Challenge 2: Thousands of Pages - From Project to Organization

Abstract

When the city’s Web project is launched, it is typically done in the form of a project. When the project is over, pages are published but there is no special budget allocated to further Web-related work. This means that expansion is limited in terms of size, technical renewal and sophistication. Initially, work is typically carried out as a marginal low-cost activity by students, people hired with unemployment support or other types of cheap labour. The task of maintaining all the pages quickly overwhelms the small team of active staff and the system degenerates, causing complaints and requiring new types of solution, because the current one can only be stretched so far. As a result, a “Web-responsible” person is identified in each department and charged with the task of overseeing the accuracy of the information pertaining to that department. An additional problem is the Web technology develops, and cities have to keep up (frames, JavaScript, XML, meta-tags etc.) so as not to appear old-fashioned. Further, demands for information and services increase, and there appears to be a need for automation and integration with existing computer systems.