The document discusses the history and evolution of the City of St. Louis Community Information Network (CIN) website from 1994 to 2006. It provides details on funding sources from grants and partnerships in early years, and an integrated approach within the new City IT Agency starting in 2003. The document also examines challenges around balancing community-centric services with municipal functions and transitioning to next generation systems.

1. Municipal website, Community
website, or both?
The City of St. Louis
Community Information Network
http://stlouis.missouri.org
Sonya Pelli, Manager Internet Services,
City of St. Louis ITSA
City of St. Louis, Missouri
March 2006

2. CIN Timeline
milestones funding
1994  WWW and Enterprise Community Grant
Grants:
1995  First CIN website is live Enterprise Community
 MIT, WU, Coro Fellows… Missouri Express
Corporation for Public
1997  Neighborhood web pages, community dial-up Broadcasting
services, and not-for-profit web hosting
OJJP Ounce of Prevention
1998  Focus on Government content EPA > CERP
>>>
1999  CIN becomes official website for City of St. Louis
>>>
2003  CIN operations integrated in new City IT Agency
City general revenue
2005  Efforts to merge systems conflicts with
Community-based services
2006  Next Generation web presence

3. Original Philosophy
 Community centric information
 Public participation/involvement features
 Capacity building, promoting early adoption of web
 Dial-up
 HTML training
 Free web hosting
 Privacy statements
 Accessibility
 Early Portal approach
 Ease of access to government data (dynamic
content generation)

4. The Early Years: Citizen and Government
Outreach and Support
Community
 Neighborhood Web Fairs
 Neighborhood Web Site Coordinators
 ISP Services
 E-lists
 News Archives and other databases access
 HTML Classes as a way to community content
Government
 Same outreach as community, hosting, HTML
classes, etc.

5. CIN Then and Now
Early Adoption of Portal Approach
>>> CIN in 1997 >>> CIN in 2006

6. Funding issues
 Outside grants and inter-departmental
collaboration primarily funded all of CIN from
1995-2003
Pros: creativity, interesting collaborations, fastest
implementation
Cons: fiscal insecurity, staff morale issues, difficulty to
implement a coordinated web strategy
 General revenue assumed full funding as of
January 2004
Pros: basic fiscal needs addressed
Cons: more red tape, difficulty pursuing grants, creativity
and out-of-the box thinking constrained, more political,

7. Examples of Internet-Based Mapping made possible through
outside grant funds
Map & Data Portal. The Maps & Data section of the Community Information
Network (CIN) web site, serves as an interactive website that assembles and maps
census 2000 data that can be used in neighborhood research by residents,
community leaders, businesses and government. Users can map data by a City
address or by selected geography and display census variables, point data, and
geographic boundaries.
Web address - <http://stlcin.missouri.org/mapportal/>
GeoStlouis. This is a prototype developed by staff of the Planning & Urban
Design Agency. Users can obtain parcel based information available from
disparate sources and tie the data to on-line mapping. This system will be most
useful once a data integration effort is completed.
Web address - <http://stlcin.missouri.org/citydata/>
Community Environmental Resource System (CERP). This project was a
joint initiative with the East-West Gateway Coordinating Council to develop an
environmental monitoring on-line mapping system. Maps and data for vacant
buildings, lead, illegal dumping, and brownfields are available for the City of St.
Louis and the City of East St. Louis.
Web address -<http://stlcin.missouri.org/cerp/data.cfm>
Map St. Louis History. This is also known as the “Mound City of the
Mississippi” web site. This is a joint effort with the Planning and Urban Design
Agency’s Cultural Resources Office and Research Division. The site chronicles
the history of St. Louis back from the 1700s to present times. Users can use
the interactive map to located historic assets.
Web address - <http://stlcin.missouri.org/history/beta1a/>
4/2/2010 7

8. Frequently Mentioned Cities
Albuquerque Phoenix, AZ
http://www.cabq.gov/ http://phoenix.gov/
Minneapolis San Diego
http://www.ci.minneapolis.mn.us/ http://www.sandiego.gov
New York City Seattle
http://www.nyc.gov http://www.seattle.gov/
Source: Center for Digital Government, Best of the Web competition

9. Ongoing Issues
Municipal website vs. community network
Interface design
Standards (design, metadata, taxonomy)
Usability
Interoperability
Evolving best practices
Educating up
Fine Balance between internal staff and
hired consultants

10. The Importance of Standards
W3C Standards
 Accessibility - http://www.w3.org/WAI/ and
http://www.section508.gov/
 Design - http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/
 Mobile - http://www.w3.org/Mobile/
Interoperability for government
 Fed Gov Standards & Guidelines http://www.xml.gov/
and http://xml.gov/standards.asp
 Dublin Core Metadata Standard http://dublincore.org/
 UK Example: Integrated Public Sector Vocabulary
http://www.esd.org.uk/standards/ipsv/

11. Standards, con’t
Why it matters?
 Good public policy > standards facilitate the finding,
sharing and management of information
 Pragmatic > increasingly a criteria for funding
 Efficiency > ability to share data (inter-departmental,
inter-agency, ….)
 Liability > ADA Compliance
 Clarity when working with consultants

12. Example: Acquisition of a CMS
General process Pitfalls
 Business goals & strategies  Lack of clear direction from the
start
 Budgetary constraints
 Too many cooks in the kitchen,
 Identification/structure of
delegation failures
requirements
 Process shapes and change
 RFI > select short list
requirements
 RFP
 Failure to involve all
 Vendor product stakeholders
evaluation/selection
 Difficulties of conveying
 Contract and specific scope complex considerations to non-
technical decision makers
 Personalities can drive the
process (one member can undo
months of work)

13. Next Steps for CIN
 Content Management Solution
 Streamline content production and delivery
 Homogeneous look & feel
 Interaction with other applications
 End of legacy community services
 Dial-up
 Web hosting for not-for-profits
 Still TBD
 Web hosting for neighborhoods
 E-lists and other value-added services
 Extension of web tools to community (RSS, wikis, blogging,
etc.
 More Community Based Collaborations

14. Thank You!
Contact
Sonya Pelli
Manager Internet Services and
Community Information Network
City of St. Louis Information Technology Services Agency
e: pellis@stlouiscity.com
v: 314 622-3400 x258
Web: http://stlouis.missouri.org