Joplin Hackathon

CivicPlus Helps Joplin Rebuild from the Website Up 

The City of Joplin’s new website launched in May to cheers and congratulations after more than two dozen CivicPlus programmers, content specialists, designers and Joplin city officials worked tirelessly to rebuild the city’s website in a compressed three-week timeframe.

Driven to launch the site before the May 22nd “Day of Unity” that commemorated the one-year anniversary of the EF-5 tornado that ravaged the city, CivicPlus, the nation’s leading developer of local government websites, donated the website to aid the city’s recovery. The company sponsored a Hackathon in Joplin the last weekend in April to jump-start the process.

Nine teams of Midwest designers and programmers worked to develop innovative solutions for Joplin’s new site in three areas: overall web design, functionality for emergency management and functionality for community engagement. CivicPlus developers and Joplin city officials incorporated the best ideas into the new site, which now serves as Joplin’s digital town hall.

“Rebuilding Joplin is more than just bricks and mortar,” explained Joplin Mayor Melodee Colbert-Kean. “CivicPlus has helped us rebuild Joplin’s digital home and brought new ideas to old ways of doing things. Their gift to our city is another example of The Miracle of the Human Spirit that so many volunteers have shown over this past year.”

CivicPlus is donating over a million dollars worth of services and support to the city, including its premium website package, best-practice training, 24/7 support and a waiver of annual maintenance and hosting fees, for as long as the city and CivicPlus remain in partnership.

“We did what we could to help a neighbor in need,” said CivicPlus CEO Ward Morgan. “We didn’t come to Joplin with hammers and nails. We came with laptops, headphones and a storehouse of knowledge about designing government websites. That’s how we could best contribute to the rebuilding of Joplin.”

CivicPlus built a number of features into the new site that will increase community engagement and enhance emergency management. Emergency Alerts and Alert Center features will provide an alert bar at the top of each website page to inform residents of active emergencies, as well as a permanent section on the homepage to notify citizens of information pertaining to an active alert.

Joplin residents also may sign up to receive non-emergency alerts and updates from the city via text or email, including project bid opportunities, job postings, calendar and news items.

Another feature, Citizen Request Tracker, facilitates two-way communication by giving residents a convenient way to alert the city of issues or concerns that may range from reporting a streetlight outage to a neighborhood issue. Once an account is created, this interactive feature offers residents easy access to the city official assigned to handle that particular topic.

In addition, a “Joplin’s Voice” button gives residents an open forum for dialogue on topics that matter to them. Ideas and opinions can be voted up or down, and the city has a chance to enact ideas based on feedback.

Morgan explained that the website will continue to grow in terms of functionality and design. “Joplin’s site will not be a static presence on the Internet,” he said. “It will be a constantly expanding and growing platform that will continue to offer citizens more ways to connect with their government.” Joplin residents and visitors can take a tour of the city’s new website at http://www.joplinmo.org.




Little Apple Hackathon

CivicPlus and Manhattan Unveil Website, Commitment to Community Engagement
Competition results in refurbished government website for City of Manhattan, Kansas

Three months after government website designers were brought together to reinvent its website, CivicPlus’ hometown had a fresh look and a new platform to engage its citizens online. 

The new site was conceived when CivicPlus, the leading developer of local government websites in North America, and its longtime client, the City of Manhattan, hosted the Little Apple Hackathon in November of 2011. Teams of designers competed to create the Best Overall Design and Best New Functionality. “The ideas and designs that were created during the Hackathon were amazing,” said Marie Christian, information and program coordinator for the City of Manhattan. “It was obvious that the participants in the Hackathon worked hard, most of them around the clock, to create designs and functionality that were new and original. The new functionality that was created during the Hackathon was really exciting to see. Manhattan is lucky to be the home of a company that has such creative, forward thinking employees and management.”

Once judges from CivicPlus and various city departments selected the winning entries, the company set out to deliver a redesigned website to the city.

The result of the Hackathon is Manhattan’s new online hub of integrated e-government tools ranging from Citizen Request Tracker, to MuniMobile, to the recently updated Agenda Center and more. As CivicPlus continually upgrades its Government Content Management System (GCMS ™), the City of Manhattan will have these improvements automatically at no additional cost, on top of approximately $23,000 in redesign savings from participating in the Hackathon.

The new site uses a new domain, www.cityofmhk.com. The winning design elements included a new logo for the city, enhanced graphics to showcase the beauty of the community as well as simplified main navigational links. With the new site, citizens are no longer redirected to an outside site to watch meetings online—CivicPlus Media Center broadcasts the meeting live on the website. “We, with the help of CivicPlus staff, have tried to create a site that will help guide our citizens to the information they need as quickly as possible,” Christian said.

“The City of Manhattan’s new website is a testament to their dedication to effectively engage and communicate with their citizens,” said Cole Cheever, the CivicPlus project manager who oversaw the design implementations. “As a long-time citizen of Manhattan, it was exciting to work with the city on developing a powerful communication tool that will benefit all residents and businesses.”