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Registration Underway for MLB Urban Youth Academy Spring League
County Funding Summer Internships at Local Arts Organizations
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L.A. Urban League Appoints Chief Neighborhood Officer for Neighborhoods@ Work Initiative
Doctors Leery of Cholesterol Drugs Vytorin, Zetia After Key Study
Maya Angelou at 80: Life Is Still an Adventure
Virtual City Hall: City’s Website Easing Into 21st Century
By
Allison Jean Eaton
Bulletin Staff Writer
Following
a long overdue facelift last year, the city’s Website is being
updated once again to provide residents even more virtual access to
City Hall.
Not only will council meetings soon be streamed live and archived online,
but corresponding staff reports, ordinances and minutes will also be
available with the simple click of a mouse button.
This time last year, a visit to the city’s official site, www.comptoncity.org,
was an exercise in futility. The antiquated site was rarely updated
save for scanned copies of each week’s council agenda and related
staff reports and did not offer much public access.
Put simply, it was not user friendly.
And not only that, but the site was also not secure.
According to the mayor, and confirmed by the Information Systems Department,
the former site lacked a firewall and provided potential hackers with
easy access to private city information.
“Our security was so bad, somebody could go online and actually
transfer monies from the city’s bank account to their own bank
account,” said
Perrodin last month.
The Council in December 2006 approved a contract with a Web technology
consulting firm to redevelop the city’s non-interactive and antiquated
site.
City 2 City Innovations was paid just over $90,000 for the site redesign.
The new site, which incorporates the city’s rebirthing campaign
has been up for several months, according to the city’s Information
Systems Department.
However, residents still can’t pay their city utility bills,
apply for city jobs or access and fill out city forms online. These
features will be available soon, officials said.
Mayor Eric J. Perrodin commented recently that although he’s
pleased with the new design, the site is still not where he wants it
to be in terms of access and transparency.
With this in mind, the City Council last week approved the hiring of
Granicus Inc., a move Perrodin said will take the city’s Website
into the 21st century.
Public access to meetings is imperative for the city and for the City
Clerk’s office, according to an April 1 staff report.
City Clerk Alita Godwin took the lead in the move to hire Granicus,
which provides similar services for the cities of Long Beach and Los
Angeles as well as the county of Los Angeles. The services will allow
the city clerk to prepare minutes using an automated system, thereby
streamlining the two major functions of her office.
The government video-, agenda- and minutes-streaming company currently
provides roughly 350 jurisdictions across the nation with improved
access to public meetings via live webcasts complete with integrated
public records.
Matt Mincks, Granicus’ Southern California regional director,
made a presentation during a council meeting last month to demonstrate
how the service will streamline access.
Documents archived online will contain embedded hyperlinks that link
users to anchor points in the corresponding video and to supporting
documentation, Mincks said.
“Basically, it’s our objective to provide public information
fairly quickly and easily to citizens across the world,” he said. “The
nice thing about this solution is that anyone, anywhere across the
world who has a computer and an Internet connection can watch these
tapes. So if you’re out of town, if you were back East for a
business trip, and you missed a city council meeting, you can click
on the Website and go on and watch the council meeting.”
The system will also feature an easy search function allowing individuals
to locate meetings during which a specific topic was discussed, Mincks
said.
The service and requisite hardware and software will cost $28,922.
Service management will run an extra $1,343 a month, according to the
ordinance.
“I think it’s a great idea. It’s just another way
for our residents to see a transparent type of government,” said
Councilman Isadore Hall.
“It’s real-time, that’s what I love about it,” said
Perrodin. “Fantastic – it’s taking us into the 21st
century.”
As far as being able to pay city bills online is concerned, Information
Systems Manager Dwayne Coleman said March 18 that the city was then
in the midst of setting up a merchant account, which is required in
order to set up the service, with Bank of the West.
He did not have a date for when the pay online feature will be up and
running.
Coleman did not return a call last week for an update on the process.
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