I'm trying to make sense of this and genuinely asking if I’m missing something. So I saw this article from The Kingston Whig-Standard about Kingston winning a national award for its stadium consultation process:
https://www.thewhig.com/news/kingston-earns-national-award-for-stadium-consultation-process-despite-controversy
On the surface, sounds great. But then I started digging a bit more.
The award is from Granicus’s Digital Government Awards:
https://granicus.com/digital-awards/
A few things that stood out:
- The award is specifically for the consultation/engagement process around the proposed stadium (which has been pretty controversial locally).
- Granicus is a company that provides digital engagement tools and services to municipalities.
- From what I can tell, Kingston uses Granicus tools for engagement (or at least similar platforms tied to them).
- The awards appear to be nomination-based (i.e., you submit your own project).
- Kingston then wins an award for that same engagement process.
So… am I understanding this right?
It looks like: A city wins an award for a project → from a company that sells engagement services → potentially tied to the same type of work → and the city (or someone on its behalf) nominates the project.
To be clear: I’m not saying this is wrong or unethical. Lots of industries have vendor-driven awards.
But it does raise a few questions for me:
- Is this basically an industry/vendor award rather than an independent “national” recognition?
- How common is it for municipalities to nominate themselves for these?
- Are there any independent judging criteria, or is this more of a marketing/recognition program?
- Does this actually reflect public sentiment locally, given the controversy around the project?
Again, not trying to be cynical; just trying to understand whether this is a meaningful external validation or more of an “inside baseball” award.
Curious if anyone here has experience with these types of awards (municipal, tech vendor, etc.) or can add context.