County commissioners research giving Whitley County Government website a facelift
By Jennifer Zartman Romano
In hopes of sprucing up the county’s online image, the Whitley County Commissioners heard a presentation from a Fort Wayne design firm Tuesday afternoon.
Mindy Hambrick, president of Design Factore, located on Barr Street in Fort Wayne, discussed options for the county to update their current internet-based offerings and handed out proposal packets to each of the Whitley County commissioners.
“We’ve tried to distill it down to a phase one because a website can be a really big project,” Hambrick said. “We’ve isolated some core responsibilities of the website.”
Hambrick explained the steps to recreating the county government website. The initial startup for the project would cost $3900.
“We’d like the 25 cent proposal,” said commissioner Tom Rethlake smiling.
Although the firm has not created a county government website before, Hambrick cited other recent projects including the company’s role as a subcontractor in working with the City of Kendallville’s website and said she had researched other local government websites.
Hambrick recommended including easy to navigate service directories, email contact for constituents to reach local leaders, a printable citizen’s guide to services packet, quick links, online polls and surveys, news and events, public information and a frequently asked questions section.
With such information available online, Hambrick said it provides a real service to residents. “It can reduce administrative overhead for people calling to ask the same questions,” she said.
Currently, the county’s website is hosted through Whitleynet. The Whitley County Sheriff’s Department, GIS and Community Corrections already have their own independent websites and a decision would have to be made regarding including those sites in a county-wide government website. “This way, it’s a legitimate portal into those websites,” Hambrick said.
Hambrick said the proposed website would be set up on a content management framework and that a person or persons within local government would need to be responsible for updating the site. Hambrick said her company could update the site if needed for $80 an hour, but recommended the county purchase prepaid maintenance blocks for site updating and maintenance needs and receive a 30% discount.
Hambrick estimated that the update process would typically take 24-48 hours.
Rethlake said that after talking with local residents, he’d like the website to be able to offer additional services through the website – such as paying speeding tickets online.
Hambrick said services such as online payment of parking tickets or property taxes would be included in a phase two of the website construction
“Those are phase two features,” Hambrick said and would not be covered in the initial $3900 startup. Hambrick said until they were able to determine a way of integrating a new website with old ones, she would not be fully aware of needs and cost concerns.
“It can get very expensive,” she said.
The commissioners agreed to take the matter under advisement.