democratic management software for modern government
democratic management software for modern government
CMIS is the e-Democracy Committee Management System for Local Government. CMIS allows you to manage all aspects of the Authorities committees, forums and working groups; including compositions, memberships, vacancies, substitutes and meetings. Attendance is recorded and statistical record created.
CMIS assists with the creation, compilation and publication of all documents including agendas, minutes, reports and decision notices.
A comprehensive member’s database stores contact and other information such as election history, images, biography and a register of interests. Information can be made public or retained within the organisation for administrative purposes as required.
CMIS offers extended facilities for creating, maintaining and publishing the forward plan of key decisions in both electronic and hard copy format. The draft plan can be circulated and approved prior to publication. Proposals can be submitted electronically using business intelligent smart forms.
CMIS maintains all aspects of a decisions life cycle from its inception through to implementation. Full life cycle history will be managed, maintained and published using the application. Comprehensive call-in functionality is incorporated within CMIS.
CMIS contains comprehensive decision tracking functionality that allows a user to instantly view the status of a decision. This includes full details of any changes, amendments or modifications to that decision. It is also possible to view details of and reasons for any call-in and any associated background information that supports the decision.
CMIS has a comprehensive outside body management module. The outside body module allows detailed information to be stored and published for each outside body including contact information, appointment criteria, terms of office and numbers of vacancies.
Appointees can be added to vacancies, including the details of the appointments, appointment letters, vacancy lists and other reports can be generated.
CMIS has an integrated workflow engine that can automate entire manual processes, an example of this is the report authoring process, authors can author reports, request comments and approvals which are controlled and monitored by the workflow engine.
Astech can now offer each customer an opportunity to build an individual solution, based on its own business processes, without compromising the integrity of the core CMIS product.
CMIS allows its users to create one or more document libraries where information can be gathered, stored and published. Security attributes can be applied at document, folder and library level to provide or restrict access.
Once a decision has been made, actions can be allocated to individual officers and e-mail notifications generated. CMIS will provide each officer with their own personal actions screen, which will highlight any required actions together with the status of the action, along with any deadlines. Authorised users will have appropriate access in order to monitor progress of outstanding actions.
CMIS e-Petitions, is easy-to-use for both the citizen and the Authority, and gives Authorities a transparent and trustworthy way to manage online petitions. Once a citizen has created a petition the Authority can review it for suitability before it is published. If the petition is accepted and approved it is made available to the wider public as an active petition on the Authority’s website. People can then read the petition and, if they wish to, sign it electronically. A summary of the petition responses is recorded and displayed and, once the end date and time has passed, the final results are published. The Authority can use the e-petitions software to manage responses and follow-up actions to the petition. These actions, follow-ups and responses can also be published on the website. A comprehensive petitions search facility is included and an Authority can also process paper petitions by utilising the system. These petitions can be managed separately or amalgamated with an existing electronic petition.
The election results module will allow users to enter and display election results. Comparisons can be made with previous elections and results can be analysed by both ward and candidate.
CMIS provides web based management of meetings and events, and calendars can be generated and published. CMIS generates and distributes reminders, deadlines to appropriate members and officers, and in addition will allow diary information to be imported into the users’ calendar applications.
The consultation hub add-on for CMIS is a comprehensive consultation management portal which allows consultation information to be maintained and published. Tasks and activities can be attached to active consultations. Once the consultation has been concluded responses can be drafted and published.
CMIS incorporates an extensive alerts and notification engine to notify members, officers, and citizens of key events including documents published, deadlines and reminders. CMIS assists administrators by providing alerts as to breaches of statutory reform or authority policy e.g. if a members attendance is such that they have not attended a meeting for a period of time and they may be approaching the de-selection threshold. CMIS provides facilities for the citizen to subscribe for updates to newly published information. A member of the public or an officer can simply register their details and preferences within the application. Once the preferences have been entered and stored, CMIS will notify by e-mail, details of any information that has matched the requirements of the user. This message notifies them that new information is available and provides a direct link to the relevant item.
Documents are instantly indexed and made available so that users may see pertinent information according to their security access level. A comprehensive search facility is provided within CMIS, enabling users to define keyword, date range and other parameters, to retrieve information from the document database. All information returned by the search & retrieval tools also respects the context of the user making the enquiry, therefore all information returned will be relevant to the status of the user making the enquiry, so, in order to have exempt content returned within the search results the user making the search needs to be authorised to access the item.
CMIS allows Authorities to manage groups and committees that are comprised of members from different authorities and groups that they are associated with. This helps with joined up working and provides control and visibility of the group’s activities.
CMIS allows feedback forms to be deployed throughout the site allowing the public to submit comment and feedback. These comments and feedback are stored within the application and administrators are notified to allow the Authority to respond if appropriate, promoting two-way engagement.
CMIS can record and publish details of entries made by members into the individuals’ register of interests, changes and updates can be made at any time and the updates re-published. CMIS also records any individual, personal or prejudicial declarations of interest made at meetings, the nature of the interest and the recorded action can be recorded, stored and published.
CMIS allows the recording, management and statistical reporting of any gifts and/or hospitalities offered to and received by members and officers.
The blogging module will provide facilities for members to maintain an on-line journal, which will offer the reader an opportunity to comment and respond. Appropriate approval and moderation facilities will be incorporated.
CMIS is web based requiring no client software other than a standard web browser for operation. Public access can be made via a web browser from computers, tablets or smart phones worldwide
CMIS allows the streaming of multi-media meeting content captured by the Authority. This content will be viewable alongside other meeting information such as published agendas and reports.
Data integrity, access control, authentication and authorisation is of crucial concern to every organisation. CMIS ensures that whilst information is published in a timely manner, safeguards are in place to ensure that restricted information is only available to correctly authenticated and authorised users A multi-tiered security model, allows the Authority to ensure that information is accessible only to those users that have the relevant access privileges. This model ensures that a user can only gain access to information that has been marked as sensitive once the user has provided valid authentication details. CMIS incorporates a role based security model to allow the Authority to delegate access to administrative users according to their specific job function. For example if a user is required only to maintain member information then only the role relating to that function need be allocated to that user.
Accessibility for all users has been a key design goal for CMIS. Web Services and xml are the primary means for data integration. CMIS has been developed, where appropriate, to comply with other relevant published accessibility standards as published by the W3 council.
Astech and the CMIS Users meet regularly to discuss the CMIS application and events and activities within the sector. The user groups are perfect for discussing industry practise and are used to define the CMIS product development plan. Ongoing developments of CMIS take into account legislative requirements and customer requests.
CMIS offers flexible reporting options to allow the democratic services section to generate information on a wide variety of topics. For example, attendance reports and distribution notices can easily be produced. The management reporting module will allow users to interrogate the CMIS Database in order to create additional and ad-hoc management reports. Users will also be able to use reports contained in a comprehensive pre-configured report library.
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