Community Forum to Discuss Latest City Website Developments

City of Austin

The forum begins at 6 p.m. at the George Washington Carver Museum (1165 Angelina St. / map).

Plans for a new city website have drawn a lot of attention in the past few months, beginning in March with the announcement that the city council was set to award a contract to Cignex Technologies to develop the next version of the site. The amount of the contract ($700,000) and the fact that Cignex was based in California, not Texas, set off a wave of online protests. After postponing the vote to award the contract, city officials decided last month to scrap Cignex's proposal and seek a new round of bids.

At tonight's forum, city staffers plan to brief the community about the latest developments of the project and outline next steps including the issuance of a new RFP (request for proposal).

During the period between the postponement of the vote and the scrapping of Cignex's proposal, a community-based effort called OpenAustin sprung up with an offer of help to crowdsource the requirements and development of the city's website. No formal agreement in in place between the city and OpenAustin, but some group members plan to attend tonight's forum to show their support of the effort.