Convene spoke to Jonathan Partridge, Assistant Director of Governance Services at Central Bedfordshire Council, about how Convene’s features have “made our lives so much easier”.
Please describe your original reasons for implementation
As a local authority we have to produce agendas and committee papers and publish those publicly as a legal requirement. Previously we had a system in place for a considerable length of time, and we became frustrated with the inefficiency of it for example how long it took to produce agenda packs and how long it took to publish them.
We chose Convene because it was much quicker than other systems we had used previously. It worked really well, it’s reliable, its cloud based which for us is of considerable importance since all our software is pushed towards being cloud based so Convene ticked all the boxes.
We used it internally only for a year, and then decided to extend it out into all areas of our operation, both internal and public in terms of papers and committees. We used to use a product called Modern.gov which is used by a large number of Local Authorities nationwide.
What made you choose Convene?
There were two reasons. Gemma, our Convene Account Manager that worked with us at the time, was very knowledgeable and very responsive to enquiries, so we were able to build up trust and a good relationship early on.
The second reason was that Convene was cloud based and that was a massive tick in the box for us. We trialled it out and it was so much more efficient than our previous system, so it was actually a no brainer.
Were any other systems considered at the time?
We went through the G cloud procurement framework which restricted us in terms of the number of solutions we were able to consider which in our case was approximately half a dozen. We looked at a solution called Semus (produced by a company called Aztec) plus a couple of others. We had previously been on a product called Boardpad, so we re-visited them as well.
Please describe your meeting calendar
Convene is used for all meetings. All of our public facing content is driven through Convene, and we hold 100-150 meetings per annum. All of our internal member meetings and senior management meetings are driven through Convene. Year to year we are probably doing 200-300 meetings per year so it’s quite a full calendar. I ran a report the other day just to show the levels of business demand placed on the team, and I’m sure we were up to 150-200 public facing and member meetings which amounts to 80% of our calendar.
What has the feedback been like from your users?
Internally, the app was received much better in comparison to the previous ones. One of the reasons we decided to seek an alternative system is because our internal meetings where officers were highlighting items and making notes, we had so many complaints about how the previous app worked that we ended up having to procure a completely different system, in this case it was Boardpad. We then moved to Convene due to it being a better solution for us.
Is there any particular functionality within Convene that you find has added value?
It’s the Agenda creation that is the standout function, it has made our lives so much easier. Previously you’d have to go into a screen for each and every individual item, you would need to type all the required data. With Convene, you have everything on one single screen. This has been a massive benefit for us. We have used the Actions module to a degree also and this has also been really helpful in terms of tracking activity over time. Those two features are probably the main ones we use.
We know that we could go out and buy a package that would offer us a wider functionality than is the case with Convene, but we know that 80% of our work is done on that agenda creation page using Convene’s Agenda feature, and we have never found a system as efficient as Convene is in terms of that function and how it publishes to the web. Our budget process is managed through the Document Library, and it is where individual presentations are stored.
We used the Votes functionality in a number of meetings that were held on Teams during the pandemic. We had approximately 59 elected councillors on a Teams call and we needed a simple solution for them to be able to vote on items as the meeting progressed. We set up Votes within the agenda pack and asked councillors to vote live during the meeting. Personally speaking, I think that it worked really well. Votes were coming in, we were able to publish a names list of how everyone had voted, which made for a smooth process. We had complaints about the way that it worked but I think that that was down to user error!
We also use Announcements fairly frequently for informing officers of the fact that papers are available so that is a function we get a lot of use out of.
How has Convene performed regarding security?
We are very confident with Convene when it comes to data security. We have had a couple of instances where papers were shared publicly in error, however the fact that with Convene it is possible to restrict access to meeting papers and apply permissions provides us with an added security layer. Confidence in Convene as a secure system is high in this regard.