Pilot Project to Expand E-Government to Cities, Counties

By Williams, Walt

CHARLESTON – Imagine being able to go the Web the next time you want to find out where the next city council meeting will be or how to contact your local elected officials. Both options already are available to many people, although not necessarily those living in West Virginia.

A recent survey by the nonprofit Community Connect Foundation found that about half of the state’s 55 counties had Web sites while only 20 percent of its municipalities had an online presence.

Kyle Schafer, the state’s chief technology officer, said his staff asked several local officials why their local governments didn’t have Web sites. They gave a two-part answer.

“One reason is they couldn’t afford it,” he said. “The second reason is they couldn’t see the value” in having a Web site.

That soon may change. The state, in cooperation with public high schools and three organizations, recently launched a new pilot program to get more city and county governments online by having students gather and put the information up for public viewing.

“What we are trying to do is eliminate that affordability aspect by saying, ‘Hey, the school will do this for you’… . There is really no cost for doing this program,” Schafer said.

The new program, only recently finalized, soon will be launched in six counties: Hancock, Hampshire, Braxton, Logan, Boone and Nicholas. Among the participants are the Community Connect Foundation, West Virginia Municipal League and West Virginia Association of Counties.

High school students will be recruited to gather information about their local governments as part of their civics or computer classes. They then will use software provided by NIC Inc. – a Kansas company currently redesigning the state government Web site – to upload that information to the Web.

In most cases, the students won’t be designing the Web sites themselves, just gathering information to put online. That information may include interviews with elected officials or government contact information.

“They are finding out who their city officials are, who their county officialsare,” said Marcel Fortin, vice chairman of the Community Connect Foundation. Each school participating in the project will receive a laptop, a digital camera and a camcorder, he said. The reason is students will be asked to gather pictures and videos of community events, from public meetings to parades, to draw viewers to the Web sites.

“The biggest obstacle we see is we can have a very good and robust site, but if we don’t get people there, it’s useless,” he said.

A total of $48,000 has been set aside for the project, half of its coming from a grant from the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation and the rest coming from the West Virginia Office of Technology in the form of a grant and in-kind contributions.

Copyright State Journal Corporation Feb 1, 2008

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