{"id":212363,"date":"2026-03-20T02:50:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-20T02:50:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/212363\/"},"modified":"2026-03-20T02:50:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T02:50:08","slug":"austin-website-overhaul-cuts-thousands-of-pages-some-public-records","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/212363\/","title":{"rendered":"Austin website overhaul cuts thousands of pages, some public records"},"content":{"rendered":"

Austin will launch a $1.48 million overhaul of its city website Thursday, cutting tens of thousands of pages \u2014 including some public records \u2014 in a sweeping effort to streamline its digital platforms<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The city abruptly announced the rollout Wednesday afternoon, saying the change \u2014 the website\u2019s first major overhaul since 2012 \u2014 will streamline navigation by reducing its content from about 17,000 pages to roughly 1,300. Much of the removed content will be PDFs that do not meet Americans with Disabilities Act standards, pages with inconsistent tone, or pages with formatting issues, staff said.<\/p>\n

The Department of Justice\u00a0published a rule in April 2024<\/a>\u00a0setting requirements for state and local government websites and mobile apps to be accessible to people with disabilities.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The city did not respond to questions about whether the scrubbed content would be publicly available elsewhere or how the move aligns with the city\u2019s broader transparency goals. When the new website launches, users will need to update all bookmarks to webpages and PDF forms because all links will change.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The money to transform the website came from capital improvement projects, but officials could not answer questions about specific bonds or other funding sources used for the project.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The city will use $1.04 million for continued website work, maintenance and software licensing over the next three years.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Austin Communications and Engagement Digital and Creative Services Manager Yasmin Wagner said the city has wanted to redesign the website for a while but took time to gather the necessary resources and funding.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe’ve had a goal that’s been a long-standing goal to continue modernizing the city of Austin’s digital experience so that we’re providing a unified, always accessible and future-ready platform for Austinites,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

She added that the old website model eventually limited the city\u2019s ability to expand and modernize.<\/p>\n

City Council approved a contract in 2024 with third-party vendor Material+ to develop the new website. Wagner said the redevelopment is separate from the city\u2019s recent logo rebranding effort<\/a>, though the new website will reflect the new logo more consistently.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The next phases of the website redesign will focus on fixing issues that arise, as well as ongoing maintenance and upkeep. Staff will use a heat map to track where traffic goes on the site and how long users spend there to measure content performance in real time and make adjustments accordingly. When the site goes live, users will also be able to fill out surveys and contact city staff with feedback.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Some of the future document cuts after the initial website launch will include public city datasets, which staff said could be removed if they aren\u2019t required to be posted online and aren\u2019t frequently accessed.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s also a decision, too, on where the city is devoting resources to actively maintain those data sets, and so we want to prioritize the areas that are most needed and most viewed,\u201d Wagner said. \u201cIf we have something that’s only getting two page views every couple of months, we’ll know that that’s probably not a good use of city resources to continue to gather that data and publish it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Austin will launch a $1.48 million overhaul of its city website Thursday, cutting tens of thousands of pages…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":212364,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133,8002],"class_list":["post-212363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-policy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212363"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212363\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/212364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}