City Website Offers New Service

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: August 30, 2004

Contacts: Press Secretary Carlene Orig  (414) 286-8531

                 Randy Gschwind, Chief Information Officer (414) 286-8027

City Website Offers New Service

An exciting new application for communicating with our citizens is available on the City's web site (www.milwaukee.gov).  It's called E-Notify. This easy-to-use, electronic communication tool allows authorized City employees to send information (news, meeting notices, announcements, etc?) to subscribers' email accounts based on selections made by the individual citizen.

Milwaukee citizens demand increased government responsiveness with more relevant, timelier information. E-notify provides a cost-effective, time-efficient, technologically advanced solution. With E-notify, staff time is reduced since the email list is self-maintained and budget dollars are saved by eliminating paper, printing, and postage costs, and communication with the citizen is timelier.  Assigned staff uses the secured system to send notifications in the form of email messages, Web pages, Word or PDF documents and/or image files to subscribers on their list.

Citizens can register online and sign-up for as many notifications as they want.  They also can add or remove themselves from notification lists at any time, making the subscription list virtually maintenance-free for staff.  Moreover, since all the notifications available to the citizen are displayed together, a citizen becomes informed of other available subscription categories, resulting in the cross marketing of the notifications to a wider audience, and improved communication with our citizens.  There are already more than 7,000 users registered for this service.

Current notifications available to citizens include: on-line auction items; city jobs; press releases from the Mayor or Common Council; committee notices and agendas; police crime bulletins by neighborhood; city-owned houses and lots for sale; bid notices by category and many others.  E-Notify is available on the City Home Page at www.milwaukee.gov by clicking it on the "I Want To" list.