I wonder if they’ll do anything about the fact that the city workers tasked with updating the site know absolutely nothing about the Internet, LOL.

Looks like you have some minimalist understanding of the internet, good on ya.

My request is simple:

Access to more data = all digitized data which is for public information is easy to find with the public search engine on the City web site.

Usability of info = most electronic files on the web site are copy protected so that when referencing something as a quote in a letter or other writing by me and others one does not have to retype the information in or use some other software to extract it.

Basic educational pieces to explain such things as:
1. who does what at city hall – job descriptions and responsibilities
2. budget information broken down by projects rather than simply departments – including cost for overhead, etc. so that total costs or total savings can be seen – a current example is the $500,000 savings by moving IPG in -house.
3. How taxes are calculated such as meaning of “representative house”
4. How tax load for PG compares to that of similar communities in BC

and on and on …. in other words, more transparency of how things work at City Hall and how it compares to others as well as in the past.

Another example would be how many FTE’s are employed by the City this year in total as well as department; how that compares to past years; some rationale for the change over time. That should, for instance, be in the annual reports, but is not.

Also, we have a capital plan spanning 5 years. It would be beneficial to have a services plan. Also it would be beneficial to have a breakdown of the total moneys paid by a homeowner encompassing the property tax plus all the user fees that average homeowner has to pay for and the change over time. This year it looks like the taxes are going to increase by 5%, not 3% since the winter games levy is coming off and that reduction of about 2% is not accounted for.

A web site is only as good as the data on it and the ease of accessibility.

Good luck!! How much will this cost? It is one of the cost that I consider comes with the hiring of Rob.

“It’s important to engage members of the public with different interests and abilities when designing a municipal website,” explains Karen Mayfield, President of eSolutions.

Nice words. Can we have some information of how they have actually achieved this in other communities and how such changes have provided more utility to the user and how the changes have actually saved the City as well as the user money by having fewer “simple” requests which the user should not have had to make.

Much more specifically, will the money spent be an investment in that the services which previously provided that by phone or at the counter will be reduced so that fewer people will be required in day-to-day civic operations?

What is in the $124,000 budget? Is it like the KPMG exercise where a lot of time is taken out of City admin time but not accounted for in the budget? Those additional duties may mean project delays or overtime. If it is overtime, because the overtime is accrued directly because of this project, will the overtime rates of administrators involved be charged to this project or the projects which fall under the normal day-to-day work?

Do administrators actually keep time sheets to track program and project costs?

As far as an understanding of the internet goes, this firm is likely just going to deal with the “interface”. It is the city workers who will deal with the data the interface will provide access to.

The data is the meat. If the City Administration and very much so, in this case, City Council do not provide better data and better usability of that data, the interface really does not matter. It will be a wasted $175,000 to $200,000 (all costs in) exercise.

I had a quick look at the web pages this company has done for other communities and judging by what I have seen you doubt you will see much of what you’re hoping for gopg2015.

I bet about half the money will be spent removing cobwebs and weeding out the two three and sometimes five year old data and links that have deep roots throughout current site.

esolutionsgroup.ca
cityofkingston.ca
owensound.ca
newmarket.ca
stratfordcanada.ca
york.ca

If a quick overview is any indication some of these sites actually provide quite a bit less information that the current city of pg site.

Does know why there is two backhoes digging the riverbed at cottonwood

i can build a website if you want…

In general the website should be simplified when compared to the current version, there is a lot of data and documentation available on the current website but a lot of it is rather difficult to find. For instance try to find a plumbing permit application form without using the search function. Items that a designer, developer, builder or investor needs in order to complete their project should be easily accessible – if it is easier to find the information they need they might be more inclined to look to PG as a place for their new project.

You hit the nail on the head!

There are a variety of people who need the assistance of city staff. Those who go to City Hall frequently, or do the same thing over and over, such as developers who build multiple houses or even subdivisions, know the process and just might want to download forms or process them on the web.

Then there are those who are new to the process and need some initial help so that when they do go into City Hall they know where they need to go, what they can expect to provide and can come somewhat or fully prepare.

Then there are those, like several on here, who try to follow what is going on in the city or components of what goes on in the city. More in depth info is typically required by them. An example would be voting patterns of Council members which used to be carried in the Citizen on a selected issues basis. Another would be issues surrounding direction of development, taxation principles (property taxes versus user fees, for example), the whole garbage/recycling issue. We are told very little. So sorting by issues for those interested in such things. In fact, the search engine could be optimized for specific users. If one is a serious researcher, one can set up a profile and the search engine will look in limited places. That would cut done the number of hits and make it easier to search. At the moment it looks like there is a simple word search rather than a theme based search. The algorithm is likely not much different than those used to track one’s exploration of the web or specific sites like amazon to provide ads specific to your supposed interests.

“Does know why there is two backhoes digging the riverbed at cottonwood?”

They used to mine it for gravel almost every year. Perhaps they still do. Perhaps DFO approved it.

Went to the City of Kingston Web Page.

First page. saw two items about the same things.

This is what it said about sign Bylaw Review

“Have an opinion on how signs and other advertising devices should be used in Kingston? Offer your input on the City of Kingston’s Sign Bylaw at an open house from 6 to 8 p.m. on Wednesday, Dec. 2 in Room A/B at the INVISTA Centre, 1350 Gardiners Rd. Staff will begin the presentation at 6:15 p.m., to discuss proposed changes to the bylaw based during their recent review.

The Sign Bylaw regulates where signs can be located, what types of signs may be used, a range of advertising devices and components and other details related to signage and advertising along Kingston streets.

Can’t make the open house? Review the existing Sign Bylaw and the proposed changes and offer your input online. Input will be accepted until Friday, Dec. 4.”

Today is Monday, December 7th. The deadline mentioned in the ad are all gone. The announcement should have disappeared automatically and replaced by another announcement.

The most common problem with web sites is currency. There should be algorithm available take care of this problem. If eSoltionsGroup does not have them, then they should not have been awarded the contract.

Then again, the specs by the City probably did not include that requirement.

It is not like there is a web developer right here in Prince George that could have tackled the problem. I am thinking maybe noratech, a firm started in PG by a UNBC alum, has built sophisticated software solutions for mills that includes porting all data to andriod and apple mobile systems.

Nah, why hire local when you can employ distant consultants who have never and never will see PG or listen to any of its citizens directly.

Think global, act local my eye.
How about lead by example or should most of us just move to a city that wants to support its local venders and economy.

Barely a year in and I already want a new council.

I went to the bid information page.

It has links to “document takers” for example. There are 6 contracts still open for bid.
When clicking on the hyperlink, the resulting statement in every single one is: “Owner does not want to disclose document takers !!” complete with double exclamation mark and red font.

I suspect this is common to all projects. The site developers appear to have used a template. The option to view bid takers should simply be removed. It is not good optics to have the option apparently available yet not available.
———————————–

As far as developer from here? Ontario is far away from here. India is almost closer. LOL.

What we are going to get for the 124k is akin to a Hollywood movie facade looks all authentic and pretty from our perspective looking at a monitor, but a peek around the corner would see that it is held upright with a few 2x4s with the same old dust clouds and tumbleweeds blowing around:)

Unless RVA is going to take the bull by the horns and hold the city’s website nerds to task 6 months after the roll out we will see 6 month old information littering the new site.

It looks like someone has a minimalist understanding of how the City update process appears to work. Instead of the updates coming from Chris Jones, as they once did, they’re now generated by a SharePoint WYSIWYG interface that breaks all kinds of accessibility guidelines to make things easier for the average Joe, neglecting that the Web is actually a difficult thing to do properly.

There’s clearly some intelligent oversight at some level (likely IT, LOL), but while updates come from people who struggle to even use Word properly, there’s no way we’re going to see an improvement in web usability until they drop the asinine department-driven update scheme and move back to the sane approach of having someone who’s competent at the web handle all the individual tasks.

Either you have your web updaters know what they’re doing (ie. trained and paid accordingly) or you have a bad web experience. CUPE’s hippy “we’re all equal” nonsense precludes the City hiring and retaining people who are actually good with tech, as most of the IT positions are underpaid by 5 figures.

” Items that a designer, developer, builder or investor needs in order to complete their project should be easily accessible”

I disagree, if you are a homeowner or a small business owner looking to do repairs or modifications then yes the relevent information should be accessable and easy to find. If you are in the groups mentioed above then one call to Melissa Barcellos et al at the City of Prince George Economic Development department should be all it takes to get all the information you need (plus more) delivered to your inbox or door in a timely manner.

more blatant money wasting by the city. 124k? Are you kidding me? Do you know how good of a site you site you can build for 20k? Oh, and yes I am in the industry, this price is outrageous.

Hint to PG101: Google “web developer salary”. Next, Google “Sharepoint developer salary”. The City’s IT department chose perhaps the single most wasteful platform to develop their website on. That’s where the waste comes from, LOL.

Ever tried migrating anything out of Sharepoint? Pure Microsoft development Hades. Low 6-figures should about cover it though.

