Sunday Special: City of Houston

City of Houston: http://www.houstontx.gov/

Transparency:  Apparently there is no video or audio archive of City Council meetings.  No real-time video and audio archives either.  They do post upcoming and past city council meeting agendas but no meeting minutes.  “C-“

Feedback: Like other city websites, Houston doesn’t appear to encourage posting of other citizens’ complaint or concerns. However, also like other municipal websites,  a citizen can report on broken parking meters and street light outages.  The link for reporting grafitti is broken.  On the plus side, Texas has a Public Information Act which allows citizens to request information from a government entity regarding existing reports.  The City of Houston does a good job of listing the relevant agency, the type of information available and the department’s contact information. “B-“

Richness of information:  I went to “Public Works and Engineering” which has an impressive amount of information about the divisions, water rates, sewage and projects.  Unfortunately, most of the best information requires the user to scroll to the bottom of the page to find it because the introductory section is a long block of text. “B-“

Transacting business: I went to the link “One stop business center” from the “Business” tab and the page has the hours of the office scrolling across the top of the page and a photo of the department (two empty chairs and the counter) and a phone number. Along the side are links to pdf documents called “Getting Started Packet 1” and “Getting Started Packet 2.” It took quite awhile to download the first packet and the front page explains that there is no general City of Houston business license.  Beyond that, the document contains a lot of random information.  It didn’t strike me as a “Getting started packet.”  I also wonder why some of the information couldn’t have been included on the web-page rather than hidden away in a pdf.   It would good to know without having to download the packet that there is no general City of Houston business license.  “D-“

Overall:  The City of Houston has lots of information and the basic layout of the website is intuitive and easy on the eye. However, once I delved into individual sections, there are a number that are “under construction,” contain broken links and have poor layouts.  “C-“

Tags: City of Houston, Linkedin, municipal website, Sunshine Laws