New Town Website Makes Government More Transparent

Friday, May 18, the Town of Hopkinton Launches their new website . This date might not be as historic as the other dates you have memorized, but it will make your daily dealings with local government much easier; at least that's the goal of IT Director Chris McClure.

"Right now HCAM is running the town's website, so this will eliminate the bottleneck the information has to go through," McClure said. "It will allow everyone working in town hall to update the information immediately and keep the website thorough."

This change is part of a grander change going on in the government offices, a rebranding if you will.

In the past, government workers and volunteers had email addresses that ended with the url for the old website (Hopkinton.org). Now a new Google applications system has been put in place so town leaders have .gov email addresses to match the town's new website; www.hopkintonma.gov .

"The old site and emails aren't going away, we will just be redirecting most of the traffic to the new site," McClure said.

Similar to what happened with the school website several months ago, users that visit the old landing page will automatically be redirected to the new home page where they will find a similar setup with a new look.

"It's got a new look and feel, but the content isn't dramatically different," McClure said.

The new website will allow the town to pursue changes to the way online billing is done, it will also make it easier for users to subscribe to town Twitter, RSS and email feeds.

"We don't want people to have to go to the site," McClure said. "We want to be able to push all of the information they need out to them."

The new website will also have an easily followable chain to all documents from government meetings, including agendas and packets.