The Stanislaus County website StanCounty.com was awarded second place for county portals in the national 2016 Best of the Web Awards by the Center for Digital Government.

The award honors city, county and state innovative and citizen-centric web sites for their work to engage citizens online.

“We’re thankful and excited that our county has been recognized for this award,” stated Mike Baliel, IT Applications Manager. “It is a visual testament to the hard work, strong partnerships and collaborative nature of our County employees and departments.”

Stanislaus County had recently completed a website re-design approximately six months before applying for the award.  The re-design was done almost exclusively using county staff, with approximately $3,000 spent on outside services.  The project could have cost up to $200,000 if contracted to outside vendors, according to the County.  The Center for Digital Government took into consideration innovation, functionality, efficiency and economy for criteria in evaluating each web site.

The county project was focused on providing the public with a site that was mobile friendly, contemporary, visually appealing, easy navigation and searching, highlighted e-government services, improved information sharing and showcased its diverse community. 

The County stated that layout and organization was a high priority because they wanted constituents to be able to find information quickly. A significant amount of energy was put into developing the technology to allow the site to look and feel the same across all mobile devices and modern browsers.

The County provides approximately 40 unique online services to the community including a customer center that is available on every county web page.

Baltimore County in Maryland took first place.