Waltham City Hall Website Gets A New Look

WALTHAM, MA — Waltham City Hall has a new look online. If you were paying attention to the election campaign season you might remember that a number of new faces who hopped into the race to challenge incumbents noted they were frustrated with how to find information about anything from City Hall online.

Apparently, the folks at City Hall have been working on it. For more than a year, the IT crew has been working to upgrade the previous clunky system, they announced Tuesday online along with the new look that they caution is in still getting some tweaks.

"We believe this upgrade will not only be easier to navigate and use, but it will also will be accessible on any device and it will improve our overall communication and transparency with the public and our residents," Social Media Coordinator, Abby Auld and Director of I.T. Donald Aucoin posted in a joint announcement.

A quick look around the website showed that there's a link right on the landing page to a "who to contact if..." directory complete with phone numbers. That page has a link at the bottom to a general directory with phone numbers for each of the city departments listed in alphabetic order. A calendar on the landing page shows events and a drop down menu contains a list of departments with links to their own pages.

The email function is similar to the one that was there before. It takes you to an online form to fill out and send. No confirmation email is sent to the user. This is how Patch reached out to the IT director Tuesday morning. But he did not respond right away because the email forms aren't quite working right. Auld told Patch crews were working to fix that Wednesday and once that's up and running anyone who submits an email should get an auto response letting them know their email actually did go through.

"This discussion has been going on before I got here," said Auld, who came onto the IT team some three years ago now. "In the city this big it takes time to get things moving, we had to first to get a budget and then get it going."

But, for the past three years the web provider and the IT department have been in talks about an upgrade.

"Tech moves super fast now and our old site was extremely difficult to navigate and mobile site was just awful," she said. The turning point for the city was discovering that of the 2,000 who regularly come to the city website, 40 percent were landing on that navigation-challenged mobile site.

Auld said her team told the website provider ( Virtual Towns and Schools)that they wanted a more responsive and friendly platform with an eye toward mobile users. Some months and research later the new site is inspired by a mix of a "best of" neighboring municipality websites.

In addition to cleaning the site up for those who navigate it, the added a "most popular" feature along the side of the landing page. The links that show up there will change over time based on which pages are most searched. "It will be awesome to keep it relevant," she said.

The mayor's office was keen on making sure the calendars, one for events another for meetings were up front a center.

There's also some changes that have been made on the back end, making it easier for anyone from City Hall looking to post material, say, meeting agendas or minutes.

"We're still working out the kinks," she said. "But little by little," she said. But once the transition is finished in the next few days and those kinks are worked out, she said it will free up city hall to post more types of information.

"I hope a lot of people like it and find it easier to use and navigate. I think it will be a good step forward," she said.

Have any feedback or questions for those city officials? Send them to a feedback center.

Photo: Screen grab from the new website.