A portal to Carthage, the official website of the city government www.carthagemo.gov, will get an upgrade, pending the final approval of a contract with the host company later this month.
The Carthage City Council heard on first reading at its Jan. 8 regular meeting a contract with GovOffice LLC., a Minneapolis, Minnesota company to upgrade the city’s official website, improving the look, adding translation into Spanish and adding the ability to fill out and submit many city forms, applications and requests online instead of having to print them and mail them or submit them in person.
The three-year contract calls for the city to pay GovOffice $3,765 a year for the website.
Melanie Blizzard, Memorial Hall Manager who had managed the city’s website, said GovOffice has hosted the city’s website since 2003, and it has never been out of service in all that time.
Council Member Brady Beckham, chairman of the Public Services Committee, which recommended the contract, said the committee worked hard and asked a lot of questions before going with this option.
“If someone is considering moving to this area, often their first impression of a city will be the website, so we’re bringing ours up to the modern times,” Beckham said. “We also added a couple of features to this upgrade.”
Beckham said an option called “super forms” will allow many of the city’s applications, requests and other forms to be viewed and filled out online. Currently most forms can be viewed, but they have to be printed and submitted in person or by mail.
If the agreement is approved at the next council meeting, many forms, such as job applications, contacting a department, reporting a problem and many business and other license applications will be online by the middle of May 2019.
The contract includes a list of 30 forms that will eventually be on the website.
The contract estimates that the redesigned website will be ready for deployment online in three to three and a half months.
