The Rutherford County Government has launched a new website viewable at rutherfordcountytn.gov. Improvements are intended to make the site easier to navigate with better routes to get citizens where they need to go, with lots of new content and with improved mobile device access.

The Rutherford County Office of Information Technology was tasked by Mayor Ernest Burgess with making sure the citizens of Rutherford County were the main priority in the design of the website.

In addition to aesthetic and organizational improvements, there is a revamped contact form that routes directly to the people best suited to assist with various citizen needs, a new events calendar, meeting agendas and minutes have been consolidated into one location, GIS mapping is integrated throughout the site, and there is a new Courthouse history page. Per the Mayor’s request, a new “Other Committees and Boards” site will contain agendas and minutes for several non-County Commission boards that have never been posted in the past.

Rutherford County recently launched Instagram and Twitter sites which are both incorporated into the navigation, in addition to an active Facebook site. Social media and government services are much easier to find from their new location on the main page.

The new site design is especially well suited for mobile devices. Visitors using phones or tablets see a layout that fits their device without losing any functionality.

As Technology Director Brian Robertson recently stated, “We really wanted to provide citizens easy access to everything that the Rutherford County Government has to offer in an easy to use and easily accessible format, and we feel that the new site accomplishes that objective and gives us latitude to make additional improvements”.

During the planning stages of the redesign Robertson sought feedback from County staff, department heads, and he conducted an extensive work session with avid site-user and citizen Susan Allen.

Allen, a member of the Rutherford Neighborhood Alliance, has been a strong advocate for improving the site and spent a substantial amount of time with the web developer to help shape the changes. As Allen put it, “The IT department is to be commended for the work that they have done to redesign the county website. This has been a long process because of the complexity of County government, but the result is a website that has a fresh look and, most importantly, is easy to navigate. It could be that my days of contacting the webmaster to find the information I'm looking for are over!”

Office of Information Technology Webmaster Megan Chaffin recently stated “We looked at many different website designs that local governments were using and decided to go with what we thought the citizens of Rutherford County wanted. We tried to place as much information on our main page to all the things we thought were important to what people are looking for when they come to our website. At the same time, we worked to make the site visually welcoming and representative of the county.”

“A big thank you is owed to our Webmaster for her excellent work, and a special thanks to everyone for the thoughts and suggestions that helped us get to this point. We look forward to keeping it fresh, relevant, and useful” said Robertson.

In order to make sure they are providing the best possible information to the public, County officials ask that you please take a look around the new website and let them know what you think. To make commenting easy, they have provided a contact form linked on the front page of the site.