The city of Springfield is giving citizens a new way to track important community information, and it's on a new-look Web site.
At the July 28 Springfield City Council luncheon, city officials announced that Springfield has signed up for Nixle, a free Web-based program that lets enrollees receive instant information about city alerts, traffic, community events and other news via www.nixle.com, and via e-mail or mobile devices.
Nixle is a private company founded earlier this year in New Jersey and California. It offers its services free to municipalities, which can then disseminate useful information to subscribers for free without spam messages or advertisements. Nixle makes money through a separate branch of the company offered to private businesses that need to spread information to employees in multiple locations.
Louise Whall, Springfield's director of public information, said the Springfield Police Department was the first city agency to learn of the program, and it is now being used by city police and government, as well as the emergency management and health departments.
"We had been looking at how much we wanted to step into social networks, and this gives us a safe way to get into that," she said. "It's pretty much all business - it's less social in that it has no post-back or commenting options. It's for people who want no-nonsense information."
She added that the program is customizable. The city can set posts to expire at a certain time, and posts can be sent only to certain people - so people in Roundtree neighborhood, for example, won't get notifications about a meeting for Grant Beach citizens.
Individuals, meanwhile, can choose which city organizations they'll receive information from and how often.
Even though Nixle just launched in the last few months, more than 1,250 cities and towns in 40 states have signed on, according to the company.
Whall said the program could have been very useful in past situations such as the 2007 ice storm.
"If we had ... been able to broadcast these running messages, when people didn't have TVs and cell phones were working more often than other methods, it would have been so helpful," she said, adding that other cities have had significant spikes in enrollees after major events. "That really verifies the usefulness of it."
The city's redesigned Web site has the same idea in mind of making information more accessible, according to a city news release.
Based on the most popular features used by citizens, www.springfieldmo.gov is grouped into five categories: services, government, community, newcomers and the site map.
There is also a posting of current city bids, job openings and a city-owned properties map, including about 65 parcels that will be considered for sale.
On the social networking front, the city offers a blog, called CityConnect, with meeting and event posts, including video, and a sign-up to follow the city on Twitter.[[In-content Ad]]
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