Creating a Town Municipal Webpage on a Volunteer Basis
Following recent articles about the official town web page, some of you have asked whether Norfolk needs another web page, and if so, whether we could build an official town web page at less cost than a commercial web-design company.
To answer the first question: Yes, the town should have an official web page that is owned and controlled by the town, which would ideally not overlap this community page but be complemented by it. Information on the official page could include a Who's Who in town government and how to contact them, the terms of various officials/board members and the charter/objective of each board, an up-to-date listing of upcoming meetings and their agendas, and notices from various town departments.
In response to the second question: Putting together such a page would be more work than one person could do on a volunteer basis, but it would certainly not be out of the reach of a committee of interested and qualified volunteers. In such a situation, the role of web committee members would be to help develop an outline for the page content and format, and then to post information provided by town officials on a regular basis.
The advantage of us residents doing it ourselves is two-fold; control, and cost. A town web committee would be more accessible for input, could represent the town interests better, and would lead to more participation by town residents in the on-line presence of our town. As to cost, IT outsourcing is not inexpensive, considering that skilled webmasters and sysadmins make upwards of 75,000 a year, and that maintaining this site takes me between 2 and 10 hours a week now that things have settled down to routine, and took 10 to 20 the first few months when I was setting things up.
We, the couple behind NorfolkNet, have the skills to set up an account and build an outline of a municipal web page, and we're willing to offer our time on a volunteer basis. The exact nature of this page is still not precisely defined, but something like the Medfield home page would be a good initial target to aim for, though the many sophisticated features mentioned in the 1/25 Norfolk Press article are also within our present technical capability.
Would any of you be interested in helping out with the effort? Ideally, it would take a mix of people with a variety of skills and interests, not only technical, but artistic, creative and administrative as well.