Winslow Township, NJ, nestled within Camden County, stands as a sprawling municipality, spanning 58 square miles and housing approximately 40,000 residents. Embracing both rural expanses and bustling cityscapes, Winslow epitomizes diversity within its borders. The township embarked on a journey with GOGov in 2014, seeking to overcome the challenge of fragmented communication systems among various departments. Faced with the arduous task of redirecting citizen calls across different offices, Winslow recognized the pressing need for a centralized solution. Enter GOGov, offering a suite of modules including Citizen Notifications, Citizen Requests/311, and Code Enforcement, tailor-made to streamline operations across departments.

About Winslow Township, NJ

Winslow Township is the largest municipality within Camden County, New Jersey. With a population of about 40,000 residents stretching over 58 square miles, there are a lot of areas covered within the Township. Within Winslow’s borders, there are both rural and more congested areas that makes Winslow a quite diverse municipality.

What was the challenge that led Winslow Township to GOGov?

Before implementing with GOGov in 2014, Winslow was using a previous system to manage the municipality, but soon realized that a goal for the township was to centralize the system among each different department. It became more work to transfer calls from citizens to different offices that handle those specific requests or issues.  Sometimes residents would be confused about which department handled their request, call the wrong department by accident, and end up being transferred between multiple people before finding the correct contact. The process ended up being time-consuming for residents and resulted in town staff having less time to perform more complex and important tasks. The municipality saw the need for a centralized system where each department used the same software.

With just a google search, Winslow found GOGov and scheduled a demo. Karen Bringhurst, the Administrative Clerk at Winslow Township explained, “When we did the initial call, what we liked is that there really wasn’t a sales pitch. It was kind of like, here is the product, and the product sold itself.” Winslow Township saw the different product modules GOGov offered; Citizen Notifications, Citizen Requests/311, and Code Enforcement, and found that these modules would work to centralize Winslow!

How is Winslow using GOGov today?

“It’s easier to tell you how we’re not using it!” – Karen Bringhurst, Administrative Clerk at Winslow Township

The municipality uses GOGov’s Citizen Notifications, Citizen Requests/311, and Code Enforcement products for almost all departments at Winslow. In the beginning Winslow started using GOGov in their main departments but have since then expanded to more departments that can find helpful use with these modules.

On the citizen side, the municipality branded mobile app “My Winslow” has been a great resource for citizens to access all information regarding Winslow Township. Winslow uses Citizen Notifications for upcoming Township events, employment opportunities, and other important notifications for residents to stay informed on public information. Citizens can also submit requests through the mobile app for any issues in the community with the Citizen Requests/311 module. The township finds that with the mobile app, a lot of younger generation residents do not want to call when there is an issue. They much prefer information to be instantaneous 24/7. The app has made information easily accessible and attractive to use for residents.

On the township staff side, digitizing the request process made a significant difference when it came to engaging with residents. The staff uses the Citizen Requests/311 for backend requests, which makes it simple for employees to be assigned tickets to complete. This also works for outside entities the township works with, such as the Board of Health. It makes it a simple process for Winslow departments to forward tickets through an email, even when the Board of Health does not have access to Winslow’s system, and they can respond to the issue with all the information there.

Code enforcement has been fully implemented at Winslow, and the automatic letter writing component has saved the workers so much time, as they would write out letters on word before GOGov. Code Enforcement officers now have the ability to go out of the office, enter all the form fields and then the secretary back at the office can print the letters out all at one time in the system. The letters can get out to residents in the same day, whereas in the past there was a lag before the resident would receive it.

Future Plans for Winslow

Winslow’s staff has been tracking what citizens are looking for in the FAQ’s, and where the staff may be missing marks as far as getting information out, for example bulk pickup days or missed trash days. With GOGov’s internal side of its software, Winslow staff is able to look back throughout the years to what people have looked at, and with that information they can easily track on a bar graph for where the staff needs to look further into information for the residents. This helps Winslow pinpoint the problem, and act on it. It helps answer the question “where is our time and money going on the back end and where do we need to put our resources?”. Winslow plans to continue tracking metrics and responding accordingly to the data.

The staff also plans to continue onboarding new departments to utilize GOGov as efficiently as possible. It is still a goal to keep everything under the same program before they try to find something outside. It is quite valuable having access to analytical history and past information, but also giving all employees access to that information. It’s important to make GOGov fit within outreach. Karen Bringhurst says, “Nine times out of ten, it works.”

Advice for those considering GOGov

Karen suggests to begin the implementation process with just one or two of your main departments first, where the impact is going to be the biggest and get their buy in because when those departments can see how much easier GOGov makes the process, it will be easier to implement and expand from there.

Your Municipality Powered by GOGov

GOGov is committed to helping municipalities and local governments enhance community engagement, streamline operations, and foster transparent communication. Our partnership with Winslow, NJ demonstrates the potential of our solutions to make a meaningful impact on cities of all sizes, and our continued efforts to improve and innovate further.  

GOGov specializes in providing CRM, Code Enforcement, Citizen Notifications, Online Permitting and mobile software to local governments of all sizes. We built our software from the ground up working with the departments and staff that now use our products every single day.

Interested in learning more? Sign up for a demo with the GOGov team today.

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