Residents of West Lake Hills will have a new citywide communication system starting in May, allowing for more choices to connect with city officials and higher city accountability.

The city will switch from Blackboard Connect to CivicPlus for its mass notification and resident communications system, following action taken at the March 27 City Council meeting.

The details

The move to a new system is in part motivated by a desire to streamline city processes and efficiencies, City Manager Trey Fletcher said.

While the city has relied on Blackboard Connect for mass communication up to now, the city’s website is hosted on a different platform, CivicPlus. Moving the communication system to CivicPlus will scale down both the number of vendors the city relies on, and streamline processes for communication and coordination, Fletcher said.

One highlight of the new system includes the 311 Customer Relationship Manager, which allows:

• Opportunities for residents to submit questions, concerns and feedback
• All walk-in visits, emails, texts and phone calls to the city to be stored in one place where they are associated with a resident’s profile
• Two-way communication from officials to residents from the time of a request through its completion

Alongside the 311 program, CivicPlus also offers a mass communication service, including:

• A mass emergency notification system to alert residents of threats such as severe weather, fires or active shooter situations
• An option for officials to distribute emergency communications to all cell phones in a given area regardless of enrollment in CivicPlus system
• Mass notifications for residents who opt in for special announcements, utility reminders and other nonemergency topics

In addition to communicating with residents, CivicPlus also has a service for code enforcement tracking that allows users to complete a range of functions in one place, such as submitting complaints and violations, paying fees, uploading documents, and communicating with city officials.

Why it matters

The move to CivicPlus will allow for better communication with residents and provide residents more options for how they’d like to report an issue of concern. With two previously disconnected systems relying on methods such as Excel spreadsheets to track issues, items of concern were able to be overlooked, according to city documents.

What’s next?

The emergency notification system will be the first part of the new program to rollout, anticipated in mid-May. Existing users will be migrated from one platform to another automatically but may be asked to verify their information, Fletcher said.