Port Moody is considering nearly doubling its budget to update city websites.
Council had already set aside $92,000 in its 2018 budget for the project but city staff came to council Tuesday asking for another $81,000 to upgrade a site that was last renewed in 2011.
The city’s previous provider, CitySoup, has gone out of business, which meant a migration to a new platform was immediately required, said a report to council. The urgency limited the scope of the project and did not allow for a detailed review of the site seven years ago.
“Staff do not want to repeat this process and are seeking to do more than recreate the status quo,” said the report.
The city wants to have more interactive content, two-way dialogue and improved search capabilities on portmoody.ca to help users intuitively navigate to find the content they’re looking for.
“We need to do this, we just simply need to do this. It’s high time,” said Coun. Zoe Royer.
Raman Braich, manager of information services, and other staff told council the feedback the city received included complaints that the city’s site had a lot of repetitive information which could be organized better and accessed more effectively and efficiently. Staff estimated the site’s 1,600 pages could be cut down to 500.
“Right now, the website is being used very much as an archive,” said Braich.
Although council voted to send the request for more cash to the city’s finance committee, Mayor Mike Clay wasn’t fully on board. He said one of his pet peeves is when the current official community plan was posted, the previous iterations were deleted. Clay said when people would ask how they came to a decision, he used to be able to point them to the archives to show the path the city took.
“I think you’re taking it in the wrong direction,” said Clay. “I think it is important that I can look at four, five, six, maybe 10 years of annual reports and see what the city did in 2010 or 2000.
"I don’t think it’s just an archiving tool but where better for there to be an archive of city information than on the city’s website? That’s really important.”
Clay added the website should have a Wikipedia-type feature about all things Port Moody by accessing local historians. He admitted his idea is beyond the scope of the current project but said, “We’re still way behind on the technology curve. We’re not on the cutting edge by any means, but it would still be useful having that kind of information.”
The report proposed $53,000 of the additional funding would go toward website design and an implementation contract, and $28,000 for staff time, bringing the total to $173,000. The estimated timeline to get it done for the city’s site is May or June of 2019 and April 2019 for the Port Moody Public Library site. The report noted the city received 22 bids from its request for proposals for the project posted last month.
