Can your community reach you through your website? You might be surprised. A recent survey shows that only half of City of Los Angeles neighborhood councils with websites offer information explaining how community residents can participate. This is just one of the findings of a white paper on the usability of neighborhood council websites in the City of Los Angeles prepared by Urban Insight, a professional technology consulting firm.
The City of Los Angeles system of neighborhood councils was created by the city's new charter in 1999 to increase citizen participation in government and provide neighborhoods increased representation in local government decision-making.
Urban Insight is a technology consulting firm based in Los Angeles. In 2009, Urban Insight was hired by the Mar Vista Community Council (MVCC), one of the City's 89 neighborhood councils, to help this active neighborhood council develop its new website. Separately, Urban Insight was hired by the City of Los Angeles Department of Neighborhood Empowerment (DONE), the Los Angeles city department that coordinates neighborhood councils, to rebuild its own website.
This study was funded solely by Urban Insight in order to understand the state of technology being used by neighborhood councils in the City of Los Angeles, we performed an evaluation of the websites for each of the City's neighborhood councils. We used the City of Los Angeles Department of Neighborhood Empowerment's (DONE) website to identify the website address of each neighborhood council website. We performed our evaluation between April, 2009 and May, 2009.
To collect data, we evaluated each neighborhood council website against 30 criteria that we understand from our work are important for neighborhood council community outreach and communication. Selected criteria we evaluated include existence of a mission statement, meeting agendas, meeting minutes, email notification lists, neighborhood boundary maps, and whether the website is accessible to people with disabilities. The full list of data criteria against which we evaluated neighborhood websites is included as appendix A.
Of the 89 neighborhood councils listed on the DONE website, 63 (75%) had a website at the time we performed our evaluation. Following are observation about the 63 neighborhood councils with websites:
Figure 1: Percent of Neighborhood Council websites with Basic Information
Figure 2: Percent of Neighborhood Council websites with Specific Features
While knowing exactly the last time a website is updated can be difficult, we looked at the last time news and meeting agendas were updated on the website as a proxy for frequency of website updates.
Weekly |
Monthly |
Quarterly |
Annually or less often |
Total |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
News |
2% (1) |
66% (31) |
19% (9) |
13% (6) |
47 |
Agendas |
4% (2) |
84% (41) |
4% (2) |
8% (4) |
49 |
Figure 3: Neighborhood Council Website Update Frequency
Accessibility: Although we did not test for full accessibility, only 7% (5) of websites we evaluated passed Section 508 automated validation testing using HiSoftware®'s "Cynthia Says" automated testing tool. (http://www.cynthiasays.com/).
Reproducible URLs: Of the 67 neighborhood councils with websites, 69% (46) offered web page addresses (URLs) that were clean and reproducible. For example, the web address for this neighborhood council's committee page would be difficult to share:
By contrast, the Hollywood Hills West Neighborhood Council's clean URL for its committee page is:
Multilingual Content: Four (8%) neighborhood council websites provided at least some multilingual content. In most cases this was a single page offered in Spanish with basic information about the neighborhood council, with several links. An example is The North Area Neighborhood Development Council's Spanish language page:
Types of Websites: Although the majority of websites we evaluated were building using static HTML, PHP or ASP, we found a variety of content management systems in use. Where we could identify the content management system, we found the following systems in use: Joomla (5), Drupal (4), Expression Engine (2), CuteNews (1), Velarium (1).
There are a wide range of neighborhood council websites, from unfortunately-designed single page sites that have not been updated for months, to sophisticated websites with several interesting and useful features. During our evaluation, we identified several websites that the authors feel are examples of thoughtful and useful neighborhood council websites:
Increase use of websites: One of the primary goals of neighborhood councils is communication, and the website is the most affordable and efficient form of outreach to residents. While it is commendable that 75% of neighborhood councils have a website, the additional 25% of neighborhood councils who do not maintain a website should be incentivized to provide information about their council
Increase consistency of information: The lack of basic information (mission, contact information, boundaries, board members, agendas, minutes) among a significant percentage of council websites suggests that there may be value in creating a set of minimum expectations for neighborhood council websites. Additionally, many neighborhood councils would benefit from stating in plain language one or more current initiatives the neighborhood council is working toward, and how residents might help. For example: "We are working to remove the mega-billboard on the corner of A and B streets. To help us achieve our goal, please send the …"
Good use of email notification: We were gratified to see that 70% of neighborhood councils with websites offered the ability to visitors to sign up for email notification. Email notification is likely to be a highly cost-effective way to regularly contact busy residents and potential members. Unfortunately, on some sites the ability to sign up for email notifications is difficult to find; the authors recommend making the email notification sign up prominent on the website.
Include neighborhood information to attract more visitors: To increase visitors to the website, neighborhood councils may also consider including a section of the website with basic neighborhood information, including neighborhood alerts, a list of local resources, information about Neighborhood Watch or similar resources, and community events not directly related to board meetings
Use professional support for websites: It appears that many of the council websites were developed by volunteers or hobbyists. While this is commendable, it is often difficult to have consistent and sustained participation by volunteers when a high level of technical proficiency is involved. Neighborhood Councils are allocated an annual budget of $50,000 per year. It may be reasonable for a neighborhood council to expect to spend 10% of their budget on website maintenance by hiring a consultant or firm to provide ongoing updates and support.
Consider using web content management systems: There is a broad trend in the field of website development to adopt web content management systems. Web content management systems enable authorized non-technical users to more easily update a website using only a web browser, which has the practical impact of helping keep the website regularly updated with current information . Given the prevalence of affordable or free web content management systems, we feel that adoption of web content management systems is likely to enable more frequent website updates by a wide range of neighborhood council members, rather than by a single "webmaster". An example of a website developed using open source Drupal web content management system is the Hollywood Hills West Neighborhood Council: www.hhwnc.org .
Offer Search: 70% of neighborhood council websites lack the ability for visitors to enter one or more keywords to search the website. Google offers the free Google Custom Search Engine (CSE). CSE harnesses the power of Google to create a customized search that can be easily installed on a website.
Cater to Los Angeles' diverse population: Asking Neighborhood Councils with limited resources to offer a website that is accessible to people with disabilities and available in multiple languages is unrealistic. However, given the diversity of Los Angeles residents, neighborhood councils may consider reaching out to non-English speaking constituents by offering a few key pages in one or two other languages other than English. Additionally, a few modest modifications to a website can go a long way toward making website content accessible to people with disabilities.
Use interactive maps: In this generation of interactive Google Maps, we expected to find a variety of neighborhood councils taking advantage of Google's "My Maps" feature to build interactive maps of their council boundaries to enable residents to determine if the resident is a member of the council. However of the 53 councils with maps of their boundaries, only 4% (2) were using Google Maps. 12 (23%) were using PDFs and 74% (39) were using some form of image to display map boundaries. An example of a neighborhood council using Google Maps to display its neighborhood boundaries using an interactive map is the Mid City West Community Council: www.midcitywest.org/pages/map.asp .
Increase photo and video sharing: Given the accessibility of low cost or free photo and video sharing websites such as Flickr, YouTube and blip.tv, and the proliferation of affordable photo and video capture devices such as digital cameras and Flip Minos, there is opportunity to use the website to present images and video of important discussions during meetings, presentations, community events and even virtual community tours.
Increase integration with social networking tools: Given the growing accessibility and use of Social Networking, there appears to be an opportunity for neighborhood councils to use tools like Facebook and Twitter to bring together news and observations about the community on a neighborhood council websites.
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