Contact: Colleen Roche (212) 788-2958 or Sunny Mindel (718) 403-8119
The Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications Commissioner, Ralph Balzano accepted the third place, $2,500 award last night at the Executive Dinner of the Government Technology Conference in Albany. He commended the Mayor's Office of Communications, the Mayor's Office of Operations and the twenty agencies currently participating in NYC.govfor bringing to life, what he described as a "technologically sophisticated but simple-to-use superhighway to city government."
NYC.gov(http://www.ci.nyc.ny.us) was launched in October 1995. From that date until its relaunch in July 1996, 63,000 visits were made to the site. Director of the Mayor's Office of Communications, Cristyne Lategano supervised the redesign of NYC.govand the Mayor's homepage which involved adding a search engine and updating existing content. Since the relaunch in July 1996, there have been 16,000 additional visits to date. Director Lategano said, "In addition to the information about government, it is the link to key cultural institutions, sports teams, tourist attractions and business services that continues to attract visits to the site."
The competition was judged by government technology journalists, municipal management associations, Public Technologies Inc. and the University of California, Davis. The evaluation criteria included innovative use of Web-based on-line technology to deliver government services in a user-friendly, efficient and economic way. NYC.gov's $2,500 in prize money will be donated to technology education. San Carlos, California won first place and Rochester, New York took second in the "Best of the Web" competition. Both cities received $5,000 awards.