Better signs, website to aid government accessibility

Navigating county offices, courthouse can be a challenge.

A few years ago, Dustin Garson had to go to the Fulton County government offices for a license to carry a concealed weapon.

He started in the county courthouse, went across the street to the government center to get fingerprinted, then back to the courthouse to pick up the permit. Once there, he realized he needed exact change, which he didn’t have.

“That was annoying and time-consuming,” Garson recalled. When it comes time to renew, he said, “I’m really not looking forward to that.”

County officials are trying to make the experience of interacting with government easier for Garson and more than 1.05 million other residents. They’re spending more than $2 million over the next year to improve signs to help people figure out where they need to go for everything from paying their property tax bills to getting a marriage license.

Fulton has debuted a new website this fall that’s intended to be more intuitive and clearer. And information kiosks in both the courthouse and the government center, coupled with a customer service phone line, are intended to help people navigate government when they need help.

“We’re changing to a more customer-focused culture,” said Brigitte Bailey, director of customer experience and solutions. “For users, it’s definitely going to be a lot easier to find the information they’re looking for.”

Fulton’s government center and county courthouse can be confusing warrens, particularly for people who come to the buildings infrequently for jury duty, to renew a license or to pay a bill. Online, the county’s presence wasn’t much better. Information was out of date, links didn’t always work and the website was more focused on government structure than on what people needed to know about county services.

Glenn Melendez, Fulton’s deputy chief information officer, said the county’s goal in remaking its website — and its philosophy in making changes — was to eliminate the pieces that frustrate users and challenge their ability to find what they need.

The website will have chatbots to help answer residents’ questions. And more than 100 forms were redesigned so they could be filled out using PDFs online.

In both buildings, digital signs that can be updated are planned, with the goal of making maps and directions clearer.

That will be welcome for people like Garson, who said a “mall directory” would have helped him find his way around when he came to the county buildings. External monument signs are also planned, to make sure people know which building has what they’re looking for.

“A map would be pretty great,” Garson said. “I don’t have to come here much.”

Farisa May, who lives in Atlanta, applauded a plan that will color-code floors in the courthouse to make destinations clearer. That will also help when residents are summoned for jury duty. The summons will have new descriptors instead of simply saying the name of a building to which jurors report.

“It’s nice to see our tax dollars at work in a proper way,” she said of the work to improve accessibility.

The website is Fulton’s virtual front door, county manager Dick Anderson said, which makes it important that people can find what they’re looking for.

Anderson estimated it cost $1.2 million in staff time to complete the update.