You can build the best of websites for $30,000. I don’t understand why the city doesn’t have their own webmaster in the first place. Why not hire expertise from PG since the tax money is raised in PG.
When they all ran for a position @ election time, not a one said yup we will hire overpriced people from out of town. They all said yup im going to solve all the problems if you vote me in. Once in, kinda like to bad so sad. More to come they say. Time to travel to see how other cities do it they say. What next?

onemansthoughts, it’s probably even worse than that, LOL. If you take a close look at the site, each subsection is governed by a different section of the City. I’d guess each department does their own updates. So a bunch of minimally (or internally) trained grunts with no web background all make inconsistent updates. Then, because this clusterbomb of incompetence can barely be adequately maintained and the process involves the entire organization, they’re trapped into pushing that mismanagement forward. So the 124K will probably involve some spruced up graphics that then falls to IT to implement and maintain; probably involves porting forward all this old worthless content, when, like some say, you could probably pay one dude that much to revamp the whole thing end to end and manage it for a year for that price. This organization is so mismanaged it’s almost too painful to laugh at. Almost, LOL.

I tried the Stratford web page. It tries too hard to be pretty and flashy. The top page is largely occupied by images that change every few seconds. This is unnecessary and distracting, and maybe even a trigger for photogenic epilepsy. Then I went to the garbage collection page since I’m always looking up garbage collection dates here in PG. The central item on that page is a photograph of a group of bagpipers. Hunh? Is that some sort of subtle insult to the Scots? Anyhow, it is distracting. The actual information is just a link to a PDF. Bad sign. PDFs are fine in some cases, but information people are likely to want quickly, and which the city generates itself, should be directly on a page. This isn’t a detailed review, but I’m not positively impressed.

Hint to LOLocaust – You have no idea what you are talking about. Webdev salaries? lol, about 5/hr from India for your backend, delivered from a someone with full certification in any dbase you want. Oh, and sharepoint blows, it’s not my fault they are wanting a platform that is out of touch with the current standards.

The city needs a simple site that relays information to the taxpayers. If they need a new backend, or intranet service, that is a totally separate job. Anyone can provide support for the actual site, it isn’t rocket science.

^ Spoken like someone who’s never received India-tier support. “Blows” is right.

Why is everyone so surprised that the city is spending an inordinate (and unnecessary) amount of money on this project? This is pretty much par for the course for the city. I’m just surprised they didn’t hire someone full time to do the job. The mayor is taking a chance pissing off his handlers at CUPE.

“Spoken like someone who’s never received India-tier support. “Blows” is right.” – You don’t need additional support from any India developer if it’s a php/mysql or sql platform.

Node.JS and MongoDB represent. And you’re right, of course. SwearPoint is not the tool for this job unless you begin with the flawed assumption (as the City does) that end-users should be handling web content.

From what I know of Melissa Barcellos and the strengths she brings to the position she is not an individual who can help specifically with all the items listed – designer, developer, builder or investor needs. Except for the last one and depending on the situation on the second one as well, which would be her strength, there are much more specialized technical people at City Hall to help the other three categories.

She is an economic development officer. Part of her duties might be to hold the hands of people who do not know how one deals with officials at City Hall, who they are, when they are needed and what they need. Believe it or not, there are still some good Architects and Engineers out there who understand the process. There are also some REAL (as opposed to the “this is easy” hobbyist who we hear about who complain how difficult it is to work with the City administrators) developers out there who know the process as well.

As an example, go to the Kingston web site and look at the Development Review Process. It lists 12 steps from pre-application to develop a project to building permit and construction. Each step is a hyperlink which opens up a relatively clear, concise process and requirements.

Try to find the same info on the PG web site by typing in “development process” and one gets a myriad of information which can easily obfuscate anyone since they tie in such things as PG’s development Permit process which only pertains to special areas within the City.

There is a reasonably clear flow chart for “normal” building development projects, but it is a “dumb” paper document without interactive links to explanations, departments, forms, etc.

princegeorge.ca/citybusiness/currentplanning/planningdevelopment/Documents/INFO_Guide_to_Development_Review_Process_for_Building_Projects.pdf

In order to build such a web site that is more useful, one requires the knowledge of the process and the ability to look at it from a typical user’s point of view. In other words, one needs to pretend (or actually get someone) that one is on the verge of being dumb and test it with a few different people who also are “dumb” and trouble shoot it until it works for at least 90% of the people. The 10% remaining will be among those who will continuously complain how difficult it is to work with the City. That is when one has the individual at City Hall available who can do some hand holding.

Melissa is not that person. She has other, more important tasks to do.

“…the flawed assumption (as the City does) that end-users should be handling web content.”

It is an assumption promulgated on the masses by such applications as WordPress. Those are great for clean looking interfaces which keep to a very simple format. The can be tweaked, and a lot or programmers seem to do that, for next level up web pages.

However, I believe it still takes considerable knowledge of the data inventory on a relatively large web site such as that of a City and the various linkages and understanding of the need for consistent terminology, technical information, contact info, etc. Unilateral department modifications could easily undermine the reliability of a web site’s information to a site’s visitors.

Axman wrote: “I’m just surprised they didn’t hire someone full time to do the job.”

I think they did. Rob vA. :-)