Legistar > Success Stories > Lake County, IL
County Streamlines Legislative Processes, Earning Cost Savings and National Recognition
Lake County needed to make their legislative process more efficient and accessible to the public. Organizing and tracking agenda items prior to a board meeting was a lengthy and cumbersome process. In 2007, they implemented the Legistar solution to build agendas and enforce new "digital" standards across their organization. Beyond just modernizing their agenda-making process, they were also able to upgrade the way they engage the public in government through video provided by Granicus. Since implementing Granicus and Legistar together, Lake County has saved roughly $38,400 in staff time and their website has been ranked among the most transparent government websites in the nation.
- Clerk staff had to manually manage the entire agenda process—re-keying agenda items, numbering, assembling, printing, mailing, and collating.
- They had no way to track agenda items as they flowed through the Committees and on to the County Board.
- Since agenda items were being submitted by email, they susceptible to being misplaced or lost before being added to the agenda.
- Needed to standardize the formats of the agendas and enforce the timeliness for submittal of materials for placement on agendas.
- Video was the among the top 4 requests for eServices when they were planning their website redesign, however, it would have been a significant investment for IT in hardware and internet bandwidth if the county tried to do it internally.
We were able to avoid significant investments in hardware and bandwidth because Granicus handles this for us. 
Kimberly Mannette,
Senior Systems Business Analyst
Lake County, IL
- Staff submits agenda items and supporting documentation items electronically, directly into the Legistar system, eliminating the need to rekey agenda items.
- Agenda templates are designed and managed within the system to ensure the Committees and Board use the same style and formats.
- Web-based portal enables the public and county staff to access materials easily whenever they want, plus they can do a full-text search for topics.
- They implemented a fully hosted and managed video streaming solution—including unlimited bandwidth, monitoring, and web-based tools to manage and publish video.
- Previously, their agenda process took at least 8-10 hours, now it takes 1-2 hours.
- They are saving roughly $800 per month from reduced labor and staff time, totaling roughly $38,400 in total cost savings.
- Staff and constituents can now easily research policy by keyword searching across all indexed video and records at once.
- Now, the Committees and Board use the same agenda templates, generating a consistent branded look for the County.
- Lake County’s website was ranked among the most transparent government websites in America by the Sunny Awards
- Leveraging a fully managed video solution has reduced the cost and complexity of trying to handle high-bandwidth video on their own servers.
- They have been able to effectively meet the Illinois Open Meetings Act—all agendas and minutes for Lake County Board, Committees, and Commissions.
