Community Websites: Moving Towards the New Town Square
Doug McKenzie
Communities are assuming an increasingly important role in peoples lives. More and more, residents are looking for the opportunity to exchange ideas with decision-makers, and each other, on issues affecting their community.With more than 65% of Ontarians now online, information and telecommunication technology, specifically the Internet, will play a significant role in helping communities provide this public forum.
Community websites can provide a modern version of the Town Square an electronic forum where individuals can access public leaders and services, express their opinions, and interact freely with others on issues of importance to the community. In other words, community websites can build on and help to foster eDemocracy.
No two communities express exactly the same needs when it comes to their online Town Square. One is looking for just the basics to serve a small, close-knit population, while another seeks a multi-functional, fully-integrated solution, providing online services to diverse, and often remote, areas. They all, however, share a common goal: an online solution that is easily managed, cost-effective, always current,and serves the community and its residents well.
Many communities which have taken the plunge, however, find they are getting more and less than they bargained for: more investment in technology, time, and resources than planned; less effectiveness, enthusiasm, and participation than expected.
CREATING A PORTAL
While many community sites present a common meeting place, that is just the beginning. The successful online Town Square also must be timely, relevant, reliable, secure, accessible, flexible and effective a tall order. To be a vital and ongoing part of peoples lives, the Town Square must bring together all members of the community: constituents, businesses, charities, volunteer organizations, residents and government. This central portal should: provide users with easy access to interactive community services; disseminate timely, relevant information to the right users at the right time; and enable discussions and informal polling on relevant topics, to ensure more voices are heard. In short, it should encourage, enable and build on eDemocracy. Creating and sustaining such a portal presents a number of challenges.
CUSTOMIZED DESIGN
An online Town Square should offer access not only to its own services, but also to local organizations, businesses or other levels of government. It should truly represent the community environment, using a logical topic tree and heading structure so that people can easily locate the information they need. For reliability and ease-of-use, the architecture must be designed around the way users prefer to access information: areas of interest, for example, rather than by government department. The industry has recognized these needs, and developed Best Practices as a guideline for addressing them effectively. Designs, content guidelines and approval processes should all be according to the community''s designated business rules. The community''s brand image should also be incorporated into the online design, to ensure that it reflects the overall community identity.
SUSTAINABILITY
Once established, the typical website requires a technically skilled webmaster to manage and sustain it. Communities either pay a premium for the skilled and hard to come by resource, or try to manage without one. The first option can be expensive, while the second can lead to disaster or at best, an out-of-date, under-used website.
But what if posting information to the site were simple and straightforward? If every content owner, who knows and understands the material best, had the right and the ability to post content, there would be no need for complex technical expertise, or time-consuming, complicated work -flow structures. Users would just login direct from their desktop and use an easy, browser-based interface to post their information on templates: news articles, events, etc. The portal would automatically publish the content, target it to specific users, and later remove it, according to business rules established by the community: format guidelines, approval process, duration of posting, etc. Webmasters would have time to concentrate their skills on more complex site requirements. So now the information is easier to post, but what ensures against information overload, searching through pages of material to find what interests you as an individual or an organization?
TARGETED INFORMATION
A sophisticated, rules-based engine could enable the portal to target content to the right users, at the right time, for the right reason. Information on each section of the site would always be fresh, because the portal would determine the content for each page based on what is available and the established rules for publishing it. The portal could also send wireless alerts and e-mail notifications to users, based on their behaviour or on their requests for timely information. Nowadays, people not only like to define their content preferences; they want the flexibility to create their own pages, and customize the layout and appearance of those pages. The ideal community portal would provide these functions.
INTEGRATED DATABASES
Another commonly heard problem is the inability to incorporate existing databases or information sources. To get the most from their website, and to do so cost-effectively, communities need the capability to perform or streamline administrative functions, and the flexibility to provide residents with a variety of interactive services. Without the integration of municipal back-end systems, the ability to offer many additional services is limited. Instead of a powerful and vital tool, the site can become a glorified bulletin board. The ideal portal solution would integrate those existing databases and information sources, enabling communities to make any number of their current services available online. To enable payment of parking tickets, for example, the system should be able to authenticate the user, process payments and present the information online.
ACCESSIBILITY AND RELIABILITY
Another challenge is making the website accessible for all end users, enabling everyone to take advantage of whatever the portal has to offer. To meet the requirement of eDemocracy equal access to information the ideal portal would accommodate a variety of technology platforms and access channels (including public terminals), across multiple platforms, wireless devices and varying Internet speeds. Not-for-profit community partners also should have a presence on the portal, perhaps through a low maintenance system of controlled access to the management and authoring tools. It also goes without saying that a community portal must be technically reliable, secure (particularly when online voting may be just around the corner) and up-to-date when it comes to the latest technology.
THE DEMAND FOR CONTENT
Should a community meet all these challenges, there is still the continuing demand for fresh and varied content: timely news and information from within the community and further afield, customized content for specific groups, links to relevant sites, and much more. Meeting that demand requires easy and economical access to a coordinated source of online news and information content, directory services, trade directories, and business organizations. No one said eDemocracy would be simple! It can, however, be considerably more attainable with the right solution.
E-COMMUNITY PORTAL
Bell Canada understands the need for communities to provide an effective online Town Square, one that builds on eDemocracy, and meets all the challenges described here. Our eCommunity Portal is a radical departure from current website development: a entirely new end-to-end, network-centric solution. It reduces considerably the financial investment required, because the solution hardware, operating system, software and necessary bandwidth can all be hosted on the Bell network. Network-centric solutions are customized to the individual community's needs, and flex with organizations, enabling them to connect on demand and provide services to their customers, suppliers and employees when and where they want them. They are based on a scalable architecture that can grow to meet increasing demands. eCommunity Portal is hosted in Bell Canada's Managed Network environment, a guaranteed and fully secure operating environment, and offers the added advantages of easy access to Bells expertise, equipment, support and security. The solution design is based on consultations with several regional and municipal communities and governments, and Bells experience in industry best practices for portal development Solution hardware and software will always be leading edge, while highly-trained people will implement and maintain the customized solution, providing help desk and consultation services when required on a convenient one-stop basis. A variety of access channels is available through the BCE family of companies. Business services such as Canada411.com, YellowPages.ca, Workopolis.ca, and BellZinc.ca can also be integrated into the portal.
THE PORTAL AS ENABLER
As eDemocracy continues to develop, tools like eCommunity Portal will become critical enablers for communities, providing rapid, cost-effective ways to interact with their constituents, local organizations, all levels of government and with each other. Portals also will provide a platform for meaningful B2B (business- to-business) and B2C (business-to -community) interactions within those communities, helping to stimulate the local economy and to attract growth industries to the area. Today, these industries are searching for Smart Communities offering technological value adds and a forward-looking business environment. With an easily managed, cost-effective, current and effective portal, the Smart Community will be firmly positioned to understand, plan and institute its own smart growth as eDemocracy continues to evolve.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
DOUG McKENZIE is the Senior Director e-Business (Ontario) for Bell Canada, responsible for all aspects of the corporation's e-Business vision and market strategy for Ontario.