Within months, Vallejoans will also have the option of paying water bills or building permit fees online as well, according to Gonzalo Gonzalez, chief information officer for the city.
"We are trying to interact a lot more with people without them having to come into City Hall as much as they do now," he said.
Currently, only the city's employment application can be filled out and emailed online. Over the next year, however, dozens of other city and police forms will be added to the site, Gonzalez said.
Among the other new additions to the site is a calendar feature that lists a schedule of upcoming public meetings with links to their locations and times.
In addition to the new features, the site has been reorganized to make it easier for residents to find what they are looking for, said Gonzalez, who headed up the revamp. For example, while some documents were available for download prior to the redesign, they were spread out throughout the site and could be difficult to find. Now, all downloadable forms are included on one Web page.
"You don't have to search the whole Web site to figure it out," Gonzalez said. "You just go to one area and everything is there."
Gonzalez predicts the site's revamp -- which cost in the neighborhood of $13,000 and was launched two weeks ago -- will end up saving the city $5,000 a year in maintenance fees because an outside vendor is no longer required for updates. Instead, a city staff person will do the job.
"The main key was we wanted to create a Web site that can be updated and modified without an outside vendor," he said.
Eliminating an outside vendor to maintain the site also means news and documents can be posted faster than before -- sometimes in 10 to 15 minutes, according to Gonzalez.
"We can post forms on the fly," he said. "If something develops, we can post documents immediately."
Quelle: ValejoNews
