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Vol. 1, Issue 12   |  April 2020 - SPECIAL COVID-19 EDITION

Hello WEB publishers, with all the fast moving pace of government having to adjust operations to support the community during this unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic, many of your agencies essential functions are being done remotely through telework, and adjustments have been made for some services contacts, locations, hours, new procedures, and messaging.

As society is going virtual, the Prince Georges county website as the digital face of the County and portal to government information and services is even more critical — an essential service. The information on the site must be reviewed and updated more frequently. Here are actionable steps that you should take immediately.

Review Content

Content is vital,  now more than ever. Agencies are responsible for their web page information. Content includes basic information regarding an agencies’ services, contacts, and applications., as well as news and latest updates.

  1. Copy your portion of the website's site map and review a few pages a day.
  2. Look for areas affected by closures and make sure those closures are also on those pages. Be sure to keep a list of these for updating later.
  3. Review your analytics. Remember, you can log into SiteImprove now and see what people are visiting most right now. This may be different than it was before.

Log Into SiteImprove

Fix Broken Links

While you're in SiteImprove, look for, test and fix any broken links. Not many things are as frustrating as going to get something done, but the link doesn't work.  Links ease some of CountyClick 3-1-1's burden by making sure people can navigate to desired content quickly and freely.

Q&A Process

With demand on some services expanding and citizens reliance on the Website heightened, we understand that everyone on your team may not be available to work on the website to make changes as quickly as needed. The WEB Team is here to make sure we are working on needs together.
If you have the role as a WEB publisher, author, or developer, or a PIO, and cannot quickly make changes needing assistance from the WEB Team enter a ticket including the specific need and we will follow-up.

Also, we may see from WEB reports broken links and other errors from SiteImprove. Those reports are sent to agencies’ WEB contact.   We will contact the WEB contact we have for appropriate priority and handling.

To make sure we are giving the best to our public we are fixing misspellings and broken links that we can, but we do not have knowledge about your agencies’ business function, published contacts,  phone numbers, information releases or operating status. We will send each agency a list of any that we cannot determine a fix for, but we will not enforce the usual time limits. We are working together to provide the best to our many residents.

Highlight Online Services

In March 2020, we had over 100,000 more visits to the WEBsite than we did in March 2019. You may be seeing a similar increase in your social media stats.  This is the time where we can do some strategic thinking to provide even better services to our residents.  One of the ways is by bringing the service to them - more e-Services instead of in-person processes, on-line chats, and alerts. With existing and new content, social media is a great way to tell them about it.  Look at services, agency status or temporary closures that you have and share that information regularly on your social media sites.  This not only makes it easy for the residents to get the information they need, but it also saves the person-power in agencies.

While the current pandemic crisis situation is a very difficult time for many,  the WEB site is one of our best tools in making the government easily accessible.


P.S. the website does not require VPN to update. You can log in by going to https://www.princegeorgescountymd.gov/admin. The same thing goes for SiteImprove and Subscribe MyPGC (powered by GovDelivery). If you're wondering some of the things we have been up to, take a look (and share) the Census 2020 Midday Meet-Up