Agenda - Council - 12/18/2001 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home

-288- Information Systems Recommendation Summary Web We recommend that Ramsey undertake the execution of a web strategy aimed at providing key information to residents of the City and proactively delivering frequently requested public information generated by the CiV. The City has 'already investigated subscribing to the GovDocs.com document management and delivery service. We believe that in addition to this, the City should implement a relatively basic content-management driven site to allow updates to key information by the owners of that information. These areas would include Fire, Police, City administration, and others. The City requested that the Web For Cities program be investigated: Although sponsored by the League of Minnesota Cities, the Web For Cities program is largely supported and financed via a private enterprise, Avenet. We have two primary concerns associated with the Web for Cities program. The first is the possible business continuity risks Avenet will suffer in the current environment, given the fact that their business requires thousands of cities to sign up to become cash flow positive. Based on our research of Avenet, we believe there is at best a fifty percent probability of Avenet remaining in business through the first quarter of 2002. The second concern is that the Web for Cities program is not particularly robust. Although we do feel that the GovOffice solution from Avenet may offer a low-price, low-end offering suitable for small municipalities (fewer than 5,000 residents), primarily because of its extremely accessible price, we do not believe it is suitable for a vibrant and expanding community such as Ramsey, particularly in light of the fact that operations would likely cease prior to any substantial upgrade to the systems. We recommend the following prioritization of web content and transactional capabilities for the City's web initiatives. These priorities were arrived at by focusing on delivering the highest-value content quickly, without immediately placing an overwhelming burden across the City's depaa'tments. Phase I: Ciw Home Page and Core Content Much of the Phase I content can be delivered via GovDocs, which will offer an added benefit of 'allowing citizens to subscribe to updates. We recommend that items indicated with an asterisk (':') be housed in GovDocs to provide access to these subscription services. · City Code (':') · City Emergency Plans (':')