Sept. 11, 2000
Kansas City metro area city/county government webmasters met September 11 at the American Royal Exposition building in the Governor's Room with 32 people present. This was the first meeting of the group.
Introductions
Rich Lovett of the City of Kansas City, Mo., called
the meeting to order and asked those present to introduce themselves and tell
what they hoped to gain from this meeting. A questionnaire was passed
out for everyone to fill out.
Votes
It was
voted by show of hands to continue meeting quarterly at a central location in
either the downtown area or at a community college. The choice of location depends partly on any fees the meeting site may charge. The
City of Overland Park will chair the next meeting. We will try to keep meetings within 90 minutes. We
decided that the host city will be responsible for taking the meeting minutes unless someone volunteers to do it
on a regular basis.
Name for the Group
No name was chosen. It was suggested that "government" and "area" or "metro"
should be part of the name to distinguish us from other webmaster groups and
to imply a regional focus. It
would also be nice if the acronym makes a word. Several suggestions were
made:
1. Kansas City Government Webmasters (KCGoWeb)
2. Webmasters of KC Area Governments (WKCAG)
3. KC Area Government Webmasters Alliance (KCAGWA)
4. KC Metro Area Government Webmasters (KCMAGWeb)
5. Regional Association of Government Webmasters (RAGWeb)
6. Webmaster Alliance of the Metro Area (WAMA)
7. Metro Area Technology Alliance (MATA)
8. Metro Area Municipal Webmasters (MAMW)
9. Government Metro Area Webmasters (GMAW)
10. Metro Area Governments Providing Information Electronically (MAGPIE)
Suggestions are still welcome and will be voted on at the next meeting.
Resources for Communicating With Each Other
Ken Davis of Countryside
offered to host and administer a listserv, Todd King of Johnson County offered
to host and administer a web site. Jody Craig of the Mid-America Regional Council said MARC
might be able to host both the web site and the listserv, but someone else would have to administer them. A
decision on these ideas was tabled until the next meeting so it can be ascertained that these agencies are willing
to offer the services.
Role of Mid-America Regional Council
Information on the Regional
Information Technology Managers Assn. (RITMA) was part of the handouts. RITMA
is sponsored by MARC. It was decided that RITMA's goals were not the same as ours; therefore we should
remain a separate entity. If we discover that the two groups' interests overlap, we will offer to meet with
them and discuss, but we would like to remain mostly web-centered.
Other Resources Useful to the Webmaster Group
A. Public Technology, Inc. (www.pti.nw.dc.us) -- City or county must be a member to use PTI's services
B. Virginia Local Government Web Alliance (www.vlgwa.org) -- A webmaster group like ours.
C. www.e-gov.com
D. National Assn. of Counties (www.naco.org)
Suggested Issues to Discuss at Future Meetings
A. Ways to use the Web to cut costs. Examples: online permits, scheduling Parks & Rec activities,
replacing mailed reports with a web page.
B. Interactive forms
C. Funding, staffing
D. FAQs to reduce phone calls
E. Legal issues (panel discussion?)
F. Legal impediments
G. Electronic commerce
H. Open records, privacy
I. Large site management
J. Making web sites multilingual and compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)
K. Domain name squatting and poaching
Suggested Guest Speakers
Rowland Cole, local attorney specializing
in Internet issues
Other Discussion
A. To meet ADA requirements, sites that are in a frameset need to find an alternative for the benefit of
screen reader software used by the visually impaired.
B. Sites can use Bobby (www.cast.org/bobby) to check a web site for ADA compliance.
C.. Photo releases -- are they needed for web pages?
D. Copyright issues -- Some entities are using a city's name in a URL, but the information being
provided is not actually provided by the city
Time and place of the next meeting will be announced.