City of San Jose Uses Konveio to Power Inclusive Engagement for Climate Smart 2025 Update

Overview

As part of its commitment to sustainability and inclusive governance, the City of San José launched an update to its Climate Smart Plan, a comprehensive strategy to meet ambitious climate action goals. For the 2025 update, the City turned to Konveio to host the public comment process, providing a more accessible, efficient, and transparent engagement experience for residents.

Challenge

Public engagement historically has been a challenge in San José, especially when attempting to reach a broad cross-section of residents, including those less likely to attend in-person meetings or provide feedback via traditional methods. With limited time to translate full documents or manually collect and respond to individual email comments, the City needed a streamlined, digital-first solution. The goal was to foster deeper public participation while making it easier to analyze and respond to feedback.

Solution

San José integrated Konveio into its outreach strategy for the Climate Smart Plan Update. Two stakeholder engagement webinars introduced the revised plan and guided attendees through the commenting process on Konveio. The platform allowed the public to review the draft document in full and leave contextual comments directly on specific sections.

To expand access, the City offered users the choice to use Google translate on the webpage and shared the Konveio link via multiple channels: a climate-specific email list, City Council communications, a technical working group, and their broader stakeholder network.

The in-document commenting system enabled residents to participate more naturally by commenting as they read, removing the friction of drafting emails or filling out separate forms. San José staff were able to respond directly on the platform, and comments were visible to the public, increasing transparency.

Impact

• Broader Reach, Higher Volume: The simplified commenting process led to significantly more public feedback than previous planning efforts.
  
  
• Inclusive & Equitable Access: Built-in translation and real-time commenting helped reach audiences previously underrepresented in civic discussions.
  
  
• Time-Saving Engagement: Staff exported comment data to draft responses and then pasted them back into the platform,which is an intuitive and efficient way to close the feedback loop and make sure participants felt their voices were heard.
  
  
• Informed Revisions: Commenters helped shape the final Climate Smart Plan, with feedback integrated into the updated draft submitted to City Council.
  
  
• Public Accountability: With all comments visible, staff felt they had a reliable tool and organized method to  provide detailed, thoughtful responses.
  
  

Reflections & Feedback

Staff appreciated the ability to download a report showing comments by page, making it easier to track and respond. They also used Konveio’s AI-driven analytics to evaluate comment tone and themes, which surfaced both supportive sentiments and areas of concern. Team members expressed that Konveio had improved the quality and transparency of engagement. One noted, “It was more work because we got more comments, but that’s the kind of work we want to do.”

Next Steps

With the updated Climate Smart Plan submitted for Planning Commission and City Council approval, San José is already applying lessons learned to other planning projects. The City’s Climate Adaptation and Resilience Plan has also adopted Konveio for public input, evidence that the platform’s impact is expanding across departments.