e-Democracy

Features designed specifically to promote and encourage student involvement

• Elected Post Management

  Keep a 'Who's Who' that automatically stays up-to-date - with automatic access for Council or Executive members to submit motions online for meetings.

  Any elected posts held by members are shown on their profiles, helping to keep your members in touch with their reps. The system is time-aware, so previous posts are archived on people's profiles, and anyone who's been elected, but whose term of office hasn't yet started can be identified as well. When terms roll over you can just sit back and watch the site automatically update.

• Diaries for Elected Executives

  All elected executives (representatives with a specific role) can keep an online diary, or weblog, which is published on the site.

  The diary is tied to a specific post, rather than an individual person, and also allows them to keep certain entries private, which can greatly assist handover when future occupants of that post can look back over old diaries to see what their predecessors were doing and thinking.

• Election Management

  As well as allowing for Election results, turnout figures and vote tallies to be archived, the system also provides an Election editor, which publicises the positions up for grabs.

  You can add full candidate lists, with online manifestos. These are then presented to your members in a simple to read format designed to make it easy to compare the candidates for any particular post.

  To top it off, on Election night the system allows you to enter the results as they come in, working out the winners and displaying the results in real-time.

  At the present time, Gumbo's election system can cope with First Past the Post, Single Transferrable Vote, and Alternative Vote. But if your union uses a different electoral system, as with everything else in Gumbo, we can customise the site to suit your needs.

• Online Archiving of Meeting Minutes

  Minutes can be generated in PDF or Microsoft Word format, and uploaded to the website where they are archived and made available to registered student members through a secure download mechanism to limit unauthorised distribution.

  With Gumbo, you can even put up minutes on the website before they've been approved at the next meeting. Until that happens, they'll only be available to authorised members of your Executive team - allowing them to review them and come prepared.

• Issues Database

  Any student can raise an issue, this system allows you to publish your Association's position on it, and that of the University (if applicable). You can also keep a diary of what's been done to address this particular issue, link to more resources (including News articles, Campaigns and forum topics), and the feature includes automatic polling, allowing students to vote on how important they feel the issue is to them. Their vote is remembered, allowing them to change it at any point in the future as circumstances change, and meaning that you can always get to up-to-date feedback on Issues.

Next: Interactive Features