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Home My WebLink About2001 02 12 Regular A Bulletin Board on City Web Site " COMMISSION AGENDA ITEM A CONSENT INFORMATIONAL PUBLIC HEARING REGULAR X 2-12-01 Meeting MGR. jL/ fDEP(JfJ Authorization REQUEST:The Information Services Department requests direction from the Commission relative to agenda item packets being placed on City web site and starting a bulletin board on City web site. PURPOSE: To clarify what, if any, agenda item attachments are to be converted, scanned, manipulated, in order to be placed on the City's web site along with the agenda item. Also to clarify the Commission's direction on creation of a bulletin board on City web site. CONSIDERA TIONS: Issue #1: Can we put up entire agenda packets onto the web site, much as the School Board and Seminole County Government does? Information Services (I.S.) currently places Commission Meeting Agendas and minutes on the City web site in PDF format. Agendas and Commission Meeting Minutes are easily converted from Word documents to PDF documents and placed on our web site. We can also scan some documents in as GIF, TIF, or JPEG formats as needed I.S. reviewed Seminole County Govelnment's web site, as well as Seminole County School Board's web site, and spoke to web site personnel at both locations. Here is what I found: Seminole County Government currently places agenda item packets on their web site in pdf format (using Adobe Acrobat). However, the practice of putting up blueprints with Agenda Items has not been successful for them at all. Large maps are discouraged, although not prohibited, because of the large file size; this large file size is also sometimes prohibitive for users trying to download these files because of bandwidth restrictions. Small drawings of up to 8.5" X II" (legal size) can be placed on the web site fairly easily by scanning them into a pdf or other format such as gif, tif, or jpeg. Large maps in Arc View or Arc Info format can be saved as jpeg files or bmp files and then converted to html files and put up on the web. GIS maps are placed on their web site as HTML files which cannot be zoomed. However, they are ok for viewing as a picture. Seminole County School Board allows maps, drawings, and other documents to be placed on their web site only if they have been converted into the proper format. The large documents are really the only difficult part as documents of up to 8.5" X 11" can be easily converted or scanned. These larger types of documents such as drawings and maps are handled in one of two ways: 1. Some documents are photographed using a very high quality digital camera. The web person stressed "high quality" because the lower quality cameras will not produce the resolution that is needed when a user views the document. These documents are now just pictures instead of files that can be manipulated. Zooming these documents will lose clarity and picture quality. 2. The documents are supplied to I.S. in a standard digital format such as Autocad, Visio or a vector file which is not resolution dependent. The document is then converted through Corel Trace/Corel Draw, at which time it can be converted to a pdf file using Adobe. Items that are scanned are scanned through Adobe Capture. The largest size file that they scan is legal size. Issue #2: Can we create a way of allowing citizens comments and input such as a bulletin board? Currently, input can be given via email to contactus@winterspringsfl.org. The option of adding a City bulletin board raises a few questions: Would we have someone full time or part time reviewing and monitoring the bulletin board to make sure that postings are "City" related? Who would do this? Would this person be responsible for making sure all questions posted would get answered? Would the BB manager be responsible for editing people's comments? Watching for Commercial posts? Inappropriate Comments? Who determines this? Deleting unwanted posts? Censoring comments? You cannot easily control what someone posts to your BB until after it is posted. Our current web hosting company, MPI Net, can create a message forum for us on our web site which will give you just what you want. The programming cost for this is approximately $2,000-$2,500 and it can be easily done. FUNDING: There is no budget for adding a bulletin board o~ message forum to our City Web site. RECOMMENDATION: 1. I.S. recommends that Agenda Items, which are already in Word format, be placed on the City's web site, if that is the desire of the Commission. 2. I.S. asks that the Commission not require any large agenda item attachments be placed on the web at this time. Only items that are 8.5" X II" or smaller be scanned or converted into a useable format for our web site. Exception is if a large document is already available in a digital format that can be easily converted into a file small enough for users to download or easily view on their browser. 3. I.S. recommends that if the Commission chooses to have a bulletin board or message center on the City's web site, that we have our current web hosting service create a Message Forum for us, which will work just like a bulletin board service, and that the Commission approve an additional appropriation of $2500 to make this happen. If this is to happen, then I.S. also needs direction on each of the questions posed in Issue #2 under Considerations. IMPLEMENTATION SCHEDULE: Implementation of Agenda Items being placed on the City Web site and a Message Forum can begin as soon as approval is gained from the Commission. ATTACHMENTS: None COMMISSION ACTION: