Before beginning a Web site, be sure you have policies in place regarding: purpose of Web use in municipality business, appropriate use by staff, public access to municipal records, privacy and confidentiality of personal or sensitive information, security of computing and network resources, and records management.

Review existing policies about computing, telecommunications, records management, copyright, and similar topics. Some will continue to serve you well and others will need to be updated to take the Web into account. Specific programmatic policies, especially ones about handling personal information, may need to be updated.

Economic development is one of the clear themes on the City of Albany's Web site.

Think of policies as guiding principles, not as technology-specific procedures. The rate of change in the underlying technologies requires that policy statements focus on service objectives rather than on the technologies themselves. Policies guiding the use of technology resources should be reviewed regularly to ensure that they remain useful and appropriate.