Digital community engagement. It's something we at CivicPlus talk about a lot. To us, it's not just a theory or a concept. Digital community engagement is the government's choice. 

Take a moment to think about how you interact with the world around you.

Guest blog by Ryan Boudreaux, Web Designer
Original Post on March 28, 2013, TechRepublic

Most businesses and organizations have websites, and with the popularity and proliferation of all sizes of mobile devices, a mobile strategy for those websites is more important than ever. If you haven’t already begun to make those decisions about your own organization’s mobile website presence, the time is now.

Think about your daily life. How do you interact with different businesses? Your bank. Your favorite clothes store. Your preferred movie outlet.

If you are a frequent user of the image filtering tool Instagram, you probably know that today (and every Thursday) is Throwback Thursday.

American City and County recently reported that a study performed by the National League of Cities found that voters trust the local level of government more than the other two tiers of government - state and federal.

With a new year comes new design trends. OK, I know it’s April, but it’s never too late for good design! This month I’d like to discuss a few trends that the design department here at CivicPlus has noticed are becoming some of the standards for modern web design. By keeping these four ideas in mind, you can create a government website that is easy to use, will stand the test of time, and most importantly, is designed with the user in mind.

Use of mobile devices is here to stay and its increasing. Mobile government is an imperative form of government-to-citizen communication; is your government website prepared?

According to the Pew Internet Project, 45 percent of American adults have a smart phone and 31 percent of adults own a tablet computer. However, the Digital Community Engagement Assessment found that only 29 percent of local government websites are optimized for mobile devices. 

Build it and they will come.

That's what we would all like to think, right? If we invest in an attractive, engaging government website, citizens will flock to the site. 

To me, digital community engagement is like most relationships. It involves two-way communication, interaction and transactions between two entities - in this case, a government and its citizens. And like most relationships, the first step is to make yourself accessible to the other party.