After much planning and work across all departments, Inyo County this week launched a new and improved website that users should find easier to navigate and loaded with helpful information about county operations and services.
The website can be accessed by the same URL, www.inyocounty.us, and is optimized to function well on mobile devices and standard computers.
Developing and building the new website has been nearly a 2 year-long process – one that involved seeking Requests for Proposals from tech firms in May 2018, analyzing the various proposals received, and ultimately selecting Boots Road Group of Seaside, CA to take on the project. The effort also included needs assessments for and consultations with each department. Departments have spent the last year customizing and populating their individual webpages in anticipation of this week’s launch.
The result is a website that is user-friendly and visually appealing, uniform in appearance, showcases the many services offered by the County’s numerous departments and divisions (and how to access those services), displays nicely on any Internet-connected device, and that integrates other County-sponsored websites and online services – all in a well-organized, easy-to-navigate platform.
Information Services Director Scott Armstrong noted that the website will also serve as a platform for the County to deploy future web-based services and applications.
The overall goal of the new website was improving customer service, transparency, and communication – internally and between staff and the residents and visitors of Inyo County. The website offers a comprehensive staff and department directory, and to help users identify and find the service they need and which department or division provides it, the site offers several different search functions (e.g. drop-down menus, front-page links to frequently sought items or services, a site-wide search bar for key words or phrases) to direct users to where they need to go – whether they’re looking for dog licenses, office hours, meeting minutes, flu vaccine schedules, job applications, building permits, or trying to find out who their elected officials are.
Individual department pages on the site offer this information in a variety of ways – including FAQs, mission statements, official documents and reports, news and press releases, events calendars – and provide numerous methods for contacting County staff members and/or accessing services and programs. Some departments offer online payment portals as another convenience.
“With this new website, we can better share a wide variety of information with the public and our constituents, and better facilitate the public’s interaction with County departments and their elected officials, such as the Board of Supervisors,” said Third District Supervisor and Board Chairperson Rick Pucci. “The site also helps showcase Inyo County and its amenities – such as parks, campgrounds, and even visitor centers and museums – for travelers or prospective visitors. It’s a vast improvement over the old website, and we envision it greatly enhancing customer service countywide.”
Another plus of the new website is the ease with which departments can upload and update their own content – which means the site will only continue to improve after this week’s launch.
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While this website makeover is long overdue, it is a good effort that will hopefully continue to evolve and improve. The Supervisors’ board meetings are much easier to watch and hear online, although it is often difficult to see the speakers at the podium because they are often partially out of frame. Tall people tend to have their heads cut off at the top of the screen, while the view of shorter people is often obstructed by the podium, the podium light and microphone or the speaker is off-center of the frame. A simple solution would be to square the frame and lock it to the upper right hand corner of the screen. It’s a work in progress.
Hopefully efforts to bookmark the video to the documentation will happen soon, and it would also be nice to be able to watch the PowerPoint or video presentations that are off-screen to viewers or post directly onscreen. If nothing else, perhaps post the PPs and videos on the website for viewing.
There are still many residents unfamiliar with using the Internet and would still prefer to watch the proceedings on television,an option available for many years…provided the audio and video were of a quality that you could actually see and hear what is going on. Channel 12 on Suddenlink is often pixelated or just extremely poor video quality, and the sound is either off or not of good quality.
Unfortunately,neither the County nor Suddenlink really seem to care much about the very poor quality of the cable television service that some citizens must rely on. It has been terrible for many years. Apparently, it has never been a problem for Suddenlink to provide poor quality service to its customers or for the County to ignore the needs of citizens that don’t have ready access to the Internet.
Suddenlink has long been accused of exceptionally poor customer service by customers, so that in itself is no big surprise to hardly anyone, but the County should acknowledge that it also has a responsibility to serve all of its citizens equally by providing good, easy access to the workings of their local government through a variety of means, including accommodating those not technology savvy. That should at the very least include decent audio and video over Channel 12.
Government should be as accessible as possible to all citizens.
Tried to open some documents from the Planning Dept. ans was told I needed a “user name” and password. I had to call their office and get them emailed to me. Hopefully they will get the bugs ironed out soon.