Local government web sites are in my view designed to thwart attempts by the average citizen to engage government. Their sites are designed to promote the views of the sitting government & benefit themselves, not to engage the public in consultation, or seek feedback. If local governments of the future are intent on engaging the public in consultation, and working for the betterment of the citizenry, they may wish to consider changing the way they use the internet. Citizens today do not have time to go to counsel meetings, fill out mail in ballots, or spend countless hours on the phone playing telephone tag with folks on city council.

Lee, you make some very good points. At CivicPlus, our goal with every website we develop is to push the idea of citizen engagement to the forefront. We have designed tools specifically for that reason (Customer Request Tracker, Notify Me & Community Voice are three examples that come readily to mind) and we really want our clients to engage their citizens. We firmly believe that this will benefit the community as a whole and provide the tools to keep that community moving in a positive direction. If your local government website doesn’t give you the tools to interact, find out who to contact and let them know that you wish to utilize the website to communicate with them. Send that same message to everyone at your local government until you get a response. You may have to do it more than once, but keep after it. Jerry Schmidt gschmidt@civicplus.com