Whakatāne District Council's recently redeveloped website has been ranked third-best among the 78 councils evaluated in the annual Association of Local Government Information Management rankings.

ALGIM evaluates all city, district, and regional council websites on a variety of measures, including testing done by the Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind, an assessment of accessibility on mobile devices, and customer service response time to a fictitious query initiated by ALGIM.

Council Public Affairs Manager Ross Boreham says the District Council website underwent a major rebuild last year and was re-launched in December. “The main goals of the redesign were to improve the website's performance on smartphones and tablets, introduce new online services such as online rates payments, and improve accessibility standards so all visitors to our website get the same standard of service, regardless of any disability,” Mr Boreham says.

“In the 2013 ALGIM rankings, prior to the redesign, Whakatāne District Council ranked 25th. The fact that we have climbed to third this year indicates that our rebuild is allowing us to deliver a better experience for all of our on-line customers, regardless of their individual needs or the device they're using to browse the site.”

Mr Boreham says that as pleasing as the ALGIM awards recognition is, the Council is not content with the current ranking and intends to continue innovating and improving. “The recent ALGIM conference has provided a wealth of ideas on how to further upgrade our online presence, and we will be implementing many of those concepts to ensure our online service delivery keeps up with the very best in New Zealand.”