Tangled Web(site)

Council meetings are usually entertaining and last Tuesday's was no exception. Sat through the morning show and left during the intermission (executive session and lunch break.) Didn't make it back before the afternoon show had started and I missed one of the most entertaining parts. An issue that I really have issues with: the City website.

The contract for the current city website was approved back in 2004. The current site is based on a proprietary system from GovOffice.com. It took a while for the site to get usable and I have several emails back and forth with city staff on problems and suggestions. Today, 8 years later there are still problems with features such as credit card information handling and keeping the agenda packets on the website. Public information staff has done a lot of work like connecting the city website with social media sites like facebook and twitter and work arounds like using slideshare to hold city council packets and information that won't fit on the website. City staff has done a lot of work to get information out and overcome the limits of the current website. I've also heard from staff members that use the system that it's a royal pain to deal with. I'd heard and seen enough problems with the site that I have been trying to get the city to change system and philosophies for several years. Earlier this year the city finally went out with an RFP for a new website.

In May, they came to council with a request to authorize a contract, not to exceed $40,000 to Vision Internet of California. From the memo in the agenda packet "Financial Impact: The costs for the website design, hosting, and training staff will be $40,000.00." A bit high but not totally unexpected. I remember this being presented to the city council as a complete, turnkey operation. Vision Internet would design and maintain the site, migrate everything from the old site to the new one, train staff to operate it, and host it on their own high availability servers. City council approved the following from the memo in the agenda packet.

• "a. Approving a recommendation from the Evaluation Team to award RFP: PI-01-
  11/Website Design contract to Vision Internet, in an amount not to exceed $40,000.00
  for design of a new, custom website for the City of San Angelo, and authorizing the City Manager to negotiate and execute a contract with the recommended vendor
• b. Authorizing a budget amendment for the project funds in an amount not to exceed
  $40,000.00 to cover costs of designing the new website, training staff, and hosting the
  newly designed site."

Looked like a done deal, and I  was hopeful a new website, at least a beta version, might be a Christmas present for the citizens of San Angelo. Last Tuesday, Nov. 20th, there was a budget amendment on the agenda that included $90,000 to negotiate a contract and amend the budget for the new website. Wait a minute. Hadn't this had been approved back in May? All of it including the budget amendment? And what was the extra $50,000 for? Simplest explanation would have been that too much time had elapsed and it needed re-approval. And maybe the $90k was just a typo and $40k was the real deal. I watched the video, and no, staff was saying that $90k was the true amount and that the $40k  was only for website design. The extra $50k was needed for training and new, upgraded servers to host the website. Like I said I wish I had been there but the replay on channel 17 was very entertaining. You could tell that staff was caught completely flat footed. The excuses they gave for the increase don't make sense when you look at what was in the May 1st agenda packet and what was recorded in the minutes. Training costs were included in the original proposal, and there was no need for additional servers at the city because the website would be hosted on Vision Internet servers. Package price, tax title and license $40k as approved in May. One further point I found out is that Vision Internet doesn't sell hardware. If there were additional servers and equipment required, that would need to be an additional contract, probably as part of the city's normal server upgrade program.

This highlights two problems our new city manager must deal with. First, staff has developed a habit of bringing parts of projects to city council piece meal and without complete project information. This time they tried to say that what was approved in May was just a portion of the total project and it was only last Tuesday they were providing information on the rest of the project. Earlier in meeting a similar situation happened on an agreement with SAPAC. The rental/lease agreement for office space was brought forward as an isolated, stand alone item. There have been some concerns about this agreement expressed at prior council meetings, and without some big picture information on the entire auditorium/city hall renovation project and SAPAC's involvement and contribution commitments it's hard to make a good decision. As presented to the council Tuesday the agreement does look and smell like a giveaway of a major city asset to a politically connected group. Add to that the cost overruns and confusion over whether or not the HVAC plant and landscaping were included in the original package voted on as part of the city hall plaza project and it's easy see how council might be getting a bit irritable. I'm sure they feel like they would if they were buying a new car and as the sales manager is handing the keys he says "Congratulation on your new car. I think now we might want to talk about putting tires on it." 

Now that I've wandered into mistakes made in handling the website contract so far, let me make a couple of suggestions. There needs to be a shift in philosophy by the city about the internet. Functionally, the city doesn't have "a" website. The main sanangelotexas.us address is effectively a portal into a series of other internet applications and sites. I could get long winded on this (actually did but erased it) but the city doesn't need a Swiss Army Knife type of website. What the city needs is a functional toolbox that allows people to exchange information and do business using those internet tools, and visible website is really just the box that keeps all these specialized tools where they can be used efficiently and effectively. This needs to be an open standards based toolbox so that as new tools are needed and developed we don't have to keep going back to a single source and hope they have an adequate tool.

Let's get ASU and their computer science department involved. They have expertise and equipment. They might be interested in doing the city's internet projects as a research and training vehicle. 

Get the city involved with projects like Code For America and see what they can surprise us with. 

Go with an open solution, preferably open source, that can help drive down the cost of government and give us greater flexibility to respond quickly in a fast changing world.

We need a new website for the City of San Angelo. We need an updated philosophy on how the city and its citizens use the internet. We need an honest, accurate, and complete plan for the projects that will get us where we need to be long term. What was put before council would barely serve us today and is not what we need for the future. We also need to get staff to keep up and do their homework before they come before city council and keep their story complete and straight.