Oct. 21, 2004
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.
Location: City of Overland Park
(Meetings alternate monthly between MARC
in Kansas City and the City of Overland Park, KS.)
Attendance
City of Gladstone , MO. ............... Kelli Behr
City of Kansas City ,
MO. ............ Rich Lovett
City of Overland Park , KS ........... Chris Audano,
Randy Ellis, and Susan Waters
City of Shawnee , KS ................. Sonya
Fendorf
Jackson County , MO.................. Thad Thomas, Sue Romine, Dan
Davis and Joe Tanner
Johnson County , KS .................. Erica Reynolds
and Karen Sorensen
The September minutes were approved. Chris Audano introduced the presenters.
Revize Content Management Software by Idetix Software Systems
Via a telephone
conference call, Joe Nagrant and a co-worker began with an introductory slide
show (http://revize.idetix.com/nagrant/RevizeScreenShotDemo040926.ppt) followed
by a demo of their software, Revize. The software was featured at Idetix’s
vendor booth at our recent Webmaster Conference. Idetix has already worked
closely with many county and city governments. One customer
is the City of Olathe.
Idetix started in 1996 and developed a complete set of Internet and intranet application templates specifically built to help counties and cities present information, solicit information and provide services, including e-commerce solutions. This set of templates is called the Revize eGov–Portal for County and City Governments.
Idetix’s initial research focused on two questions: 1) What types of information do residents call in about on a daily basis, and 2) What kind of information are they expecting?
Here’s what local government personnel wanted,
according to the survey:
Most had had a Web site for at least 4-5 years and wanted a new design with
improved functions.
A template system was desired with an architecture that included 6-8 styles so after a year they could touch up the template and not worry about migrating the entire content.
Easy-to-use content editors are needed which require little training to use.
Of course, residents would be able to easily navigate and reach the information they’re seeking.
Each department must be able to participate in keeping the content up-to-date.
Ultimate goal: to increase communication with residents and to market their Web sites.
It’s been shown that Web sites can reduce foot traffic by at least 25 percent. Also, a town with a population of 11,000 can save as much as $10,000 in printing, paper, toner and postage; not including employees’ time.
Here’s what residents wanted:
Within two clicks, they want to reach
the information they are looking for.
From each department page, they want links to up-to-date forms, events, programs and services.
65% are still using dial-up, so they don’t want flashy sites that are frustratingly slow to load.
Revize Web Content Management System enables non-technical personnel to quickly update and deploy Section 508 compliant Web pages, improve management and control of entire sites, and reduce costs associated with web development and ongoing maintenance.
What’s included
Revize includes 25+ templates enabled to facilitate
updating information by non-technical content owners using fill-in-the-blank
forms and wizards. Local governments can use these templates out of the box
or modifiy them using Macromedia’s Dreamweaver MX.
Numerous other features are listed at http://www.idetix.com/product_features.html.
Cost
In most cases, the Revize eGov solution costs $25,000 but can range
from $15,00 to $45,000. This includes:
- Unlimited web developers
- Unlimited non-technical content editors
- Unlimited administrators
- Unlimited Web sites (i.e., URLs)
- Unlimited Web pages
- Training
- First year's annual maintenance and support
Revize comes with Dreamweaver extensions, an embedded relational database and a web server. No additional software is required.
Attendees’ questions included:
Mode of Delivery? Either as a packaged
application or a hosted application (ASP).
Target business size? Less than 100 users to greater than 500+ users.
Operating Systems Supported?
- SCO UNIX/PC UNIX
- Windows XP/2000/NT
- Linux
- Solaris/Sun OS
More information on Revize:
Product URL: http://www.idetix.com
Case Studies: http://www.idetix.com/customercasestudies.html
Overview Revize eGov: http://www.idetix.com/freeform2_T8_R4.html
Old Business
2004 Government Webmasters Post-conference Update
Ninety percent of the 2004 conference attendees remarked on their evaluation forms they would come again to the conference. More details will be provided at the next MAGWeb meeting.
Upcoming Meeting Topics
A casual meeting was suggested for next month. Topics
would include the final conference tabulations, possibly testing a copy of
Revize, meeting at an earlier time, election of officers, and a MARC-related
update.
(Postscript: it was decided later that the November meeting topic will be cascading style sheets (CSS).
Next Meeting
Nov. 18, 2004, MARC.
Meeting minutes: Karen Lynne Sorensen, Johnson County Wastewater