City working to improve its site

BURBANK — The city is updating its eight-year-old website to make it more interactive in an effort to better engage residents, officials said.

The overhaul, which has a budget of about $47,000, is expected to be up and running by the end of spring, city project manager Sana Ford said. Vision Internet, the company hired to do the overhaul, specializes in government websites. “Rather than forcing people to understand how government works to find information, we want to make using our site a pleasant and informative experience,” Ford said. “We want to make a site that’s architecturally sound enough to support the city’s Internet needs for at least five years. We need something flexible with new features because technology is always changing.”

New features will include local weather forecasts, traffic information updates, interactive maps of city buildings and a site search engine to make any city information just a click away, she said.

“We’re going to add a community calendar, so if you’re interested in something, it will show all the events, regardless of what department will be hosting them,” Ford said.

Another feature planned is e-mail notification, which would allow people to join an e-mail list to receive updates from whatever part of the city interests them.

“If you want to know what’s going on every Tuesday at a council meeting, every week, a council agenda will be sent to you,” Ford said. “That way, you won’t have to go to look up the agenda online or stop at the city clerk’s office.”

Cinda Cates, the city’s public information officer, expects that a new website would attract people and businesses to the city in this uncertain economy.

“We’re the media capital of the world, and our current website doesn’t really reflect that,” Cates said.

City Manager Mike Flad said one solution to tightening the budget could involve putting some of the city’s bureaucracy online, such as the permit application process.

“That and other e-commerce features are functions we’re going to look into,” Ford said. “It might not be done in this phase.”

Part of the site’s stability will be a content management system that will give city departments the independence to update their own information as they see fit, she said.

“Different departments would also be able to create online surveys with questions for the community as another tool the city can use to communicate and get feedback,” Ford said. “In our redesign process, there’s been a representative from each of the departments.”

To visit the current site, go to www.ci.burbank.ca.us.