How the Kansas County Clerks and Elections Officials Association ditched listserv chaos to build institutional knowledge

The big picture

• The Kansas County Clerks and Election Officials Association (KCCEOA) represents 109 member offices across all 105 counties in Kansas, including county clerks who manage elections, tax rolls, and other records.
• For years, the association relied on an email list serve that posed two problems: 1) It generated massive email overload — simple questions produced 105 "reply-all" responses and 2) When elected clerks left office, their email archives disappeared, leaving new clerks without access to institutional knowledge.
• KCCEOA implemented Civic Roundtable to create a searchable, organized community that preserves knowledge across staff transitions.

Hitting the coordination limits of listservs

The Kansas County Clerks and Election Officials Association had a communication tool that worked — until it didn't. For years, KCCEOA's 105 county clerks relied on a listserv to stay connected across the state. But what started as a simple solution had evolved into a daily source of frustration.

The listserv served its purpose. We could communicate," says Rick Piepho, Harvey County Clerk and Chairman of KCCEOA's Elections Committee. "But it was getting cumbersome.”

A simple question like "Are you closed for Columbus Day?" would trigger 105 reply-all responses. Clerks' inboxes would fill with simple messages of acknowledgment that added noise without adding value.

And perhaps most critically, when elected officials left office, their entire email history left with them.

"A new clerk coming on would not have access to any of that history," Piepho explains. "The prior clerk may have had all those emails in their history, but a new clerk had nothing."

For an association where elected officials regularly rotate out of office, this loss of institutional knowledge was becoming untenable.

From temporary to institutional knowledge 

The light bulb moment came at an Election Assistance Commission conference, when, amidst frustrations with listservs, Piepho saw a Roundtable presentation.

"The whole time, all I could think about was how it would help our association,’" Piepho said.

KCCEOA implemented Civic Roundtable to replace their noisy listserv with a software platform built for government operations, organizing and sequencing information and resources, making them easily searchable, and preserving knowledge for future association members — whether that knowledge lives in documents, chats, or elsewhere. 

In Roundtable, KCCEOA found a solution that had everything the listserv lacked: Threaded discussions that eliminated reply-all chaos, searchable archives that preserved institutional knowledge, and controlled membership that ensured only verified county staff had access.

“Roundtable represents a permanent repository of knowledge for us,” Piepho said. Today, new clerks can instantly access years of discussions about topics like provisional ballots, candidate filing deadlines, tax roll procedures — and every other question that came up in the regular course of county clerk work.

Fewer emails, faster information — greater mission impact

The shift was immediate and dramatic. Email volume plummeted as members moved their questions to Roundtable. 

"Other than direct communications, rarely is there anything put out there as a global question in email," Piepho says. 

Piepho told us that he keeps Roundtable open constantly. "I can read the short synopsis and say, 'Is that something I want to look at, see if other people are commenting?' Sometimes it'll just be an HR question and I say to myself, okay, that's good that somebody posted something, but I'm not gonna go respond to it because community members can help answer most questions."

Even more valuable is the emerging culture of self-service knowledge. Each post in KCCEOA’s secure workspace gets over 100 views on average, and 3-4 responses. The space centralizes hundreds of uploaded resources, with thousands of downloads by the members. And the engagement is instantly surfaced in Roundtable's analytics view. Members are increasingly searching for answers before posting questions — and when they do respond to others, they're linking to previous discussions rather than re-typing the same answers. “That's the beauty of having the archive of all those conversations and the searchability of Roundtable," Piepho continued. 

For KCCEOA, Piepho explained, the real victory is solving the institutional knowledge problem that had plagued the association for years. Reduced email volume and better organizations are extra benefits, he told us — benefits he’s delighted by. 

“The value of Roundtable is definite and conclusive for our members,” he said.