All that hopey, changey stuff? It's actually working out quite nicely for GovDelivery.
The fast-growing St. Paul company helps government agencies manage digital communications, everything from e-mail newsletters to social media feeds.
President Obama signed an
Open Government Initiative shortly after taking office that calls on federal agencies to be more participatory and transparent in the way they do business. The order has resulted in a spike in demand for the kind of
services that
GovDelivery provides.
Meanwhile, many state and local governments are facing budget cuts and looking for ways to communicate more efficiently with their constituents.
"There's a lot going on in the public sector market," says GovDelivery founder/CEO Scott Burns. "There's a lot of pressure to communicate what's going on and a lot of pressure to be more efficient and more effective."
GovDelivery recently advertised 14 new positions to keep up with growing demand for its services, which are used to send out more than 10 million messages a day. The company has about 75 employees.
The company was founded in 1999 with an emphasis on local government. It launched a beta version of its e-mail subscription service for the city of St. Paul in 2000. If you've ever signed-up to receive snow emergency alerts in St. Paul, then you've used a GovDelivery service.
The company's clients now include the FBI, the National Guard and U.S. Health & Human Services, which used GovDelivery to get the word out about H1N1 flu.
"We're getting out information on H1N1. We're getting out information on cyber crime. We're getting out information on your local park hours," says Burns. "This is stuff that needs to get into people's hands and that makes their lives better."
Source: Scott Burns, GovDelivery
Writer:
Dan Haugen