Public sector messaging on Orbit
Civic notifications, emergency alerts, and service reminders (utility shutoffs, court dates, benefits renewals) all require provable reach. When the messaging stack is split across a legacy email-vendor and one SMS gateway, the audit office defends it as two systems and a resident's STOP on the blast lane does not cover the benefits reminder vendor.
The tenant-owned compliance posture
Compliance posture on Orbit is tenant-owned: your workspace attests the consent basis per flow, sets the quiet hours, keeps the shared suppression list, and holds the sender registrations. The platform enforces those settings at send time — the controls below are decisions your team owns, not platform mandates switched on for every tenant.
- Consent classes by service — Emergency alerts carry a distinct consent class from service reminders; your office declares the basis per list and the platform enforces it at send.
- Quiet hours for reminders — Court-date and benefits reminders respect the local-time rest window you configure; emergency alerts bypass on the same policy switch you mark urgent.
- Resident opt-out — One suppression list covers the reminders, alerts, and outreach lanes; a resident's STOP suppresses across every service when your policy says so.
- Records-retention — Message retention windows the workspace configures determine the audit-trail horizon for civics communications.
These controls are tenant-owned: your workspace decides the consent basis, the hours, and the list hygiene; the platform enforces your settings at send time.
The channel matrix
Every flow above runs on the same account across the five channels — the fallback chain is a setting you configure once, not a per-channel vendor contract.
- SMS — Emergency and service alerts — the floor channel for residence reach.
- WhatsApp — Two-way service intake and multilingual resources threads in communities where WhatsApp is primary.
- RCS — Branded agency reach (city services, benefits portal links) on supported handsets with SMS fallback.
- Voice — Outbound senior-callback agents, IVR self-serve benefits status, hotline recordings.
- Email — Long-form notices, public-comment packets, and formal correspondence.
The buyer-explainer for Public sector
The full narrative — what you are actually buying, in what order to evaluate it, and how the channel fallback chain degrades — is the paired buyer-explainer post: Public sector messaging, the buyer's explainer.
Evaluating Orbit for public sector?
If your procurement review needs a security questionnaire response, volume pricing, or an enterprise terms discussion for public sector traffic, talk to us.