One local government has taken their site to the next level, aiming for the goal of that online city hall. The Indianapolis/Marion County Web site, IndyGov, has broken the mold of static, information-heavy sites to offer one that is attractive, interactive and innovative.
THE MAYOR'S VISION
Mayor Stephen Goldsmith, well known for his views on government competing with the private sector to provide services traditionally held within government, believes that a successful Web presence is a key part of reinventing government. "You can't reinvent government -- or pretend to -- without the significant use of an Internet backbone," Goldsmith said. "Our site really has two uses: to reinvent government by more efficiently moving information inside City Hall, breaking apart the hierarchical system, so that the line worker has access to the mayor; and second, to enhance the delivery of services to the citizens, so that eventually they wouldn't have to come [to City Hall]."
Goldsmith's long-term vision for IndyGov is a bureaucracy without paper. He wants the site to mature to a level where all city services can be conducted over the Web in an easy and efficient manner.
E-GOVERNMENT
Interactivity and inventive services are the elements that make IndyGov unique. In fact, Goldsmith and IndyGov's staff have named these services "e-government," which is defined as, "using the Internet to create unique interfaces to City Hall and deliver online access to city/county government information and services."
To achieve the goal of becoming an electronic city hall, the IndyGov team is pressed by the mayor to deliver at least two new Internet services per week on the site. To meet that mandate, the team has worked hand-in-hand with city and county employees as well as several interns to deploy a wealth of leading-edge Internet technologies that are helping to define e-government in Indianapolis/Marion County.
Beyond the usual city government contacts and downloadable forms, IndyGov is unique in its range of services for its users. Users can pay parking tickets, chat with the mayor during scheduled sessions and report potholes, and contractors can apply for permits online. "IndyGov has ventured into relatively uncharted areas for local governments," explained Ken Barlow, IndyGov project manager. "This leads many who work with us to remark that the city of Indianapolis is more advanced than many private companies."
According to Barlow, Mayor Goldsmith has played a key role in implementing the advanced services. When the city first added service requests to the site, the requests were just
e-mailed to the correct person, whom would then re-enter the data into a database. In a meeting, Goldsmith looked at this and suggested that the data should go directly into the database, without the retyping. "I really get into that story, because it illustrates his determination," Barlow said. "He looked at this thing and said that it was really simple. In effect, he really designed much of our site, including the new online permitting application." It was that meeting that defined the site team's focus of supplying more than just static information.
IndyGov is very unusual because it is one of the few local government sites to also offer direct interfaces to government databases. "The new online permitting application will enable approved contractors to directly submit their permit requests into the permits database for approval and processing. From there, IndyGov visitors can search the permits database or a database of neighborhood organizations," Barlow said. Other features being developed by Barlow and IndyGov Webmaster Chris Strom involve adding online bidding for city services and interactive government information using GIS. More information and a comprehensive list of IndyGov's capabilities can be found on the site.
RESOURCES TO MEET THE CHALLENGE
Meeting the mayor's challenge and creating a site that breaks all molds hasn't been easy, but Barlow and Strom found a wealth of talent and ideas in their interns. "We hired a team of four summer interns -- from Princeton, Harvard, Purdue and Duke -- and put them in a very free environment where they could learn from one another," Barlow explained. "They were a very valuable resource and got the opportunity to contribute and produce value for the city. It was a win-win situation all around." The contributions of the interns are visible all around the site, and many of the interactive services coming online are their ideas as well.
The site also relies on the participating agencies and departments as well. Early on in IndyGov's development, the city's chief information officer established "Internet liaisons" in each department and agency to help identify content and coordinate the site's implementation. Each department or agency is responsible for its own content, which, according to Barlow, works more in some cases than in others.
Since its launch in 1996, the composition of the services offered on the site has been an ongoing process and a continued success. Since November 1996, the site has jumped from fewer than 500 internal and external hits per day to more than 3,500 external hits per day.
HELPING OTHERS
When asked what advice they would offer to others interested in launching a site similar to IndyGov's, both Goldsmith and Barlow advocate taking the growth of the site step by step. "Find out what government services involve the most transactions at the greatest effort to citizens," Goldsmith suggests. "Design your home page to provide those answers through the page first. Don't let a bunch of officials talk about what would be pretty to read on the screen; what is more important is to find out what services are important to the citizens and provide them first." Barlow takes the advice a step further. "Look at the five phases we used [see sidebar]. Think these things through before throwing your resources at them. We broke up our site into four different areas: online services, features, maps and feedback. These four are key areas that are a pretty good model for building a government site."
Using that model has resulted in honors and publicity for Indianapolis/Marion County. In 1997, the site won third place in Government Technology's Best of the Web awards, and just recently, the site won the government category of the Global Information Infrastructure Awards.
Despite its honors and current level of interactivity, the mayor still sees the site as having a way to go before it fully takes advantage of Internet technologies and creates a paperless bureaucracy. So, while the electronic city hall is still developing, IndyGov.org is well on its way.
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