There has is a “healthy” online discussion among Austin netizens about the latest RFP and (retracted) contract award for the sorely needed update to the City of Austin website. Links: Omar Gallaga’s digital savant blog on Austin360, Sarah Coppola’s statesman.com City Beat Blog. I added the following comment to each of their blogs today:
I’m glad to see that the COA is delaying the vote on the site redesign. I commend Omar for originally surfacing this story, and for sticking with the comment thread. That this discussion is happening in the open is great. How many other COA RFP-to-contract award processes face this much netizen light of day?
Ideally, the forum for a discussion like this should be hosted by the city (irony intended). And, any online forums hosted by the city should also allow for reg’d participants to not just compose/comment, but also vote up other posts/comments too (Whitehouse.gov did this just today in their first online presidential town hall meeting – a watershed event in government 2.0).
I’m starting to enumerate functional requirements for the redesign now. Where is the RFP? Can anyone share a link to the original RFP? I can’t readily find it (or much of anything) on the current COA site. (update: Omar has added a link to the original RFP at the end of his post)
One comment mentions that the RFP did not specifically require Plone/Zope as the platform. Can anyone confirm this? If true, then where is this requirement coming from? As a tax paying Austinite though, I am very pleased that at least a Free/OSS platform strategy is in play.
I hope the current RFP (or the new one now that “the city’s new communications director and new chief information officer need more time to review options for the project”) will not be limited to functional requirements that facilitate business us usual. It should also define requirements that open visibility into the business of the COA in new ways, allowing for online interaction and feedback from residents in ways that currently aren’t possible today. As whitehouse.gov demonstrated today, net based social media is creating a whole new paradigm.
Heck – we are home to the most important new media/tech interactive conference in the world today (SXSWi). Wouldn’t it be great if there was a panel discussion in next year’s SXSWi agenda like this?… “City Government 2.0: Come to this panel to learn how the City of Austin designed and implemented their widely acclaimed interactive city government web site.” …with the panel comprised of the our Mayor, the COA CIO, and leaders of the *AUSTIN BASED* firm that led the successful and widely emulated project.
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