Mayor Dyer creates digital team for city’s new website

The city of Orlando has created a team that will design and maintain a new website at Orlando.gov that will modernize services and make them available to residents 24 hours a day.

An early version of the site has gone live, with a final version expected to debut by the end of the year.

Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer announced the team in a guest post on a website that showcases the intersection of government and technology earlier this month.

It’s his latest public effort to highlight Orlando as a technology hub.

Last month, he appeared on the online broadcast channel Cheddar.com from South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, to promote Orlando’s tech scene.

On the blog, Dyer said the city needs to be ready to help residents around the clock in today’s connected world.

He said most governments “have lagged far behind in ensuring that government services (online) are designed for the user.”

“For instance, if you visited an airline website to book a ticket or search for information and all the website did was direct you to the airline’s phone number, you would likely look for a new airline,” the blog post read. “Yet municipal websites across the country continue to do just that today . ... ”

Dyer also revealed a greater goal of embedding technology further in the city.

Eventually, he wrote, consumers will be able to take a photo of a pothole and get an automated push request to ask if they want to report it to the city for repair.

“One of our biggest strengths is that we have always had a very forward-thinking community and I think our focus in tech is a clear result of that mindset and the ability of our community to continue to put value in innovation in everything we do,” he said.