County Changing Website, Email

— Benton County is staking out a new home on the Internet as the county’s website undergoes a makeover and employees get new email addresses.

Sidney Reynolds, Information Systems director, said the new domain name will be www.bentoncountyar.gov, replacing the more convoluted www.co.benton.ar.us.

“Hopefully it will be easier to remember,” Reynolds said of the new domain name. “As part of that, we’re changing all the county email addresses. It’s going to be the person’s first name.last [email protected]. That way if you know a person’s name, if you’ve done business with them, you should be able to figure out their email address.”

At A Glance

Changes Coming

Benton County’s website and the email addresses for county employees are being changed as the website is updated, according to Sidney Reynolds, Information Systems director. Reynolds said the old website address and email addresses will remain active for the next two years at least and users who try to access the old addresses will be directed to the new site.

Source: Staff Report

Making the county’s information easier to access coupled with the goal of making the site a way to access information from other sources is what is driving the changes, Reynolds said.

“Our goal is to make our website a portal for citizens to access county government and any governments in the state,” he said. “We have links to the different cities and to the state. Whatever it is, we have links to it.”

Reynolds said the design of the website tries to let users search for a particular office or service they need and give them access to additional information they might not know how to find.

One example, he said, is a tab labeled DMV for Department of Motor Vehicles. While Arkansas residents may know they need to access the state’s Department of Finance and Administration, many newcomers are accustomed to doing business elsewhere and might not be able find the Arkansas information.

“They may be from someplace where it’s called the DMV,” he said. “In Arkansas it’s not called that. We want to help them with that.”

Reynolds said the new website is set to go live today but asked users to be patient as the Information Systems staff continues work.

“It is a work in progress,” Reynolds said. “We will have a way for people to contact our webmaster. If there are problems, we can correct it.”

County Judge Bob Clinard said the county is doing the work in-house to save money and to take advantage of the skills of the county’s Information Systems staff.

“I think it’s good,” Clinard said. “There will be two or three ways to get to the information you need. You can do it alphabetically, by department or by name.”

Assessor Bear Chaney is among the elected officials who have made the most use of the website in the past, with many services and sources of information available. He said he’s worked with Reynolds and the staff on the new site and is pleased with the changes.

“Some of the things they’re doing are going to make it easier to navigate the site,” Chaney said. “Most people use Google when they’re searching for something. Not only will they get what they’ve Googled, they’ll get all the information out there. The way they’ve got it laid out is going to be real user-friendly.”

Chaney said his office already has the ability to monitor the site and update information, offering news updates and alerts to frequent visitors.

“I think it’s going to be a good look for the county,” Chaney said. “They’re trying to keep it user-friendly and at the same time make use of the new technology that’s out there.”

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