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Idaho Transportation
Department
Public Affairs Office
P.O. Box 7129
Boise, ID 83707
208.334.8005
Fax: 208.334.8563
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ITD Web site receives Digital Government award

The new ITD Web site that makes information about transportation in Idaho more accessible and easier to update, received one of six “Digital Government” awards this week.

Innovative technology-based initiatives were recognized during a Tuesday Boot Camp for Idaho Policy Makers, sponsored by the state’s Information Technology Resource Management Council (ITRMC).

Jeff Stratten, ITD’s Public Information Officer, and Darla Christiansen, who coordinated the new Web site design, accepted the award on behalf of ITD. Webmaster Steve Jackson submitted the redesigned site for the award.

ITD launched the new design in July 2004 with the goal of making navigation easier and to improve service to the public.

“The new site has a better look and feel than the old site, but more important, it employs significant technical advances behind the Web pages. Content management techniques are now more fully automated,” explains ITD’s application.

“The old site consisted of static Web pages which required a significant amount of labor to maintain. Any time some content changed, it usually required that numerous pages be updated to reflect the new changes. There were no intelligent functions built into the old site.”

The new site offers visitors three ways to view the content:

  1. Full graphic version, which is the default view
  2. The reader-friendly version that meets the ADA Section 508 guidelines and is formatted on-the-fly in real time from the single content pages into the text only version.
  3. The printer-friendly feature works the same way. When someone clicks on the Printer-Friendly button the page is formatted from the original content by the Internet application and is optimized for printer output.

It is hard to calculate the numbers of hours spent in maintaining the old site content, Jackson explained in his award documentation.

“During the conversion from the old site to the new – 10,000 web pages were rebuilt. That would have to happen every time someone wanted to change the site if the pages had remained entirely static. The new site design allows the entire site design to be changed in a matter of hours by changing only a few pages. This will be an incredible time and cost savings in the future.”

The new site content is much easier to maintain and takes less time.
Explore the site at: itd.idaho.gov