As the first phase of our website redesign project finally gets underway, I wanted to briefly reiterate some of my personal priorities for the City's new website, which I've expressed on numerous occasions over the past several years.
PAYMENT CENTER: Austin citizens should be able to pay City and utility bills online via a single payment center. Payments that are not currently web-enabled - for example, various development-related fees and fines - should be brought online as soon as possible on a prioritized basis, with the ultimate goal of web-enabling all payments.
FINANCIAL TRANSPARENCY: I've previously referred to this as "putting the City's checkbook online." Austin citizens should be able to easily track all City revenues and spending on a basis that is as close to real-time as we can reasonably get. A good model for spending transparency on City contracts is Houston's "E-Catalog" product.
SOCIAL MEDIA & WEB TOOLS: While I'm pleased with the City's recent utilization of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, our relaunched website should make these social media tools even more central to our communications strategy. I would also like to see the new website make use of web-based tools like Google Maps and Google Earth.
DATA PORTAL: Washington DC, New York City, Boston, Vancouver and other cities have recently launched initiatives to make a broad range of raw data generated by City departments available to the public online, and to encourage citizens to make creative use of the data. I know our staff has taken some initial steps in this direction; I hope we can get a data portal project launched before, or in conjunction with, our new website.
CONTACTS DIRECTORY: Austin citizens with questions or concerns should be able to more easily locate the appropriate City department and staff person to assist them. The current pull-down "services" menu on our home page and the current FAQ page are both serviceable, but not sufficiently comprehensive, in my view.
LANGUAGES: Finally, our website should offer more content in other languages. Currently our site only offers Spanish-language content, but the Census Bureau estimates that over 100 languages are spoken in Austin. Over time, our goal should be to provide content in Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, German, French, Korean, Hindi, and Arabic, at a minimum.
Thanks for the hard work that's already been done to improve our current site and to move the redesign forward, and thanks in advance for the work that remains to be done to bring these efforts to fruition. Don't hesitate to contact me with questions or concerns.
There's a lot of good stuff in there. There's not excuse for not being able to pay more city bills online and efficiently in this day and age. And just being able to put more data out there is a huge step forward. If you want to talk about some good government websites, check out Utah.gov. Or maybe the city could offer a phone application to report road and neighborhood problems directly to city departments like they do in Boston.
