City portal reimagined - towards eGovernment

Challenge

Some 2,738 fire-gilded copper shingles and the legend of "Frederick of the empty purse" made the Golden Roof of Innsbruck world famous. Today, 500 years later, the city landmark is featured on the Innsbruck homepage.

The provincial capital has had its own web presence since 2000, and it was to be rebuilt from the ground up: high usability based on a consistent layout, refined search, citizen-friendly services, comprehensive information and excellent performance.

On top of that, all 90 municipal departments were to publish and maintain their own content. Where in-depth HTML knowledge used to be required to update a page, every department should now be able to work without outside help.

Solution

Together with inxire, the city rebuilt its portal on inxire ECM. All content is held in XML and can be published on a schedule, so the same information can be reused in other output formats - as PDF, for print media or for mobile devices.

The XML editor makes it easy for staff to edit content themselves and to arrange banners and images flexibly; one hour of training is enough. The agreed design keeps the layout consistent across all areas, and every access path is governed by fine-grained permissions. The fully web-based system is easy to administer and can be operated from anywhere - no special client required.

Search was rethought as well: alongside the navigation there is a sitemap, a keyword index and an integrated, central full-text search across all content. inxire ECM manages arbitrary metadata and, combined with the editorial system, provides an excellent search index - no more endless clicking through pages.

„The big advantage for us is that the departments are able to create and maintain their content independently - without needing any further help from outside."

Markus Vogelsberger Information and Organisation Department, City of Innsbruck

Result

The new homepage has been available to the citizens of Innsbruck since August 2004. The city has counted more than 80,000 visitors per month ever since - around 2,000 visits a day to almost 1,000 XML articles, 1,800 PDF documents, 1,000 graphics and countless photos.

Residents, new arrivals, tourists, businesses, freelancers and insured persons find concrete information on the city’s electronic business card, download forms, browse the city map online or use the virtual city hall guide. The navigation is clearly structured: the key areas such as citizen services, city map, contact, imprint and sitemap run horizontally, while the departments’ topics - from lost property and forms to local taxes, culture, sport and leisure, environment, administration and business - run vertically.

„Today ten times more users visit our homepage every day than our busiest walk-in department, the registration office."

Herbert Kronlechner Head of Information and Organisation, City of Innsbruck

The portal therefore provides the basis for consistently implementing eGovernment - a programme the provincial capital is driving forward in great strides, having found a well-suited partner in inxire.

Improvements achieved

• Publishing and maintenance of content by the individual departments
• No HTML knowledge required
• Citizen-friendly user interface
• Four ways to find content
• Complete editorial system with scheduled publication
• Consistent layout and design across all areas
• Reuse of content for different output formats and media
• Flexible design of the banner area and all images
• Improved performance

All success stories