The City of Grand Rapids recently launched a new website that serves as a digital City Hall for residents, businesses and other community members. The website, which replaces grcity.us, provides information in both English and Spanish and offers online payments as well.
“The bottom line is that our old website wasn’t working. People couldn’t find what they needed. That means we had to do an entire overhaul, you start from the ground up.”
And start from the ground up, they did with the help of community input. Becky Jo Glover is with the City of Grand Rapids. She’s the 3-1-1 Customer Service Director and Project Manager for the new city website. The new website provides information in both English and Spanish and allows residents to conduct business right from home.
“Services that you could never do online before. For example, start your water, start your refuse service. Today, all those things are online.”
In fact, the website offers online payment for 54 City services and 24 business licenses. And Glover says they’re not done yet.
“We’ve got another 250 services to add. Because this is what people want to do, 24/7, in their pajamas if they want to, so that means we’re bringing city hall to them on their terms.”
The new site provides what’ they’re calling a digital city hall, in fact, the first “true” digital city Hall in the country.
“You’ve built it with and by and for your community. Taking out all the jargon and government ease. It’s not convoluted. That’s why it took a good 8-10 months to do this.”
Glover says the new website is up and running and you can find it at grandrapidsmi.gov.
