League Web Advisory Service

New Jersey municipalities have embraced the Internet as a way to cost effectively deliver services and communicate with their residents. While many of the issues confronting municipal web sites have remained unchanged over the past decade, many new issues have arisen as municipal web sites seek to change their web sites from mere signposts on the Internet to full delivery service vehicles.

The League is uniquely positions to assist municipalities in this journey with its Web Advisory Service. This "FREE" service is designed to assist municipalities with a variety of web site and Internet issues, regardless of whether your municipality has an existing web site or is considering developing one. Advice and answers to basic questions in this telephone-based service includes the following elements:

• Advise on constructing or redesigning web sites for municipalities who want to build a new web site or re-construct an existing site.
• Advise on domain name (your web address) issues; e.g., who owns your domain name, should you use .com, .org, .gov, .us or others. Should you register multiple domains? How do you transfer a domain from a volunteer who registered it?
• Advise municipalities on e-commerce issues and new functionality. ACH payments vs credit cards.
• What about e-mail policies and use of non-municipal email addresses for elected and appointed officials?
• Records retention issues for email and web content.
• Recommend web development software tools.
• Recommend Internet web policies (privacy and disclaimer statements).
• Advise municipalities on making their web sites accessible by people with disabilities.
• Advise municipalities on elements to be included when issuing an RFP or RFQ for the development and maintenance of a web site.
• Placing audio and video of meetings online, streaming live vs. on-demand.
• Online Forms library and interactive vs printable forms. How do you decide which to use?
• What about text messaging and pod casts?

Sample Acceptable Use of MUNICIPALITY Information Resources (Internet and Website) policy for Municipalities (WORD and PDF) (Provided by City Connections LLC)

Web site audits, web hosting, backup, and maintenance for web projects and review of start-up web site design are available at discounted rates for League members.

To use the service contact:
The League's Bureau of Municipal Information at (609) 695-3481 ext. 120