Peachtree-City.org has been recognized by Juggle as one of the top city government websites in the state of Georgia. Below you'll find an interview with Matthew Robinson, Systems Administrator for the City of Peachtree City.
- Peachtree-City.org is a top-notch web portal; what has been your role in its development?
Peachtree City’s web portal was developed through the work of a team of City staff members and CivicPlus, a government-focused content management system provider out of Kansas. As Systems Administrator, my role is to assist in developing the navigational strategies and in getting department buy-in. I provide training and followup assistance to our departments in the use of the system, and I also work with the CivicPlus technical support staff to resolve issues we experience. And, when needed, I update content, too.
In her role as the Public Information Officer, Betsy Tyler states, “I add a lot of the content to the main page, the news flashes (which automatically feed to our Twitter account), the events calendar, and the FAQ section, and I maintain the more static information on the other Administrative Services pages (City Hall, licensing, municipal court, HR, etc.). I try to achieve a level of cohesion between varying departments and pick the most important topics to highlight in a given week (whether that is a zoning request or an arts & crafts festival). I also try to ensure that the page templates are being followed by the other department representatives who update their own content. If a department wants or needs something new, Matt and I together evaluate it to make sure it meets the overall goals of the site in both content and appearance.”
We also want to acknowledge the rest of the team that keeps the website up to date within each of the departments. Each department has a key contact who is responsible for updating their section of the website. Of special note is the work that Tony Bernard in the City’s planning department does to keep their section one of the most information-packed of the entire site. Other website team members include Ashley Alonso and Cajen Rhodes for Parks and Recreation, Mike Rogers for Public Works, our GIS specialist Tony Whitley for our mapping portal, Jill Prouty for our City library, and Captain Rosanna Dove, Lieutenant Mark Brown, Battalion Commander Ron Mundy, Tim Maret and Rosemary Griffin for our Public Safety pages. We decentralize as much of the updating as we can so that the site remains fresh in terms of content, while using a CMS like CivicPlus allows us to keep our design consistent throughout.
- Can you summarize the history of Peachtree City's web portal?
Peachtree City has had a presence on the WWW since 1995, first by partnering with a local technology company, then through a period of internal development and maintenance. We have been through at least three redesigns (two of them since Robinson began with the City in I.T. in 1999). The City focused on enhancing its marketing and created a new logo and slogan in late 2003. As an offshoot of this marketing enhancement, staff began a process to revamp the website in 2004 to more effectively help citizens get the information they were looking for in as many ways as possible. In 2006 we completely revamped our site (navigationally and aesthetically) through a committee of City staff, commission and authority assistance and citizen involvement with the assistance of CivicPlus.
- What are the overarching objectives of Peachtree City's current e-government initiatives?
We have the lofty goal of what I called being the “Yahoo of Peachtree City” – a single source to get whatever information you are looking for on our community, not just in government, but community information as well
Peachtree City has been fortunate in its development as a city; its growth was guided by a single developer for much of its history, and that developer was able to market the City’s services and amenities very well. Since that company has moved on to other objectives, the City government started looking at how to continue to ensure that citizens and prospective citizens and businesses could get timely, accurate information about the City and to market the City as a great place to, as our slogan says, “plan to stay”.
Our mission statement for the website is “is to provide a unified, progressive and professional gateway for target audiences to request information and interaction with the City's agencies to generate increased satisfaction and confidence in them.” We had many different departments within the City out on their own in terms of look and feel of their sections of the site, with the content they were developing. We also had a variety of our volunteer commissions and authorities with very little web presence at all. We wanted to bring all of these elements together, to the best of our abilities, and present a single source to get information about Peachtree City. While it’s still an ongoing challenge (what online project isn’t?), we think we’re starting to build that recognition that people can get what they’re looking for on our site.
- From a marketing standpoint, what are some of the strategies that you have utilized to draw attention to the information and services provided by Peachtree-City.org, both on- and off-line?
The biggest thing we have been able to do to market our website is to keep the content on the site up-to-date and accurate. By having information out on the site, we’ve been able to make our site dependable, which is the best marketing I think we can do – people will tell others about your website if you have the information folks are looking for on it.
Additionally, the City publishes a small quarterly newsletter highlighting important issues in the City. The distribution of this to our residents emphasizes the web in finding details and information stemming from the newsletter’s topics. This has spawned a weekly subscription email that highlights issues and events and links back to the web page (calendar, news flashes, or other pages) for more detail.
We developed a series of informational videos in the past couple of years that play on our Community cable channel all with the hook to “visit the website” on each particular topic.
We offer onsite training sessions to residents called “PTC 101”, where we use our website in each class to show residents how to access all the information we make available. We are also holding workshops with realtors and homeowners’ associations this year to increase that push.
One of our biggest successes is our email newsletter; we send out a weekly email of highlighted topics and events to anyone who wants to subscribe, and we’ve noticed a good response on the site after an article has appeared in the email newsletter.
