Whakatāne District Council’s website has been judged the supreme winner among the 78 local government websites evaluated in the 2016 Association of Local Government Information Management (ALGIM) rankings. This is the second year in a row the Council’s website has taken the top spot, which is unprecedented in the history of the ALGIM survey.

ALGIM evaluates all city, district, and regional council websites based on their adherence to Web standards, testing done by the Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind, assessments of accessibility on mobile devices, and response times to queries sent via both email and Facebook.

Council Public Affairs Manager Ross Boreham says the website’s continuing top performance in the survey is particularly gratifying.

“For a small Council with limited resources to top the efforts of every metropolitan council in the country is a great achievement,” he says. “People now expect to be able to access most Council services via the internet – whether via a PC at the office or via their smartphones while on the go – and we’re committed to continually providing top-class online services for our customers.”