Ci.Marshfield.WI.US 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 Heather Binder, Information Technology Analyst for the City of Marshfield.
- Ci.Marshfield.WI.US is a top-notch web portal; what has been your role in its development?
Our current web design was created by our previous webmaster, so as the current webmaster, my role is to work with The City’s Departments to keep our web current, informative, and helpful to better serve our citizens and other interested parties. Also to constantly look to ways to enhance our web portal to increase web visitors.
- Can you summarize the history of Marshfield’s web portal?
The City of Marshfield launched the web portal in the late 90’s using plain html format. Then moved to using FrontPage with different city departments creating and supporting their own pages. Currently we are bringing all the departments under one format using Content Management Services, developed in house by the previous webmaster.
- What are the overarching objectives of Marshfield’s current e-government initiatives?
One of The City of Marshfield’s objectives is to disseminate information to the citizens of our city and other interested parties in an easy manner. As an example, The City’s agendas and minutes are posted weekly along with the video recordings of the meetings. Another objective is for our citizens utilize our eservices, like online registration for our Parks and Recreation and many of our forms are available on-line.
- What is the most-used feature or service on the site?
The most-used feature on the site is the Marshfield Interactive Mapping, which allows citizens to explore the City of Marshfield without leaving the comforts of their home. They can search for locations in the city and view them several different ways, for example they can view the map in a street view or a photo view. We also have two other popular features on the site. The first is the Assessor’s Property Data which allows a citizen to search for a property in the city and review all public data related to the property including a picture. The second is The City’s agendas and minutes are posted with a link to the video of each meeting.
- In what way has harnessing Facebook allowed you to connect more directly and personally with the citizens of Marshfield?
The City of Marshfield only very recently joined the social network Facebook and our followers are 250 and counting. We are using Facebook to promote current events, job openings and important notices such as road closures. We find this a convenient way to get data pushed out to our citizens, especially the young tech savvy generation.
- What has been the biggest hurdle in developing and/or maintaining Ci.Marshfield.WI.US, and how did you overcome it?
When The City’s started having each of our departments developed there own pages, each departments’ pages ended up with their own look and feel. This made our web pages disjointed and difficult to navigate. This also made them difficult to maintain even when small changes were needed. We are currently moving all of our departments pages into our in house developed CMS so that our web portal is easier to navigate for our web visitors, but also easier to maintain for our departments.