May 21, 2001
Please feel free to invite some of your colleagues from your or another
city/county if you think it would benefit them to be part of our group!
Please help
The MAGWeb Web site is homeless! We need to buy a subscription
to an ISP to host it. We will be passing the hat at our June 18 meeting for a donation of $10 from those who were
absent or didn't have the cash today. (Receipts will be available in case you want to seek reimbursement.) $70
has already been raised. KCMO has generously offered to pay for our domain name registration at kcmagweb.org.
It was brought up that we might consider having annual dues for things such as this.
PTI Conference Update from Rich Lovett
About 135 webmasters from cities and counties attended this year's
one-day conference sponsored by Public Technology, Inc., in Atlanta. Next year the conference will go back to two
days in length. Four issues were discussed heavily by the group:
1. Portals -
Lots of cities are wanting to become portals. Miami/Dade County and New York City gave demonstrations of their portals.
2. Site management
- Denver spent $200,000 to develop its own site management software. It was quite a task as they have identified
over 200 content providers. The software has resulted in the Web site growing to more than 43,000 pages. It is
an ASP program and you can get a free copy of it by e-mailing IT director Ms. Byron West at bwest@ci.denver.co.us.
3. Accessibility.
- Doug Wakefield of the Federal Access Board gave a presentation on what the section 508 requirements are for Web
site access by the disabled. He mentioned two free programs created by Temple University, LIFT and WAVE, that check
accessibility on Web sites You might also try downloading a screen reader to see how it will read your site. Homepage
Reader (from IBM) and Window Eyes (from Microsoft) are two that he mentioned. He emphasized that for tables, use
row and column labels (headers).
4. Web identity issues
- Arlington Co., VA, had its Web identity stolen by a copycat site. The site stole the county's seal, content and created an identical look, confusing visitors. A porn site bought a domain name similar to that of the City of Scottsdale, AZ. Ways to minimize
your city's risk include buying up similar domain names and copyrighting all your site content. Just putting the
copyright notice on each page is all you have to do. There is no fee or registration process to copyright intellectual
property.
Guest Speaker
Bill Geary
Assistant City Attorney, City of Kansas City, MO
Bill gave us a very informative presentation on policy and legal
issues surrounding government Web sites. He suggested:
- Take the "legalese" out of your policies.
- Put copyright notices on each page. For older pages use the year it was created - current year: © 1996-2001.
- Don't link to illegal acts. (the example he gave was a DVD streaming program)
- Sponsorships on your web site can be dangerous. You may have to allow anyone to sponsor unless you have written a comprehensive policy prior to accepting any sponsorships.
- City pages for elected officials are municipal property and cannot be used for political purposes. This should be explained in a policy adopted by the City Council.
- If you link to an incumbent's private Web site, you must link to all running for office.
- Set content-neutral parameters for linkage.
- Past dockets cannot contain information about not guilty or dismissed cases; they are closed records and you could be in violation of the Sunshine Law.
- Pages regarding ballot and bond issues shall have facts only, no marketing or language seeking to influence the vote.
- Don't use copyrighted graphics, music or articles from another site or scan them from a magazine/book. This is all intellectual property and you need to gain permission and/or pay royalty fees.
- COPA (Children's Online Privacy Act) states that you cannot collect personal information from children under 13 years of age. There should be verification by a parent or guardian.
Our next meeting will be held at 9 a.m. on June 18 at the MARC offices. Sonya Fendorf of Shawnee will share the pros and cons of Microsoft FrontPage. Barbara Hensley of MARC will assist her with a comparison between FrontPage and Macromedia DreamWeaver. On July 16 we will discuss different methods of marketing our Web sites.
If you have any ideas for future topics or guest speakers, please share
them with Rich Lovett, KCMO, (rich_lovett@kcmo.org) or Susan Waters, Overland Park (sjwaters@opkansas.org).
SJW