What most people don’t notice at first is that the City website is really about a dozen separate websites — all provided by different vendors. So, there is one for permits, one for pet licenses, one for crime reports, etc. One of those is a new Agenda Portal. People seemed to hate it because it looked so boring — like Craigslist. But in fact, it was fantastic. The new version is terrible. As they say “one piccie is worth a thousand words” so here are two examples.
One other thing: The terribleness of the new Agenda Portal will increase over time. The defect below isn’t as apparent because the current software only contains records from 6-9 months. As it ‘fills up’ with old data, it will become unusable.
Search #1 Lodging Tax
Here is a search for the phrase ‘Lodging Tax’ in our new public software. Fifteen hits. Only 2-3 are in any way relevant. And, I have to open each one to determine why they are on here, ie. no excerpt.
Here is a search for Lodging Tax in the ‘Old’ website. All relevant. The excerpt tells me why. The only downside? There’s no date range (which could be addressed.) But it’s totally useful.
Search #2 Ferry
Searching for ‘Ferry’ in new software. Fifteen hits. Most of these are, again, total rubbish. And many are only there because there will be meeting minutes from months ago where the single word ‘ferry’ was mentioned.
And now in old software. Again, every hit is relevant and gives me a decent excerpt to know if its worth my time. And again, the lack of a date range is annoying (especially for a broad term like ‘ferry’), but again could easily be corrected.
