FY27 - Streamlining News Aggregation_

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IT Governance Business Case Streamlining News Aggregation

Communications

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Background The City of Durham's Communications Department is responsible for monitoring national, state, and local media coverage related to the City's municipal government. This includes tracking news stories across online publications. In addition to traditional media, the department also monitors social media platforms to capture community sentiment and emerging issues.

This ongoing monitoring effort supports the City’s goal of maintaining transparency, fostering community trust, and enabling timely communication responses.

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Current Business Problem The Communications Director currently spends extensive time manually searching for relevant national, state, and local news, reviewing sources, organizing updates, and distributing them via email to the City Manager’s executive team and department directors.

This daily effort, including weekends and holidays, is highly time-consuming and still results in coverage gaps, missed updates, and delayed responses, particularly for video and radio content and untagged social media posts.

As a result, the department lacks a comprehensive, real-time understanding of emerging news and trends. This limits its ability to advise leadership strategically and respond quickly when issues arise.

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Current Pain Points • Manual and labor-intensive news aggregation process • Inefficient use of resources • Incomplete news coverage • Lack of video and radio coverage • Delayed information flow

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Future State Benefits • Automated news aggregation • Increased operational efficiency • Comprehensive news coverage • Social media, video, and radio coverage • Real-time insights

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Strategic Alignment

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Analysis & Recommended Solution

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Solution Analysis Solution Analysis: The business problem is best solved with a news aggregation tool to automatically collect, filter, and organize digital content from multiple sources into a single, personalized feed. This will eliminate hours of manual research each week from the Communications Director current workload.

Market Analysis: During market research, three vendors all offered comparable capabilities to solve the existing business problem: Cision, Meltwater, and NewsWhip.

These three solutions offer monitoring and intelligence capabilities to aggregate news coverage, online conversations, and emerging trends from traditional media, digital publications, and social media in real time.

Based on current and anticipated requirements, TS recommends moving forward with a formal Request for Proposals (RFP) to assess vendor capabilities and select a solution that best aligns with strategic objectives, budget considerations, and long-term needs of the city of Durham.​

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Recommended Solution: Implement a News Aggregation Tool

Issue an RFP to identify an aggregator-based solution that provides comprehensive news coverage, email digests, robust category filtering, and the ability to create custom feeds.

Description

Pros

• Automated news aggregation • Increased operational efficiency • Comprehensive City of Durham news coverage • Social media, video, and radio coverage

Cons

•

N/A

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TS Architecture Review The identified solution will undergo the standard Architecture Review once a vendor is selected.

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Cybersecurity Review The identified solution will undergo the standard Cybersecurity Review once a vendor is selected.

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Recommended Solution - Project Financial Estimate COST ESTIMATES

FUNDING

Implementation Costs (Hours)

Post Implementation Run Costs (Hours)/ KTLO

Internal TS Department:

281 Hours

25 hours

Business Analysis

Description

Departmental Funding Amount:

$0

Labor $ (Hours) Funding Requested (Y/N):

Yes

8 hours

Internal Labor New FTE – Year 1 Costs

$0

Architecture Office

10 hours

Project One Time Costs (External)

$25,000

Cybersecurity

3 hours

*Total Project Funding Requested for Year 1

$25,000

Project Management

200 hours

Total Project Funding Requested for Year 2+

$25,000

Communications

60 hours

25 hours

Non-Labor $ Software

$25,000

$25,000

* Total Project Funding Requested Year 1 includes New FTE Labor, External Labor and Non-Labor

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Risk Identification Description of Risk

Risk Impact (High/Medium/Low)

Vendor performance

Low

Y

N

Cyber Security

Low

Y

N

Project Team Turnover

Low

Y

N

Poor Execution

Low

Y

N

Mitigated (Y/N) Contingency(Y/N)

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Mitigation Risk (Costs) •

N/A

Contingency Risk (Costs) •

N/A

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Our Ask We are asking the IT Governance Steering Committee to approve and score the business case to streamline news aggregation for Communications. If approved, the business case will be scored, ranked, and submitted to the City Manager for final approval.