Intro to City of Houston website

[fileunderjeff]

What does the City of Houston do, and how does it work? It would be great to have a website that explains the way that the city operates, and how citizens can get involved.

Here are some examples of pages that might be helpful:

• Capital improvement projects - what are they, how are they planned, and why are they important?
• Houston's strong mayor form of government - how does Houston's executive administration work? what do City Council members do?
• Org charts - key staff positions and what they do
• Key programs - in plain language, describe what they are and list key city or administration programs (e.g. Harvey recovery programs, Complete Communities, etc.)
• City budget - how does it work? what does it mean?
• Speaking at public comment session - how to do it, why to do it, proper etiquette

It could be a directory site, but it could also be a workflow starting with what people care about.

[LawExplorer]

A wiki could can serve those purposes. With Semantic MediaWiki, administrators and even users can import structured data. The wiki farm Referata permits the creation of a semantic wiki for free, so that would be one way to create a prototype.

[LawExplorer]

Here are some links to information about plain language in law and government:

• Plain Language website for the U.S. Government;
• Writing Tips and Grammar Tips from the American Society of Legal Writers;
• Publications from the European Union
• How to Write Clearly
• _Claire's Clear Writing Tips_.

Books by Rudolf Flesch also provide guidance about plain language. A couple of those titles are The Art of Plain Talk and The Art of Plain Writing.