MinutesMaker

Legislative Management  >  MinutesMaker

Government agencies face enormous pressure to modernize their information delivery methods to keep up with heightened transparency and accountability demands. As the primary keeper of public records, Clerks must help agencies overcome this challenge by adopting digital tools to deliver higher-quality information to the public, at faster speeds. Granicus MinutesMaker equips Clerks with advanced tools to build a one-stop-shop for public meeting information—all minutes, audio/video recordings, and other documents are indexed, cross-linked, and searchable on your Website. MinutesMaker also allows Clerks to enhance their public recordkeeping process through an automated workflow that saves time and money.

How MinutesMaker can help:

• Deliver higher-quality information to the public.
• Decrease the time and effort required to create and deliver minutes to the public.
• Run more productive public meetings.
• Increase government transparency.
• Respond to public information requests faster.
• Work within your existing systems: Agenda Management and Microsoft Word.
• Enhance, rather than replace your existing legislative procedures.

Automate minutes creation and save time

MinutesMaker is specifically designed to help Clerks automate time-consuming minutes creation processes. The software’s digital workflow tools enable Clerks to automatically record meeting actions–such as motions, notes, and votes—live as they occur, with little effort. The process is productive, reliable, and can give governments a positive return on investment in staff time.

Enhance your minutes with rich media and advanced linking

Evolve your minutes format into a digital, Web-based format that meets today’s Web 2.0 standards. With MinutesMaker, Clerks automatically generate a rich media minutes document that provides more information than standard verbatim or summary minutes. Instead of flat text, MinutesMaker builds “LinkedMintues,” contains hyperlinks to your audio/video public meeting media recordings and back-up documentation. As a result, audiences can instantly learn more about a discussion item by watching the meeting discussion or drilling down into staff reports to get a complete portrait of the context and intent behind decision-making.

Deliver more transparent and accessible public records

MinutesMaker empowers clerks to easily manage their public meeting records online. Your entire agency, and citizens, can benefit from the software’s ability to build what we call a searchable “Integrated Public Record.” This is a digital, online archive of your audio/video meeting recordings, minutes, agendas and staff reports–all cross-linked, keyword-searchable, and available 24/7, live and on-demand. Plus, it contains RSS (Really Simple Syndication) subscription feeds–for agendas, minutes, and video–to make it easy for viewers to subscribe to stay informed without having to visit your website continuously to find new content.

Spend less time responding to public information requests

Reduce hours spent locating meeting records or duplicating audio or video recordings to fulfill public requests. MinutesMaker gives you high-impact archiving and integrated search for public records on your website with our Integrated Public Record. This portal has been proven to reduce the number of calls received to government offices. It enables citizens to answer their own questions by centrally reviewing meeting agendas, watching or listening to the meeting discussion, or instantly researching history on specific policy items by keyword or number. Also, if requests are made for a copy of your meeting recordings, Granicus offers fast-paced CD or DVD creation functionality so you can speed up your turnaround times and reduce burden on staff. These advantages help government agencies cut costs in paper usage and staff time spent fulfilling public records requests.

Avoid redundancy: use your existing systems and data

You don’t have to retype agenda items or use multiple systems for your Agenda or Minutes workflow. MinutesMaker’s open architecture is designed to integrate with the leading agenda and document management companies to ensure agenda information can flow into and from your live meeting process. Also, MinutesMaker integrates with Microsoft Word to allow you to format and edit your Minutes using the features and functionality that you are used to.

Connect citizens to a central, keyword searchable media portal of your meeting recordings and documents.

Maximize transparency by building an Integrated Public Record comprised of agendas, minutes, video—all cross-linked and keyword searchable on your Website 24/7.

Enrich your meeting minutes with embedded links to your audio/video meeting discussion. This gives users the ability to read the action and understand the context behind it.

Increase public access by enabling citizens to watch meeting deliberations and review backup meeting materials such as staff reports from one user interface.

Use our live meeting interface to streamline motions, votes, and note-taking with a few simple clicks of the button. All actions recorded in your minutes are automatically live indexed against your audio/video meeting recording.

Instantly capture votes, tally results, and record this into your digital minutes record.