Image via rva.gov
With an emphasis on accessibility and added functionality, the city of Richmond has overhauled its main website for the first time in more than a decade.
The new site, RVA.gov, will eventually replace richmondgov.com, which has been in place for more than 15 years. Charles Todd, Richmond’s director of information technology, says that apart from an aesthetic overhaul, the new site offers Richmonders easier access to online services such as city databases, interactive maps, payments and applications through its virtual city hall feature.
“I want this platform to best serve the residents of this city and present an inviting digital welcome for those seeking to visit or interact with city government,” Mayor Levar Stoney says in a statement.
RVA.gov also features livestreams of meetings and on-demand archives of previous broadcasts through its RVA-TV page, as well as a social hub that collects all city social media accounts on one page. On the back end, the site offers city departments direct control over their individual webpages, which allows them greater flexibility and the ability to publish updates in a more timely fashion, Todd says.
“It was time for a presentation overhaul,” he says. “Clearly, we needed an overhaul [on the back end], but the end users very much needed those front-end overhauls to help them get what they need in a modern way and a timely way.”
The new site was “soft launched” on Aug. 14, a period during which the site is open to the public but employees continue to test features and iron out remaining bugs. Going forward, Richmonders can expect richmondgov.com to stay online for record-keeping purposes as it begins encouraging users to transition to the new site.
The city contracted with Charlottesville-based company Tech Dynamism to build the site, which cost around $1.18 million. Ongoing website maintenance and content management will be handled by city staff, says city spokesperson Sam Schwartzkopf.
