If two hundred years ago the face of every city was its marketplace, central ca-thedral, and cemetery, today the website of a city can tell us a lot about it. Thanks to websites, we can find out how citizens live, how the authorities work, and generally get a lot of useful information even about cities we have never been to.

Every year, under the Transparent Cities program, TI Ukraine publishes rankings of transparency and accountability of Ukrainian cities. And to prepare the re-search, our team studies the official websites of city councils, analyzes published information, and considers feedback from residents.

Over the years, we have found that local self-government websites are one of the main channels of communication between the government and the community, and year after year, the number of their visitors are increasing. What should we look for when designing a user-friendly and accessible site?

Firstly, the website should have a fast and easy-to-use content management system (CMS). This will make updating the site quick and easy.

Secondly, the site should be adaptive to make it easy to view on mobile devic-es.

Thirdly, the site should have clear navigation to make finding information in-tuitive.

How to create a site that will meet these criteria? Let's try to figure it out.

• Ready-made products and solutions to save resources

Although there is no separate design code for official websites of local govern-ment, we can be guided by the requirements of the Cabinet of Ministers' resolu-tion on the design code for official websites of executive bodies. The require-ments specified in this decree are sufficiently adaptive for the municipal context.
To upgrade your sites in accordance with modern requirements, you can down-load ready-made web elements and not spend money on design from scratch, special layout and programming. For example, ready-made web elements and sets of fonts are freely available on the website of the Design System of State Websites of Ukraine. There, you can also learn how to conduct a survey of users, fill the site with high-quality content, to comply with the principle of accessibil-ity for different groups of users.
In general, the number of resources that provide recommendations, or offer ready-made templates and plugins for working with websites, is gradually in-creasing. For example, you can use inexpensive software with open source, such as WordPress or Joomla. And the completeness of the use of these systems will already depend on the knowledge and capabilities of the IT specialists responsi-ble for the development of municipal websites.
Why should municipal authorities implement such solutions? First, be-cause the number of users of government websites will increase when the quality and ease of use of the service increases. And this will make it possible to build trusting relationships with residents.
And besides, the use of such systems will facilitate the work of designers, simplify the development and cheapen the modernization of municipal websites. Consequently, the people in charge of designing websites on the part of local au-thorities will be able to focus on the effectiveness of electronic services, rather than on their visual form.
Over the years of research, we have found that local self-government web-sites are one of the main channels of communication between the government and the community, and year after year the number of visitors to such sites is in-creasing.

• User comfort is a priority for municipal websites

Visitors of the local government websites should potentially be all mem-bers of the local community. This means that such sites should be equally acces-sible to different types of users: those having low vision, hard-of-hearing, with musculoskeletal and speech disabilities.
For example, in Ukraine, the problem of accessibility for people with low vision is still common. As part of evaluating the accountability of cities, our team evaluated the websites of city councils for the availability of versions for users with low vision, and only 16 out of 50 cities such versions for their sites have provided.
According to the WCAG 2.0 international recommendations, website de-velopers should consider the following points:

- Users should be able to double the size of text without using support tools, and have access to all information and features on the site.

- Contrast of the text to the background so that users can read published texts without strain. You can check the site using the Contrast Ratio Calculator (nor-mal text should have a minimum ratio of 4.5:1).

- If the site contains video with audio, there must be subtitles added. This will allow hard-of-hearing users to use the site comfortably.

- For the needs of users with low vision soft, simple colors should be used. It is also best not to use flickering images.

The WCAG 2.0 guidelines themselves are in English, but there is an adapted instruction in Ukrainian under the link.
Visitors of the local government websites should potentially be all mem-bers of the local community. This means that such sites should be equally acces-sible to different types of users: those having low vision, hard-of-hearing, with musculoskeletal and speech disabilities.

• Feedback as a benchmark for website improvement

The development of a convenient site is impossible without considering the views of direct users. The needs of users should be studied both at the start of development and during the operation of the site.
Research can be conducted through questionnaires or focus groups. Before beginning, you should determine a basic list of questions and identify the main objectives of the study. On this basis, the most successful sampling model and research method should be formed.
In addition, professional technical tools, such as heat maps, can also be used to analyze the behavior of users on the site. Or analyze reports on the satis-faction of requests for information, which local governments are required to make public in accordance with the Law of Ukraine “On Access to Public In-formation.”
With this kind of research, you can identify major trends: which sections of the site are most popular, how the number of visitors changes at different times, and how easily the requested information is searched. You have no idea how useful such information can be!
To avoid fallacious notions of the site's usability for certain types of users, you should solicit feedback from people of all ages, genders, socioeconomic sta-tus, and education levels. Moreover, do not be afraid of negative feedback.
For the most comprehensive understanding of residents' needs will reveal possible barriers in accessing information, difficulties in navigating, and existing barriers for people with disabilities.
The development of a convenient site is impossible without considering the views of direct users. The needs of users should be studied both at the start of development and during the operation of the site.

• Scanned documents ≠ open data

As part of the annual rankings of Ukrainian cities, our team works through the availability of information on the official websites of city councils. And in our work, we came across very different interpretations of the concept of “open data” — from PDF-versions of published documents to handwritten ones.
Here, we would like to remind that open data are data published in a ma-chine-readable format and are subject to automatic reading and computer pro-cessing. In other words, the corresponding formats for such materials are CSV, JSON and XML, while a simple scan or image does not meet these require-ments. In addition, it is very inconvenient to use them.
As we can see, it is very difficult to overestimate the importance of the convenient and accessible interface of official municipal websites. Residents use them to solve important issues of life — to enroll a child in kindergarten, to get information about subsidies or benefits, to support community projects, or to in-itiate the creation of their own. Conversely, because these sites are not working properly, residents can't get the money they are entitled to or find out about the licenses they need to open their businesses on time.
We hope that more and more new sites will be developed in accordance with modern requirements, and existing ones will be gradually updated to be-come more convenient for residents.
For our part, the Transparent Cities program team is open to cooperation with all municipalities. We are always ready to help those who want to improve their websites, become more transparent and accountable, not only nominally, but also in practice.