Resources for Austin
Best Practices for Austin
- The City of Austin needs a Web presence that:
- Makes it easy for citizens to get services and information (search)
- Can be maintained, improved, and extended as cost-effectively as possible (devices)
- Helps showcase Austin as a technology-leading place to live and work (apps)
- The alliance with OpenAustin and the City Austin will strive for these goals to develop a new site and data portal their transparency portal:
- Compare city service inventory with other peer cities to assist in gap analysis
- Work with the city agencies to determine what data streams are currently available and those that should be made available public in machine readable form, and what technical approaches to use in publishing them to a city data portal.
- Test social media strategies and tools for applicability to the city’s web needs.
- Assess options to incorporate crowdsourcing as an appropriate development approach for components of the city’s web, mobile and e‐service capacity
- Develop a functional workplan that identifies resources and prioritizes work in order to implement the innovation initiatives.
- Establish a foundation for volunteers to advance Austin’s tech goals
- Identify successes and opportunities from the program on a biannual basis
- From Town Hall July 2009 Meeting: “Where does decision come from to publish data? Seems to be from Dept-level interest and those most web enabled and staffed. A challenge is to show Depts. what all can be done with the web.”
- “Need to be wary that many Depts. can’t afford a web or PIO team. Solution needs to be very easy to use for even non-techies. Must be efficient and quick – most CMS these days are very easy”