SANTA CRUZ — Local government websites include
broken links, missing documents and information that in some cases appears
years out of date, a Santa Cruz County Civil Grand Jury investigation found.
In a report release Tuesday, titled “The Tangled
Web,” the grand jury found that departments at the county and city level are
failing to update their websites “often enough to keep citizens informed.”
Santa Cruz County’s local governments generally
lack a clear process to review and ensure the accuracy of information posted to
their official government sites, according to the report.
“The necessary information on county and city
websites at times is more than 12 months old; annual reports are not current,
members of organizations and committees have moved on and rosters have not been
updated; in addition, organization charts are inconsistent and do not contain
contact information,” the report states. “This hampers the user’s ability to
make progress, and reflects on the potential struggles the public can have to
access government services.”
To improve the accuracy and availability of
online information, the grand jury is urging local governments to take steps
such as creating a formal review process and tasking department heads with
signing off on the accuracy of online information on a quarterly basis.
Among the examples of apparently inaccurate
online information detailed in the report: A city of Santa Cruz website on the
city’s Equal Employment Opportunity Committee last updated its list of current
members in Oct. 2018 — and the committee’s membership has since changed.
The report also notes that minutes for some of
that committee’s scheduled meetings are not available on the site, though a
review of the meetings in question suggests at least some were canceled. A
spokesperson for the city didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
But lack of clarity around information that
appears to be out of date or missing is itself an issue, according to the grand
jury.
“There may be reasonable explanations for why
errors and omissions exist in website information, but those explanations are
not presented on the website, nor are estimates for when the website will be
corrected,” the report states. “Without an understanding of why information is
missing, users may continue to spend time searching for information that does
not exist, whose unavailability is known to administrators, but not to users.”
Other identified issues — which the report
offered only as examples, not as a definitive list — include broken links on
the Santa Cruz County Fire Department homepage and other sites, outdated
repositories of annual reports and seemingly out-of-date membership listings
for city of Watsonville’s Board of Library Trustees.
Santa Cruz County’s government was singled out
for not having a system in place to notify website users when content is
updated — unlike each of the county’s four cities, according to the report. The
grand jury urged the county to adopt a similar notification system by June
2021.
Responses to the report are required from the
Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors and the city councils of Santa Cruz,
Watsonville, Capitola and Scotts Valley by Sept. 14.
The grand jury requested additional responses
from each local government’s chief executive by the same date.
The Santa Cruz County Civil Grand Jury is made
up of 19 private citizens. An independent arm of the judicial system that
serves as an ombudsman for the public, the grand jury is tasked with
investigating local government operations and alleged misconduct of public
officials.
Santa Cruz Sentinal
By Nicholas Ibarra
June 16, 2020
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