Olathe Turns Its Website Into a Virtual City Hall

The City of Olathe, Kansas has long prided itself on being transparent with it citizens and using data to drive the decision-making process. But city officials knew they could do a better job of following those guiding principles on their website.

They already had some of the basics down: They were using govAccess, which provides intuitive tools for accessible government website design. But Olathe took it a step further by launching OlatheConnect, a tool (and accompanying app) that turned their website into a virtual city hall.

Now when the city performs its quarterly updates on statistics that it identifies as key to municipal health, they can easily share it with the public in one spot.

The benefits of OlatheConnect are already obvious: Citizens are better informed (officials can point them there for all sorts of information) and, because the stats are easier for everyone to view, including city workers, there’s been an improved effort for cross-department collaboration. For instance, public works and police used better data access to identify problematic intersections. They’ve been slowly lowering the crash rate since implementing a new plan.

Want to learn more about how making its website into a virtual city hall helped Olathe? Check out their success story!