County Revamps Website

As of New Year’s Day, the county of Marin has a new electronic look and ways of contact.

A newly designed website with a more intuitive URL, www.marincounty.org, is open for business as well as new e-mail addresses and uniform phone prefix 473 for county offices and direct lines for employees.

The site has been revamped and is organized so information and services are easier and quicker to find, such as online bill-pay features. It also highlights news and events in Marin, connects to the county’s social media accounts and provides an interactive, full-featured calendar complete with details about coming events that can be imported directly into your personal calendar.

“The new site responds to the increasing demand for people to take care of County-related business electronically,” David Hill, the county’s chief information officer, said in a release.

The site includes links to pay taxes, access county records and retrieve applications for licenses and permits.

“The new site, the e-mail and phone number changes address the need for simpler and easier ways for the public to reach us,” Hill said.

The test homepage, or beta site, was introduced in mid-December to gather input and feedback from online users before going live with the new site. The county received more than 200 responses with helpful improvements and suggestions, many of which have been incorporated. More improvements will be rolled out in the coming year as department pages are upgraded. Until then, many links point to the old web pages.

In conjunction with the new look and name, the county is changing its e-mail address to reflect the shorter name @marincounty.org and moving to a single telephone prefix 473. The old e-mail website name and e-mail address format (www.co.marin.ca.us) were developed as the standard government format more than a decade ago and has generally been seen as cumbersome, outdated and difficult to remember. The old county website was designed in 2001 and won three awards for excellence at that time.

The county has used three telephone prefixes and is consolidating to one to also make it simpler for residents to remember. The 473 prefix simply replaces 507 or 499 in all county phone numbers. The old e-mail addresses, web address and phone numbers will continue to work until July 2012 as residents become accustom to the changes.

To find any contact in the county offices, the public can dial the automated attendant at 473-7000.