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Charlottetown Mayor May Not Want Your Vote

Out-of-date information is posted on City website for November 3, 2014 election

By Stephen Pate – The City of Charlottetown has not updated its Elections Information website page since 2010.

I was checking out when the election was being held- actually November 3, 2014 – and the page was dated November 2010. The page in the featured image above is today.

I was using an iPad which found the page in the image with the results from 4 years ago. On my computer I got an entirely different page which was still out of date.

The City of Charlottetown is wasting its money if you can’t get accurate information on election day.  Try the Elections PEI page if you need help.

Mobile Responsive

The City of Charlottetown website is not mobile responsive,  “a web design approach aimed at crafting sites to provide an optimal viewing experience—easy reading and navigation with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling — across a wide range of devices (from mobile phones to desktop computer monitors)”

Most of the information like Ward maps is useless on a tablet or smartphone. The City of Charlottetown using out-of-date technology that’s not mobile responsive.

Out-of-date information and technology – is anyone paying attention?

Several years ago, the City of Charlottetown spent an enormous amount of money for a web portal that was supposed to put the City on the map, internet-wise. In addition to the $200,00 plus spent on computer services, the City Portal gets funded every year in the budget as follows,

2007 $         64,000
2008 $         64,000
2009 $         63,000
2010 $         63,000
2011 $         63,000
2012 $         63,000
2013 $         68,000

 

Web Portals were a bad idea for internet access pushed by sharp sales people but have been abandoned. The idea was to centralize all the information of one type to make access easier.

Trying to get users to access a portal turned out to be harder than herding cats. People use search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo to find what they want.

The current City of Charlottetown developer is Revolution Media who list the City of Charlottetown as a reference client. They can’t be doing much for their $65,000 a year fee.

My memory tells me Deltaware did the original contract for the portal and I am trying to get confirmation on that. Perfect – the portal rejected my email.

Deltaware has moved on the health info systems since then. They are connected to the enormous over-spending for the PEI Health Info system at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital.

Follow me on Twitter at @sdpate or on Facebook at NJN Network, OyeTimes and IMA News Buzz. You can also subscribe and receive notifications of new stories by email. We do not share your email with advertisers.  Featured image – screen shot of City of Charlottetown website from iPad by Stephen Pate.

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