looks nice. I see its all filled up with current day-to-day stuff, not just phone numbers and mission statements.

  I would like to see an option to get the press releases as an RSS feed. 

Worse than the old site, which was one of the worst city sebsite in America and the world.

Who paid for this low-intellect, worthless makeover, how much, and who made the money?

Find anything on the City of Cleveland website about lead poisoning - anywhere, any way - search on the site - go to the logical places...

Eventually, you may think to go to the Health department website, which is totally separate from the city website - where you may find a search result for "lead poisoning" or "GCLAC" but the links will be dead... but you may eventually stumble across "Lead Safe Living" under the "Environment" tab... if you really looked hard, and looked in the last place imaginable.

What a piece of shit effort - pure PR fluff for pure-pluff-Frank's re-election campaign - total waste of taxpayer funds and proof Cleveland IT leadership and the mayor are worse than worthless, being harmful and dangerous to the community! 

Disrupt IT

It won't be at the top of any lists, but it's 100 times more organized and understandable than the last one.

They've done a better job pulling things under one roof -- I'll bet a difficult thing for a city gov't that's already disjointed and struggling -- but it still seems quite pieced-together, both in vision and in technical construction.

Wow-yes to the notable absence of RSS feeds -- would especially be nice for the Press Release page.

Did you notice the Cleveland Crime Reports map? -- external site, but something I've been itching for.

Norm, the Cleveland Dept of Public Health is a separate site, but has a section of pages on Lead Safe Living. Also, the CMHA site has a Lead Safe Free Home Repairs link on the front page and more resources if you search CMHA for "lead".

It's a great improvement, but I'm worried that its piecemeal approach will lead to difficulty in upkeep, maintenance, expansion. Probably a starving web firm's dream, but not a taxpayer's.

  What did they use to construct the site?...How can you tell when there is an update to the site?  I have been concerned for sometime that no one quite knows where to go on line/television/radio to find out critical information pertaining to city services or emergency information.

I've been analyzing websites professionally and for personal purposes since the mid-1990s, using a combination of many methodoligies including ICE - Information Community Excellence - I developed with a group of global Fortune 50 clients' IT and Telecom management - global high tech leaders. I believe we came up with the best methodology in the world.

Around 2001 I applied this methodolgy to analyze the Economic Development function of the websites and leadership of the largest 50 cities in America (to really analyze a website effectiveness requires breaking the site down into many functions and processes and analyzing many aspects of each). Cleveland was the worst in America.

If someone wants to pay $10k or so I can tell you how we are really doing now - at a quick glance I'd say we have fallen farther behind the best cities and are still as bad as the worst - although we may be more responsive than in the past, which would be a big improvement.

If a group of people want to run through a simplified version of the ICE methodology and work together to analyze a group of cities for some aspect of Information Community Excellence, I'd be glad to do provide the methodolgy and training and run the analyses...

In the mean time, you can do your own snapshot analysis... look at the websites of a dozen cities you think are great places - pick a few things to look at like recycling, rainwater management, pre-K education, or such... something you know and care about (if we do a group analysis, we will pick one set of objectives) and grade each site from 0-5 for the aspects you look at. Pick a few aspects and grade each (my analysis included 1,000s of aspects). You'll soon realize which are best sites and cities and why.

I developed my methodology as part of a multi-company competitive benchmarking process, with a strong focus on best practices. So, in the process, you learn about all the cool stuff really great cities do, and you want to move away from Cleveland (which is exactly what I did last time I ran this analysis... and why I rant his analysis... winding-up in the San Francisco area). 

What does a best practice on the web of a best practice in a city look like?

If you are into urban food, and question my statement we are two years behnd best in class (where we should be), look at this link to Portland... http://www.portlandonline.com/osd/index.cfm?c=49224 

Look at the websites of great cities and learn about the programs of great cities, and wonder why we don't have them here! And realize what smoke local leaders are blowing up ourasses when they say they are being innovative oxcellent in any ways...

Some good places to start...

Austin: http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/

Baltimore: http://www.ci.baltimore.md.us/ 

Boston:  http://www.cityofboston.gov/

Cambridge:  http://www.cambridgema.gov/

Madison: http://www.cityofmadison.com/ 

Portland: http://www.portlandonline.com/

Seattle: http://www.seattle.gov/

Disrupt IT

  You just helped me make up my mind on which sister to visit for my long break.  Mosey Posey, I will be visiting you in Austin, soon. 

  Wow--Madison is way ahead of the game.  I just finished some local snow removal and was wondering to myself how a city like Cleveland could tap into young bodies to do the work???