Orange County NC Website
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l~ <br />Orange County Website <br />._ __- _ _ _ <br />-- - --~- __ _ ._- -_ a <br />^ Developed originally in mid 90s <br />^ Loose confederation of departmental websites <br />^ Not citizen friendly <br />^ Valuable content and eGov services difficult to find <br />^ Does not conform to ADA guidelines, not translation <br />friendly, not accessible on all computers <br />^ Difficult for departments to update <br />^ No global controls <br />•Original web site development was ad-hoc. Departments focused on their own <br />departmental site without regard to an overall navigation strategy or an <br />arrangement of information that put citizen needs first. <br />•Historically, the website conveyed the impression that Orange County itself <br />was a loose confederation of departments. This, in turn exacerbated citizen <br />confusion as to what services Orange County provided, as compared to other <br />governmental entities. <br />•The historical website arrangement compelled citizens to navigate to <br />departmental sites for information. This was very confusing for citizens when <br />the service they sought wasn't intuitively in a particular department (e.g., well <br />water testing, assistance for elderly, property valuations) <br />•Over 17,000 pages are on the OC site, many of which offer great interactive <br />functionality, but citizens have been largely unaware of the existence of these <br />services, due to lack of overarching navigation strategy <br />•eGoverment services are interactive Internet services which allow the public <br />to transact with the County from any Internet accessible computer.. These <br />services include Deeds Inquiry, Permits Inquiry, Location Services, Library <br />Searching, Tax Inquiry, on-line Tax Payments, GIS and others <br />•The historical website uses technologies (frames, captionless images) that <br />confound disabled citizens' attempts to access web information. For related <br />reasons the site was not well suited for language translation services, older <br />Internet browsers or slow Internet connections. <br />•Plethora of web site standards encouraged great diversity of web designs <br />which made sites difficult to hand off to new webmasters. Consequently, ~ 2 <br />