Contents
- 1 1. Niagara Region, ON: Building stronger relationships between councillors and residents
- 2 2. City of Richland, WA: Enhancing community engagement with a new meeting program
- 3 3. Saskatoon Public Library, SK: Reducing barriers for vulnerable groups
- 4 4. League City, TX: Approving the “Development Services Strategic Plan”
- 5 A season of strategic success stories
- 6 ↓ Book a demo, and get started on your own strategic outcomes ↓
We love to see our customers turning their strategic goals into real outcomes. Since July, we’ve seen some amazing progress with many public sector organizations implementing impactful initiatives in their communities. Here are four standout strategic success stories that demonstrate the power of clear strategy, community engagement, and performance management in action.
1. Niagara Region, ON: Building stronger relationships between councillors and residents
Niagara Region’s 2023-2027 Strategic Plan emphasizes equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) to address barriers faced by marginalized groups. One major goal they have is to increase the percentage of community members who feel heard by their elected officials and ensure staff feel respected and valued by management.
In 2024, the Region launched several initiatives aimed at fostering connections between councillors and diverse community groups. This included conducting periodic internal and external surveys to assess the impact of their programs and services.
By the start of October, Niagara Region exceeded their internal employee engagement goal on these surveys, with 71% of staff reporting that they felt heard, respected, and valued—a significant increase from the target of 60%.
2. City of Richland, WA: Enhancing community engagement with a new meeting program
As part of their 2024-2026 Strategic Plan, Richland has prioritized becoming a high performance government by increasing public trust, transparency, and community engagement.
When we talk about strategic success stories, we want to recognize the importance of community engagement. Richland is prioritizing this element of strategic success through their development of a “Community Meeting Program” to formalize community engagement. By July 2024, the City had established the scope, objectives, and team for the program.
A community meeting program is a structured approach to fostering open dialogue and collaboration between an organization or local government and its community members. The goal of such a program is to ensure transparency, inclusivity, and active participation in decision-making, creating a sense of shared ownership and trust within the community.
Richland’s community meeting program is now ready to roll out in 2025, providing folks with more opportunities to engage in local decision-making.
3. Saskatoon Public Library, SK: Reducing barriers for vulnerable groups
We loooove public libraries! They provide essential services, yet frequently have to rely on lean resources in order to get things done. There are lots of rich learning opportunities for other public sector institutions that can be gleaned by looking at how libraries strategically plan.
Saskatoon Public Library is a stellar example of how, when done right, strategic planning (and strong implementation practices) can lay the foundation for real change in a community. One strategic area for the Saskatoon Public Library is to improve the quality of life for all residents. They have a particular focus on reducing barriers for vulnerable populations who rely on library services for essential needs—from access to water, shelter from the heat or cold, washrooms, to computer facilities.
Rather than turning away from the reality that many vulnerable people access the library’s services, SPL is leaning in, and questioning how they can do an even better job. In July 2024, the library began assessing service gaps for vulnerable groups and kicked off a public consultation to better align opening hours with community needs.
We’re celebrating how they ran their community consultation from August 14 to September 15, which provided insights into how the library can better serve previously underserved areas, and enhance accessibility. These results will help inform future service enhancements and operational changes. They’re a great example of a strategic success story.
4. League City, TX: Approving the “Development Services Strategic Plan”
It’s a common story—development plans can come at the expense of the residents in a community. We’ve all seen the loss of heritage sites, or critical community hubs, in favor of a short-sighted development plan that leaves a community struggling to bounce back from the change. That’s why we are excited by what we’ve seen from League City, Texas, who have sought to create a customer-driven Development Services Strategic Plan that also improves the quality of life for residents.
In early 2024, the City invited concerned parties—from potential investors, to contractors, developers, and residents—to participate in a strategic planning roundtable process. On July 9, 2024, the City Council approved the Development Services Strategic Plan, through which (after a process of going through hundreds of responses from the session), emerged five themes of prioritization:
- Culture of caring
- Communication and inclusion
- Processes, policies, and practices
- Empower to excellence
- Encourage investment
The new plan positions League City’s Development Services team as a state-wide leader in providing professional, responsive, and efficient public development services.
Part of the plan includes regular process mapping exercises to identify and implement process improvements, and updating standardized operating procedures to maintain consistency and relevance.
Finally, the city has created a plan with its Communications Department to keep relevant parties and residents informed about strategic initiatives, leveraging their public dashboard to provide real-time updates on progress. This helps ensure development aligns with community goals.
A season of strategic success stories
These success stories highlight the incredible work our customers are doing to improve their communities, foster engagement, and drive meaningful change. We’re proud to support these efforts, and we can’t wait to see what they do next.
↓ Book a demo, and get started on your own strategic outcomes ↓
Stay tuned for more strategic success stories, and updates as these projects continue to evolve—and if you’re ready to achieve your own strategic outcomes, we’d love to help.
Mary King
Mary King is a professional writer and researcher based in Toronto. She comes to Envisio with a Masters Degree, where she researched the relationship between the disappearance of urban public spaces, and high level decision-making processes in local governments.
For nearly a decade, Mary has worked as a community organizer, promoter, and supportive researcher in a variety of nonprofits and think-tanks, and her favorite area of focus was in connecting local artists with marginalized youth. Since 2017, her writings and research on policy, local governance, and its relationship to public art and public space has been presented at conferences internationally. She has also served as both a conference chair and lead facilitator on professional and academic conferences across Canada on how to better bridge academic research with local change-agents, policy makers, artists, and community members.
Envisio’s mission of excellence and trust in the public sector maps onto Mary's interest in local government and community mobilization. She loves working at Envisio because she cares about having well organized, strategic, and transparent public organizations and local governments. Mary is also a creative writer and musician and has been supported in her practice by the Canada Council for the Arts. Her stories can be found in literary journals across Canada.
