences and are looking forward to sharing that wisdom as the next wave of Kamloops entrepreneurs makes their mark!

Check out the hashtag #KamloopsInnovation on twitter and make sure to give @KICpeople a follow.

(Pictured Above: Lincoln Smith – Kamloops Innovation Centre Executive Director)

iCompass Releases Automated Open Government Webpage

iCompass Technologies is excited to announce the official release of CivicWeb, an addition to our paperless Meeting Management Solution that will revolutionize the concept of open government.   CivicWeb takes agendas, minutes, council voting and attendance records, and data search tools and puts them on an attractive web portal promoting government transparency.  It is linked to your current homepage and becomes the public’s primary resource for information. 

CivicWeb is redefining open governance through an automated posting system that makes updating content as easy checking a box once a document is complete.  Information is updated and formatted instantly.  There are also subscription features that allow people to sign up for updates that are sent automatically to their inbox.

“CivicWeb is an open government game changer,” says VP of Sales and Marketing Scott Neufeld. “Municipal governments and school districts want to be transparent and engaging, and with today’s launch of CivicWeb its all possible, due do the automatic posting system iCompass has created.“

The response has been overwhelmingly positive. Over 40 of our current academic and municipal partners quickly signed up for a pilot program to assess CivicWeb’s impact.

iCompass Technologies is pleased to announce 5 new partnerships with local governments from across Canada.  Their new solutions will improve transparency while saving time and money throughout the meeting process. 

“The excitement for our solutions isn’t limited by geography or the size of a municipality,” says VP of Marketing Scott Neufeld. “These recent partnerships illustrate iCompass’ solutions are an ideal fit for communities across North America.”

With our industry leading Implementation and Customer Success teams hard at work, all 5 organizations will be up and running in the near future. 

“Our cloud-based solutions streamline the implementation process as no on-site setup is required,” says Neufeld.  “We pride ourselves on building relationships with our customers and knowing each person by first name.”

The municipalities that have partnered with iCompass are:

It's always great to see our new customers making headlines at local news outlets following the implementation of one of our solutions.  Bay Roberts recently purchased Agenda SE and now has Council using iPads during meetings.  In this article you'll find that Bay Roberts is saving about 1,100 sheets of paper per a meeting.  The environmental and financial savings over the course of the year when you extrapolate those numbers is substantial!  Here's a link to the article from The Compass Newspaper in Carbonear, Newfoundland.

What you need to know: Building Safe Communities – LGAA 2013 March 13-15, 2013 Red Deer.

iCompass continues with our second conference/tradeshow of the year.  We will be at the Local Government Administration Association Alberta Chapter 2013 Conference in Red Deer.

The theme for this conference is Building Safe Communities.  There are some great pre-conference sessions lined up:

• Ed Wendlandt | Joint Exercise Planning - Integrating Industry & Municipalities
• Brian Thwaits | Train Your Brain

• Ron Tite | Creative Thinking & Innovation
• Derek King | Anti-Bullying and Fighting Bylaws

With an election coming up iCompass has a number of solutions that will help governments start fresh once the dust has settled.

Stop by our booth, #56, to learn more!

A bit bleary-eyed but still enthusiastic, the iCompass team is making their way home after the first week of our LOL tour.  Gareth Brunt, Joel Neustaeter, Aaron Weiss, Scott Neufeld and Courtney Harris have spend the week criss-crossing BC, Alberta and Washington State.