FranklinWi.gov has been recognized by Juggle as one of the top city government websites in the state of Wisconsin. Below you'll find an interview with Mark Luberda, Director of Administration for the City of Franklin.
- FranklinWI.gov is a top notch web portal. What has been your role in its development?
I oversaw the recent restructuring of the information architecture, and I serve as the Editor-in-Chief.
- Can you summarize the history of Franklin's web portal?
The city redeveloped its website early in this decade, and then about two years ago we undertook a restructuring focusing not so much on the design as on the information architecture: how people could find certain bits of information more quickly and more readily. The look into the information architecture naturally led to some changes in the design itself, and then once we got everything migrated into the new structure we were able to go live with this most recent version just this past May.
- What are some of the overarching objectives of the current website and its e government initiatives?
What we try to achieve with our website is to get information about the city, its services, and its opportunities to three groups, which we see as the potential visitors to the site. This identification of who would be using our site was the primary thing that came out of infrastructure/architecture review. Those three groups are the residents and potential residents of the city, then visitors to the city. And then, lastly, the businesses and potential businesses, the economic development aspect of the website.
- How has citizen feedback influenced the development of Franklin's e government services?
It was actually a primary instigator in that recent information architecture review. Prior to our restructuring, we did receive a lot of comments that it was difficult to find things on our site, and it was that feedback that led us to say, "OK, what can we do to change it?" We talked to some people, thought we were just going to redesign, and then realized that the problem was not the design components but how the information was structured within it. We worked with a consultant who then helped us structure it.
We used a citizen committee from a technology commission to help us work in detail with the different structures and tiers and tabs and design components. We actually had a lot of citizen feedback, particularly when you consider our technology commission, in what the final look of the website was.
- How did you determine the kind of information that is timely and relevant to citizens, and from what sources do you get the data?
The primary thing for timely and relevant is just keeping it updated for what the different committees and boards and commissions in the city are doing. Since our office is the one that makes sure all those agendas and minutes are posted onto the website, it's clear to us what are the hot topics, so to speak. So, we can go in and make sure the news and events and the calendar are accurately reflecting what are the hot topics that someone might be coming to our website for.
- From a marketing standpoint, what are some of the strategies you've utilized to draw attention to not only the information but the services provided by your website, both on- and off-line?
The main thing that we do, as far as the website, is we emphasize it a lot in all of our other documents and publications. For example, whenever we have an opportunity to reference the website for more information, we point people there. Our newsletter that we send out five times a year to every residence and business in the community, that newsletter is always referring people to our website. A lot of our documents and forms point people to our website. We have a cable television channel that regularly has text that says, "For more information, see the Franklin website at..." We point people to that website a lot.
- In general terms, where do you see e government in the next two to three years? Specific to your site, are there any exciting new features or services currently in the works for Franklin's web portal?
The first thing that I see changing, and it's currently in the works... It's in, I guess you'd call it, beta testing right now. It's a new mapping tool. The mapping tool that was in our old website was so bad we didn't even migrate it over to our current site. We don't have one right now on our site, but we believe having one is pretty important. We have a new mapping tool that is soon to be developed, and we've set it up so it's much faster. It works with similar speed to a Google Earth kind of thing, but it's also tied to our property database so you can get owners' names and records. A very useful site, and that should be up within the next month or two, I would think.
After that, I think the next thing that we see happening is making sure the website has access to digital recordings of meetings. We have minutes, we have agendas, but the minutes don't always reflect the detail of the conversation. And the discussion and debate that goes on, so we'd like to link that up.
In our longer term future we'd like to see more e commerce capabilities incorporated, more online permits, more payment opportunities, that sort of thing.
- What else would you like to tell us about Franklin's web portal?
We very much appreciate the recognition from Juggle.com. It was quite a project with a lot of input from people to try and figure out how to make the website very usable, very intuitive. Intuitive was the target we had. We've got a lot of positive feedback that it's much easier to find things, and to get the recognition for that is something we appreciate.