Pay your water bill. Apply for a building permit. Enroll in a summer recreation program.
All are services that have traditionally required trips to town hall, usually during the workday hours of 9 to 5. But in a growing number of communities, they are tasks you will be able to cross off your to-do list whenever you choose, simply by booting up the computer. Even if it's 2 a.m. and you're in your pajamas.
"You don't have to live your life to our schedule," said Pam Wilderman, who recently helped launch Marlborough's website, which allows residents to pay real estate, utility, and excise tax bills online for as little as 25 cents a transaction.
It is a practice known as "e-government." Cities and towns across the region, recognizing that the public now expects to conduct everyday business online, are beefing up their Internet offerings, shedding outdated, difficult-to-navigate Web pages and introducing handy services such as electronic bill payment, online program registration, and e-mail news subscriptions.
Dirk Coburn, a Natick resident and Town Meeting member, said local websites -- both municipal and privately run -- are a key resource for people whose daily schedules may keep them from participating in town government.
"I think it really serves an important need," he said.
Aside from being more convenient for residents, officials say, government websites -- the quality of which still varies greatly in the western suburbs -- promote efficiency by freeing up employees from having to track down or distribute basic information.
"I haven't given out directions to City Hall in I can't tell you how long," noted Wilderman, who also is the secretary for the city's Planning Board.
In some ways, Marlborough is at the cutting edge among area communities. The city built its website (www.marlborough-ma.gov) through a partnership with the Maine company Virtual Town Hall and the state of Massachusetts, which will make the site's "architecture" available as a prototype for other communities, according to Jodi Charles, a Romney administration spokeswoman.
In e-mail messages, Charles said that the Marlborough project, which cost $50,000 in state money, was similar to the redesign of the state's website, www.mass.gov, and meant to "develop a consistent approach to presenting information and services" to residents, businesses, and newcomers.
But unlike many private organizations, communities are often forced to fit grand visions for their online identities within the confines of minimal funding. While some still rely on volunteers to keep sites up to date, there are paid efforts being considered in several communities to improve their online offerings.
Stow's website (www.stow-ma.gov) was built by a volunteer committee, but the town is considering spending $15,000 this spring to hire a part-time web facilitator, said Town Administrator Bill Wrigley. Plainville, whose official site, www.townofplainville.org, contains limited information, will consider spending $5,000 to hire Virtual Town Hall to redesign the site and $3,000 a year to maintain it, said Town Administrator Joe Fernandes.
Last year, Needham cut about $23,000 needed for a part-time web position, said Town Administrator Kate Fitzpatrick, and the site (www.town.needham.ma.us) is now maintained largely by Roger MacDonald, the town's geographic information system administrator. He estimates he works up to 15 hours a week on it and depends on town departments and residents to feed him updated information.
"It's a real family affair . . . because we don't have a truly dedicated person," he said.
Despite the current lack of funding, Needham is still considering expanding the site by offering services such as online building permitting, he said, and perhaps electronic bill payment.
Building on the work of a group of local residents, Norfolk has redesigned its website (www.virtualnorfolk.org) and within the past week has begun offering online bill payment. Christopher McClure, the town's information technology coordinator, said the public has come to expect useful government websites. "They're used to having access to everything else in their life online," he said.
Indeed, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Pew Internet and American Life Project, 66 percent of Internet users -- roughly 83 million Americans -- said early last year they had visited government websites for information, up from 56 percent the year before. John Horrigan, a senior research specialist with the organization, attributes this in part to the increasing availability of high-speed connections and also the convenience of having government information online.
"They can navigate at their own pace, on their own time," Horrigan said.
While the project, which is about to release a report on e-government, does not specifically track whether the Internet has led to increased civic involvement, Norfolk, for example, has noticed more interest in vacancies on public boards since posting that information online, according to Town Administrator Bob Markel.
Because the municipal websites are frequently maintained by volunteers or staff with other responsibilities, a common problem is outdated information.
"My viewpoint is a bad website is worse than no website," said Wrigley, of Stow.
Until last week, for example, Boylston's homepage (www.boylston.org) carried the name of a town administrator who had not been in town since 2001.
"I get a lot of calls from people asking for Anita Hegarty," said Sue Olsen, Boylston's current administrator, noting that two others have served in the position since Hegarty left.
But late last week, Boylston unveiled its updated website, designed by volunteers Jarret Byrne and Adam Mack, two recent graduates of Tahanto Regional High School. While Olsen was unsure whether the town would eventually hire someone to oversee the site, "at least we're getting started," she said.
Millis's website has the name of the current town administrator, but the most recent selectmen's meeting agenda it displays dates back to April 2002.
The town's selectmen chairman, Jeff Hardin, launched the site in 1993, well before the Internet became a common household tool. Early on, he said, the site would receive a scant 20 visits a week. "About 18 of those were me," he said.
Now the site is visited thousands of times a day, Hardin said. Recognizing that he can no longer maintain it himself, he is pushing for a system that would allow town departments to post new information themselves, rather than funneling it through him.
"The need for the site has outgrown the management of the site," he said.
Hardin believes Millis could offset the costs of revamping its site by making bylaws and other town reports available to residents online, thereby saving printing and mailing costs.
While many communities are searching for such web-wrought efficiencies, none foresees computers supplanting staff. Conversely, Randy Perry, senior vice president and founder of Virtual Town Hall, which has helped nearly 60 Massachusetts cities and towns build their websites, said some communities have begun looking to online transactions to fill gaps left by reductions in staff.
In Holliston, where residents can now pay property and motor vehicle tax bills online, the town's treasurer/collector, Mary Bousquet, said electronic transactions take less time to process, but she noted that many people continue to come in to pay their bills. Like many others, Bousquet said the online service, which costs users 50 cents per transaction, is a convenience for people who don't work in town.
Many school systems also use websites to provide information to parents and students. In Natick, an increasing number of teachers are building their own sites and offering homework help online, said Barbara Kane, the district's director of instructional technology. And her department is working to gather and centralize curriculum information for teachers to share.
In Newton, school officials have begun discussing offering online access to report cards, said Assistant Superintendent Carolyn Wyatt.
Some police departments, too, maintain their own websites. Both Framingham and Norfolk, for example, allow users to report crimes online and find information on convicted sex offenders living or working in town.
Residents say official government websites have not forced out privately run sites, which often are lively alternative sources of information about local government and community activities.
"In general, in a town there's a lot more information than what the town hall makes available," said Andras Radics, a Norfolk resident who helped build the town's original website and now maintains his own site, www.norfolknet.com.
Natick resident Josh Ostroff launched www.natick.info as a complement to the town's official site, www.natickma.org. Where municipal sites generally must be consistent and fulfill certain expectations, Ostroff said, community sites tend to have more freedom.
"There's always going to be a role for citizens to publish information about the government," Ostroff said.
But strong community-based websites do not let official government sites off the hook. Ostroff believes town departments should be held accountable for how well they communicate with the public, be it in person, over the phone, or through cyberspace.
"It's all about delivering good service," Ostroff said. "The Internet is really a fact of life now."
Quelle: The Boston Globe, 06.05.2004
