LTC 275-2010 WEBSITE CALENDAR CONVERSIONm MIAMIBEACH
OFFICE OF THE CITY MANAGER
NO. LTC a
275-2010
2 i D OAT i~ Pik i2~ i
LETTER TO COMMI~,~~l~C~.N~ R ~~ g ~ ~ ~ ~: ~ ~ ~
TO: Mayor Matti Herrera Bower and Members of the City Commission
FROM: Jorge M. Gonzalez, City Manager
DATE: October 14, 2010
SUBJECT: WEBSITE CALENDAR CONVERSIO
This Letter to Commission in intended to provide you with information on our continued efforts to
improve the City's website. As we have previously reported, our website has been undergoing
continual improvements in an effort to improve the usability of the site, with a goal of not only
providing access to information the public wants and needs, but ensuring that it is provided in an
intuitive manner that is easy to get to. This is an ongoing process, with comments and
suggestions considered and reviewed for implementation on a regular basis.
Consistent with this effort, we will be replacing our current website calendar with the Google
Calendar as of October 15, 2010. Google Calendar is a free, time-management web application
that requires no hardware or software, and needs minimal administration. Google Calendar
makes it simpler for City staff to publish meetings and events on our website. This Calendar
solution not only helps our constituents find this information faster than the current calendar
allows, but it also allows users to add the meeting/event to their own Google calendar, as well
as providing an option that allows them to add the meeting%event to their Outlook calendar.
Other recent website improvement efforts include making our content progressively more ADA
accessible, revising the portals (Business, Government, etc.) to ensure that most commonly
accessed information is more easily available, and adding additional options to provide news
events to visitors to our site. As you may not be aware, the City's website currently receives on
average of 20 million hits every month.
These recent improvements resulted in Miami Beach's website being recognized by Juggle.com
as its "Top City Government Website" for our excellence in web design and content. Juggle.com
2010 winners were selected from some 3,000 sites reviewed in all 50 states. They recognize a
select group of government websites based on their commitment to providing their constituents
with unprecedented access to government information and e-services excellence.
As always, we welcome any additional suggestions to improve our website.
JMG/
H:\Communications\Web\LTC -Google Calendar final rev1.doc