From the Post-Tribune yesterday, how much should your local town or city in Indiana put online? How user friendly should that information be? Multi-media?
Towns improving Web presence
Want to become an Internet star? Make a video of your cat playing the piano and upload it to YouTube?
How about tell everyone the innermost secrets of your life? Create a Facebook account?
how they rate
A.J. Bytnar, an Indiana University Northwest public affairs graduate student, critiqued eight local government Web sites. Bytnar, who works for Hobart, declined to review Hobart's Web site. Here's his take:
PORTAGE -- This one got the best ranking from Bytnar, who said it made a big turn around during its redesign.
VALPARAISO -- Effective, but it throws a lot at you, he said. Bytnar added that it is a great site for information.
PORTER COUNTY -- Not bad, but no anchor on the main page to catch your attention.
LAKE COUNTY -- Boring to look at, but "it's a very powerful Web site," Bytnar said. He pointed out how you can access an online Geographic Information System on the surveyor's site, which is a great tool for mapping, he said.
HIGHLAND -- His main problem with this Web site was how the main item on the front page was links to videos for tourism. Bytnar said tourism shouldn't be the main focus. He also said that the videos started immediately, which could be a problem for people with a slow Internet connection.
MERRILLVILLE -- The Web site was "sparse," he said.
CROWN POINT -- A little busy but gave a nice feel for the community's character, Bytnar said. He also liked that the site included pictures of employees.
SCHERERVILLE -- Poor navigation. Arrow buttons are at the bottom of the page instead of the top, where they are easily accessible, Bytnar said.
GARY -- Bytnar said he was most disappointed in Gary's Web site, saying for a city of its size, the site should offer more for interaction and opportunities for residents. He also said that about 60 percent of the links for the departments didn't work.
GARY PUBLIC LIBRARY -- When Post-Tribune staffers went to the library's Web site, numerous links on the front page failed. However, Bytnar had more success and was able to click on all of them.
The Internet has become everyone's domain, easy to use and easy to look like you're a pro.
But then there are the holdouts, Web sites run by people who just don't seem to realize how easy it is join the 21st century.
Those would be the government Web sites.
Known for their listless, bureaucratic design, government Web sites have developed a reputation for being the redheaded stepchildren of the Internet.
Amazon.com they are not.
Northwest Indiana government Web sites often follow the same pattern. Some are filled with dated information, while others lack contact information, among common problems.
But there's hope. Several communities have recently started to make changes, and as one designer says, the basics are there.
"I think they all have a good start," said A.J. Bytnar, a graduate student at Indiana University Northwest and planner for Hobart.
Bytnar and classmates last semester took a class with Karen Evans in public management, looking at government Web sites.
Bytnar said most area government Web sites -- in both Porter and Lake counties -- do what they set out to do. Porter County Web sites lead the way, he said, with slightly better aesthetics. Bytnar noted many Lake County Web sites look like they use similar templates.
But looks aren't everything. Bytnar gave high marks to Lake County's and Valparaiso's Web sites for the information they provide, even if they are a little boring visually.
Evans agreed, saying a government Web site's priority should be getting information to residents. If a site is only pretty, it still fails, she said.
"It's like sewing lace on burlap if the site itself isn't good," she said.
The more residents can make use of the Web sites, the better they are, Evans said. She isn't familiar with most of the Northwest Indiana government sites, but from what she hears from students, most are too complex to use, yet lack sophistication.
Does any community do better? She points to the Blacksburg, W.Va., site, which looks a bit spartan but lets residents do just about anything, from watching live videos of city council meetings to paying their taxes online.
Northwest Indiana Web sites can improve by adding one simple thing -- online payments, Bytnar said. Some here, such as Valparaiso, offer utility bill payments online, but most lack this service, he said.
Bytnar pointed out that it took just a few minutes for his rugby club to set up a PayPal account to sell their gear.
"If a small club of 30 guys can do that," then so can cities with thousands of people, Bytnar said.
Indianapolis based E-Gov Strategies recently redesigned the Portage Web site, which will introduce online payments soon, Clerk-Treasurer Donna Pappas said. Officials are still collecting data on the fees, but residents will mostly likely be able to pay fees and buy permits normally handled by Pappas' office, the parks department and the marina, she said.
Gary officials told the Distressed Unit Appeals Board on Wednesday they too are looking at allowing businesses to pay fees online.
Web sites can even help cash-strapped communities save money. April Strano, a Web consultant for E-Gov Strategies, said the town of Fishers allows people to file police reports online, which saved $4,500 a year, enough to pay for the Web site.
"When money gets tight, everyone needs to think that way," she said.
How much should it cost?
The question is, does upgrading a municipal Web site make financial sense? Strano said there's no average price for Web sites because so much can vary. And then there's the decision on whether to do it in-house or to contract out the site development and management.
Finding out how much local governments spend on their site can be hard, too, because the costs often get listed under larger projects.
In Crown Point, for instance, the city spends about $1,000 a year to host the Web site on server space, but updating and maintaining it falls to Adam Graper, the city's director of media relations and IT. Graper said work on the Web site probably takes 15 percent of his time on the job.
Highland, however, contracts with a company to do its IT work, and the Web site portion of that costs about $4,500 a year, including hosting for the city's internal e-mail.
Portage spent $10,539 on its Web site in 2009, Pappas said, although that includes costs for the redesign. Annual maintenance costs about $4,600, she said.
No matter what it costs, the site's useless if users can't find any the services they need. Strano said organization is a key factor for any Web site, and officials need to make it easy for people to find what they're looking for.
She suggested including a search box. "It sounds like a funny thing but people don't always think about that," she said.
Bytnar said of the local Web sites he looked at, the best ones had specific pages for departments that said what each department does and gave contact information.
That's one knock against Gary's Web site, Bytnar said. More than half the departments shown on the site have information on how to call employees or even a list of what they do.
That doesn't help residents, which he considers the most important thing a government Web site can do.
"I don't think cities will ever be as effective as Yahoo," Bytnar said. "I think what a lot of city Web sites should do is inform."
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