Aug. 18, 2005
Please feel free to invite some of your colleagues from your or another city/county if you think it would benefit them to be a part of our group.
Attendance
City of Gladstone , MO – Kelli Behr
City of Kansas City , MO - Rich Lovett,
John Sims and Jan Wilkinson
City of Overland Park , KS - Chris Audano, Randy
Ellis, and Susan Waters
City of Shawnee, KS - Sonya Fendorf and Roman Madrigal
Johnson County , KS
- Pat Loriaux, Anthony Oropeza, Erica Reynolds and Karen Sorensen
Mid-America
Regional Council - Barbara Hensley and Julie Wittman
Introductions
Barbara Hensley, chair, welcomed the attendees and self-introductions
were made. She also introduced our speaker, Bart Budetti, senior assistant
city attorney for Overland Park, KS.
Legal Issues for Local Government Web Sites
Bart answered questions that
MAGWeb members had sent in advance. He began by describing what a disclaimer
is and why there is a need for one on a Web site. A disclaimer is to inform
the person visiting your site that there are limits to the information being
provided. A disclaimer will protect your local government from a lawsuit. It
will also protect you from being held personally responsible for the information
or advice stated on the site. A disclaimer is especially important if the information
from your site is being used for legal purposes. For example, property titles
and records on a county clerk's Web site may or may not be up to date. From
a legal standpoint, the best disclaimer in one the visitor must read and click
past to proceed.
Other questions included:
- Linking to other Web sites, services and resources.
- Providing employment forms to the blind.
- Potential risks of posting items for sale on an employee intranet.
- Whether or not to archive Web pages.
The State of Kansas has a good set of guidelines for webmasters. Visit www.accesskansas.org/webmaster.
Other Business
Rich Lovett won this month’s drawing for a copy of Visual
Studio Tools from Microsoft.
The 2005 Government Webmasters Conference is scheduled for Sept. 21-23 in Denver. Registration is $175; 148 people have registered so far. Discounted rooms contracted through the Hyatt are all taken, although rooms are still available at a higher rate. Another hotel, the Wyndham, has rooms available at the government rate and is located within walking distance of the conference. More information about reserving a room at either of these hotels, registrating for the conference (it's easy to do and it's online), plus the conference's agenda and session topics (ranging from HTML and usable site design to creating online surveys, e-commerce options and more) is available at www.governmentwebmasters.org.
Next Meeting
Since several MAGWeb members will be attending the Denver conference
in September, our next meeting will be Oct. 20 at the Overland Park Police
Department.
Meeting minutes: Karen Lynne Sorensen, Johnson County Wastewater