History

Public Communications serves as a communications link between the city of Columbia’s municipal government and the citizens. The Public Communications Office coordinates several programs that are designed to link citizens with their city government.

History

Beginning in 1993, Columbia Online Information Network (COIN) hosted information about the City of Columbia. Information on COIN was text only.

Two committees were established to assist in prioritizing information and services to be provided on the Web site. The Mayor's Citizens Web Page Task Force and the Computer Advisory Group met periodically to make decisions and guide the development of the Web site.

In June 1998, the city unveiled a new Web site at the council retreat at Lenoir Retirement Center. When the Web site was introduced in June 1998 it was a work in progress, and each department was responsible for maintenance of their portion of the Web site with overall responsibility resting with the Information Services department. Since then the Web site has gone through several transformations.

By early-2000 the Web site had become large and management was becoming difficult. On September 18, 2000 the city council adopted an ordinance that abolished the existing Web site management structure and established the Internet Citizens Advisory Group (ICAG). This group, consisting of citizens with Internet, marketing, or e-commerce experience, is tasked with making recommendations to city staff and city council on resource priority for the city's utilization of the Internet. In addition this group assesses the user friendliness and effectiveness of the city's Internet activities. The ordinance also established a statement of purpose for the City's Web site:

The City of Columbia’s Web site is a channel for conducting business and bidirectional communications with the City’s current and potential residents, visitors, employees and businesses. The City’s Web site is cross promoted through other city communications channels to provide timely, accurate and easy to obtain information about Columbia City Government, its programs, processes and issues facing it. The City will conduct business through its Web site as a supplement to other conduits for recruiting, scheduling, registering, permitting, routine transactions for city services, and purchasing of goods and services.

Shortly after the establishment of ICAG an internal committee, the Internet Staff Coordinating Committee (ISCC), was created to coordinate Web site efforts among departments. This group consists of city staff appointed by department directors. Members of this group are responsible for providing their departments input into resource priority, assuring timely and accurate Information is provided on the Web site, and serving as liaison between their department and other decision makers.

Once the ISCC and ICAG were established the existing management process began to take shape. The members of these groups quickly identified a weakness in the existing management scheme. The primary limitation was that everyone involved with management of the Web site had other responsibilities and was working with the Web site on a part-time basis. Both groups decided that in order for the Web site to meet its full potential a full time Web site manager was needed.

The next year brought many improvements to the Web site but the list of limitations continued to grow. The primary concerns included:

1. The need for a full time Web manager/coordinator
2. Lack of training for department Webmasters
3. Inconsistent look
4. Poor navigation and difficulty in finding information on the Web site

By late-2001 two decisions had been made. A Web consultant would be employed to redesign the Web site and a full time Web coordinator would be brought on board to manage the Web site.

On April 1, 2002 a Web consultant and full time Web coordinator began work redesigning the Web site. A great deal of work and coordination went into the process and if it weren't for the efforts of the ISCC, ICAG, and Beyond Horizons the redesign would not have been possible. A special thanks also goes to the Office of Volunteer Services and the many volunteers that assisted us in various phases of the redesign.

In 2006 work began on the now current design. This design was completed in its entirety by City of Columbia staff, resulting in significant savings in design and development fees. Improvements were made in Web site usability, accessibility and page load times.