We have our website on our stationery, and for specific events, we use other media in the area to draw interest to our website (posters, press releases, etc.). An additional goal is to add the web address on the back of all City vehicles.
- How has citizen feedback influenced the development of Peachtree City's e-government services?
When the citizens speak, we try to listen. In addition to the traditional ways to get input (phone, email, walk-in traffic to our facilities), we use SurveyMonkey as a fantastic tool to gage citizen’s opinions on a variety of topics. Annually, we send out a survey (available both online and offline) to get feedback on how we’re providing information.
While we’re still not fully where we want to be in terms of being citizens’ first place to get information, we’re finding that the trends are improving as we put even more information online. We’re now streaming our council meetings online, and we’ve found that service to be of value for citizens who cannot attend meetings or want to further research topics of interest. Our most frustrating element is we don’t get a great deal of feedback from our citizens on our website – but we do on a lot of other topics... I hope that means they’re able to find things well on our site. We know we’re not perfect, but we do try to listen an integrate citizen suggestions into our site as we can.
- What is the most-used feature or service on the site?
The main page of the web site has by far the most visits (over 80%), but the modules on the page make the content ever-changing and provides a springboard to many other pages that are contained in the Civic Plus content management system or are integrated and maintained on a separate City site. The main page features a news-flash section that is updated weekly, as well as rotating “flash” slides that link to more detailed content, a section on Frequently Asked Questions, a preview of the Events Calendar, and links to several other online services. The Police, Library, and Parks and Recreation Pages also receive trackable numbers of visits regularly, along with the jobs posting page. Popularity of a given page or section also varies depending on current “hot issues” in the public or being promoted (such as the annual resident survey, a major rezoning or annexation request that is going through the planning process, etc.).
The main page is also one of the most used by staff, whether posting new information to the site or researching information for citizens on the phone or who have contacted the City via email.
Uniquely, one of our most popular features based on the comments and feedback we get is our online listing of yard and garage sales. During the warmer months, we can have several dozen yard sales taking place on any given weekend. As we require citizens to purchase signs through the City in order to keep them uniform in appearance, we provide the benefit of posting their sales online, along with a Mapquest map of their location. We’ve heard of quite a few shoppers using our lists as their “shopper’s guides” for hidden treasures!
- How many people currently use your news subscription service, and how does this provide citizens with greater access to government information?
We have approximately 6,500 subscribers to our weekly email updates. Betsy Tyler adds, "it provides those who are interested with direct contact with a member of City staff – they can hit reply, ask a question about something in the newsletter or a completely unrelated matter, and I respond with the answer or the contact for the correct person/department. It also reinforces visits to the City web site by providing links, visually showing the redirects whenever possible, so people can continue to learn to navigate through the amount of information on our site."
- In what way has harnessing Twitter allowed you to connect more directly and personally with the citizens of Peachtree City?
Our use of Twitter is still, essentially, in its infancy – we currently promote events and special announcements, but the direct viewership (number of followers) is still very small compared to the newsletter. At this time, a more useful function is following what is being said on Twitter about Peachtree City, and monitoring what type of messages are getting re-tweeted. Of course, we will respond directly to citizens who contact us through Twitter, but email contact remains the primary method for citizen questions/complaints/comments.
- In developing Peachtree City's website, what were some of the obstacles that had to be overcome? How did you surpass them?
One of our biggest obstacles is to find the best way to help citizens find what they’re looking for. We know that many people search in different ways. By having top navigation using mouseovers, side navigation menus within pages, a site map and search engine, we’re trying to serve as many of those goals as we can. I don’t know if we’ve necessarily overcome them yet (we still get some feedback that some things are hard to find on the site), so we now try to use the weekly emails to highlight the big topics. We also have started using redirects to try to make giving out a website on a topic or hot button issue easier.
- Where do you see e-government heading in the next 2-3 years? Are there any exciting new features or services currently in the works for Peachtree City's web portal?
E-government is the realization of having to do more with less in government. I want to see us build a site that makes the trip to City Hall or other departments as needless as possible by offering more live services and transaction services online. We’ve been playing with a live operator service, and we’re in the beginning stages of reviewing all of our operations to determine which parts of the things we do can translate well online, what can be consolidated into more integrated systems, etc. We know that we won’t be able to do everything online, but if we can find ways to give the citizens access to the services they want wherever they are, whenever they want them, I think we’ll be doing well. We’re starting to utilize GovQA (an online CRM for government) and will be expanding that to enhance our “online services” section of our site.
We’ve also spent a good deal of time developing an excellent mapping section (maps.peachtree-city.org) using open source tools, and I can see us bringing more of that to the forefront on our site as we can, both as a tool for citizens and one for staff.
- What else that you would like to tell us about Peachtree-City.org?
We’re excited to be recognized as having a site that people can use to find out what’s going on in town, find a place to eat, shop or stay, and get the services you need from local government. We hope that citizens find value in our website, and we definitely appreciate and welcome all feedback – good and bad. If we can change something to make the experience online better, let us know and we’ll try to bring it to reality.