County Plans Web Site Improvement

By Jane DeGeorge

Published: March 6, 2008

Officials plan to bring some “depth” to Madison County government’s Web site. The county has hired a Web developer to make the site user-friendly for both staff and county residents.

Madison County Board of Supervisors member Bob Miller, who currently maintains the site, has been considering improvements for a while, he said. Currently, the Web site features contact information for each government department and related documents, although some are out of date.

Officials have hired a freelance Web site developer, who is also a member of the county’s EMS squad, to design a new framework for its site, a project Miller is not qualified to do, he said.

Once the revamp is complete, staff members from each county department should be able to manage their own sections of the county’s on-line home page. At the moment, Miller is in charge of the entire site, which has led to the lack of updated Web site offerings, he said.

The types of information officials intend to make readily available include, updated budget documents, public meeting minutes and building permit application forms.

“More documents and more information will be available from home 24/7,” Miller said. “Right now people have to come down to this office to get a copy of the budget,” he said. “This way, they can be sitting in the comfort of their own home reviewing it.”

Miller said officials have looked at other area localities’ Web sites, including Albemarle County, for guidance. Albemarle County has received national recognition for its use of information technology to deliver services to the community, according to its Web site.

The upgraded Web site is intended to reduce the number of community inquiries county employees handle each day.

“It’s really inefficient for staff to answer questions all of the time,” Miller said.

“With this ability to put stuff on the Web site, it should answer a lot of those questions,” he said.

One user-friendly feature the county supervisor hopes to provide on the Web site includes posting large documents onto the site in sections to be downloaded separately for people whose download speed is slow, he said. The Web site will also include an option to enlarge the site’s text to accommodate the county’s elderly population, he said.

County officials said they were unsure of the total cost of the Web site upgrade since the contractor is working at a rate of $25 per hour and the total project length is not set.

“He’s working at an hourly rate, we don’t anticipate it will take a lot of hours,” said County Administrator Lisa Kelley.

Once the hired contractor designs the Web site’s framework, county employees will be able to use the county’s Joomla software by accessing its on-line server through their computers, Miller said. Joomla is open source content management software, which means it’s free and can be used on multiple computers at no cost. The county purchased a $40 template, which is used to create the look of the Web site, according to Miller.

The upgraded Web site is expected to be ready in about a month, he said. Madison County’s Web site is www.madisonco.virginia.gov.