Community Portals

From DoWire Wiki

Lead Editor(s): User:Peter Davison 2005

Community Portals:

Community portals, sometimes government-funded, present local content, community link directories, community event calendars, and more. They are designed in the public interest to make community content more accessible.

Summary: Local governments have found that community portals are an excellent method of engaging people, organisations and businesses in a dialogue of civic participation. Many of these community portals offer an opportunity to broaden the types of information being disseminated to local constituents and stakeholders.

Rationale and Objectives:

What can you use this feature for?

Acting as a mechanism to promote the role of the local economy in communities. Community portals have the potential to create jobs, promote local spending and generate revenue from sponsorship and advertising programs.

Providing a bridge between the promotion of local events and government initiatives. Events calendars and e-newsletters work to promote civic participation.

Facilitating interdepartmental and interagency collaborations such as: municipalities using library systems as a means for public internet access; municipal governments hosting community websites.

Why use it? (Compared to other options)

Community Portals creates opportunities for citizens to be a part of ICT strategies. This shows a direct correlation between investment and action plans.

Community Portals allow for a much broader range of services to be offered than tradition government websites. They are also able to attract new audiences that might not have otherwise been interested in civic participation.

Online community portals allow for the use of several different modes of communication such as text, images, PowerPoint presentations and audio or video clips.

Benefits - Describe the top benefits for each group

All Users: provides a central source of information
Citizens: allows for civic participation in government and private sector activities.
Councillors: highlight key issues and events to constituents plus the ability to learn about the ongoing community projects in a particular ward or constituency.
Local Administration: arms length funding enables government to be involved in a project without interfering with allocated staff resources.
Others (list special audiences): service users that would not normally be able to participate due to their socio-economic position have been able to benefit due to the link between the creation of community portals and the increased role of public access to the Internet.

Limitations and Cautions

If not properly funded for long-term sustainability, the content on many of these sites becomes irrelevant and outdated.
In order for community portals to compete with their market counterparts, there should be adequate allowances for training and development.
A consideration of contributing individuals and groups is necessary to maintain the legitimacy of a community portal. Every effort should be considered in order to develop a broad based stakeholder management strategy.

Successes ^{collected projects}

- Successful Implementations

Two or three key examples from at least two countries.

Example 1 Title: Our Brisbane
- Link: http://www.ourbrisbane.com/
- A Brisbane city council initiative created for citizens to inform them of an array of activities, services and organisations in Brisbane, Australia. This site is an excellent example of what can be accomplished by a combination of both lifestyle and government services. The site contains easy entry points to the daily on goings of the city including bus schedules, real estate information and movie listings backed by a series of permission based e-newsletters. According to a preliminary UN report, this site is considered to be at the forefront of proactive decision making with an elaborate network of business and community groups that includes a computer recycling program and a substantial training program that has introduced over 50,000 people to Internet technologies through the public library system.
- Background Information
  - Our Brisbane Promotional Material
    http://www.ourbrisbane.com/about/ourbrisbanecom.pdf
  - UN Preliminary Case Study: Brisbane, Australia

http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/un/unpan008856.pdf

- - Paid Search Clicks at ourbrisbane.com (Commercial Case Study)

http://www.decide-interactive.com/case-studies.html

- Contact Information:
  - Name: Anne Foley
  - Title: Project Manager
  - Email: Anna.Foley@team.ourbrisbane.com
  - Phone: 1300 134 199
  - Fax: 07 3403 7433

Example 2: Cities of Coquitlam and Port Moody
- Link: http://www.citysoup.ca
- The website citysoup.ca is an information and services gateway to the communities of Port Moody and Coquitlam. The site was launched in June 2003. The initial portal supported websites for more than 100 local businesses and community groups. The website documentation reveals that it "supplied a variety of eBooking, eRegistration and eCommerce tools to the municipalities, contained over 1,000 pages of information and generated more than 300 community calendar listings each month." This project has also been a crucial element in the overall ICT strategy that has seen community training programs and a strengthening of local broadband infrastructure.

- Background Information: (Optional)
  - View a short video about eCommunities and citysoup.net

http://meta.insinc.com/citysoup_meta/soup.asx

- - Creating a Citizen-Centric eCommunity - Lessons Learned From citysoup.ca

http://www.citysoup.net/NR/rdonlyres/AAD9EE2A-DE74-4B82-A56F-E066DED6E79E/30551/CreatingaCitizencentriceCommunity.pdf

Example 3: Wellington Community Network
- Link: http://www.wcn.net.nz
- Describe usage and results: This is a partnership created through the Wellington City Council, the Wellington library system and the Wellington Region 2020 Communications Trust. WCN is an electronic community network that provides website hosting, training and support to community groups and not-for-profit organisations in the Wellington region. The primary purpose of WCN is to use internet technologies to facilitate and promote the work of not for profit organisations (NFP) and individuals by providing an independent communications network that will help NFPs and citizens share information and which will expand opportunities for citizen involvement in decision-making.

- Contact Information:
  - Tim Jordan
  - Wellington Community Net Coordinator
  - Room 413, Level 4,
  - Harbour City Tower, Panama St.
  - Wellington New Zealand
  - 04 381 3335, 04 473 5757
  - wcnsupport(at)wgtn2020.org.nz

- Background Information:
  - Connecting Communities Conference Booklet

http://www.ceg.govt.nz/initiatives/docs/cc-conf-report.pdf

Further Information

Top Related "How to" Online Resources

From broader Internet community, not just government

Smart Communities Canada-A Guide to creating smart communities. Please see: http://198.103.246.211/documents/SC-Guide.pdf

Community Enabler-Intro to Sustainable Portals - Guidelines for portal planning. Please see:

http://docs.communitye.net/engage_adopt_sustain/guidelines_html

Portals in Practice: Experiences of establishing and operating portals. Document produced by the Norwegian Association of Local and Regional Authorities. Please see:

http://www.statskonsult.no/publik/notater/2002/n2002-01eng.pdf