I was poking around the city's website today to try to get a sense of which top level staff were kept on from the previous administration (to update our own "appointments page") and I realized how ridiculously difficult it must be for whoever is in charge of that site to create something that's useful, coherent and well-organized.
This isn't a dig at the Mayor's Office of Information Services. It's just a thought about how difficult it must be to create a website that has to be so many things to so many different people. For business and residents, the website should exist to provide an easy way for them to get certain city services or find out where to get them. For the city, it serves as a promotional tool that spreads the word about new programs or initiatives. For those of us in the media, sometimes all we want is to find out who's who (and who's doing what job).
To complicate matters, the city government itself is HUGE. Just hit the drop down menu on the top left that says "Select a City Department" and you get 85 choices, many of which seem to stretch the definition of "City Department." Basically, rather than make things simpler, the website falls into the trap of simply reflecting the complexity of city government and the difficulty with which one has to navigate it.
So we probably shouldn't expect a massive overhaul of the city's website within the first several weeks of the new administration. The only real change will come when the actual system represented by the website is radically reorganized.
That said, don't expect this blog to do some sort of "Web Watch" in which we nitpick the pages and parts of the site that are out of date, non functional or just plain confusing. Heck, plenty of folks can do that for The Next Mayor website anyway. But we will continue to be vigilant about and report on the structural changes that make city government work better.
(And for anyone who's wondering when we'll update that "Appointments Page," the Nutter folks assure us that they'll be sending out a comprehensive list of all of the senior level staff. As soon as we get it, we'll fill in all of the blanks.)
Comments (2)
I've always thought that one thing Nutter could do is invite Google to come and redo the city's website. How cool would that be?
Think about it for a second. A good website could not only be a tool for ordinary citizens. It could also be used by city officials to understand what's happening in the city. If 10 people clustered closely in one neighborhood search "Need stop sign" or "How do I get a stop sign put up?".....
Posted by Ben Waxman | January 9, 2008 6:03 PM
My suggestion to save time and money for our city is to fire all the thieves entrenched in various supervisory and managerial positions at L & I. That will save space and money and insure ethics in city government.
Watch out L & I the game is over!!!!!
Posted by Anonymous | January 9, 2008 11:00 PM