University Bridge and autumn colors map it

Photo by bwellsea

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Budget and Staffing

Seattle has a central web team, in the Office of Electronic Communications, Department of Information Technology. This team provides the central web infrastructure and services, maintains the top tiers of the City's website, supports City-wide applications, and assists departments design and manage their content.

The chart below shows how staff resources on the central web team are allocated to various functions:

  1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004
Division Director 0.75 0.75 0.75 0.75 0.5 0.5 0.35 0.35 0.35 0.35
System Administrator 1 1 2 2 2 1 2 2 2 2
Application Devel/Support 0.5 0.5 0.5 1 1 2 2 2 1 1
Web Page Designer 1 1 1 1 1 2.1 2.1 2.1 2.1 2.1
BBS/Community Sites/Lists 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25
Content Manager 0.5 0.5 0.5 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
                     
SUBTOTAL Internet Functions 4 4 5 6 5.75 6.85 7.7 7.7 6.7 6.7
                     
Other Digital Divide Programs 0.25 0.25 0.25 1.75 1.75 1.75 1.75 1.75 1.75 1.75
                     
TOTAL WEB, Internet AND DIGITAL DIVIDE 4.25 4.25 5.25 7.75 7.5 8.6 9.45 9.45 8.45 8.45

Overall, the budget has been reasonably stable over the past few years, with a drop in 2003, resulting in elimination of one position, and a slight increase in 2004 to provide some resources to implement the City's Web Content Management System. The City of Seattle has a system to allocate costs among various utilities, special funds and the general fund (local tax revenue).  The central web team is funded this way, along with many of the other services provided by the Department of Information Technology. 

1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004
$440k $486k $488k $726k $763k $844k $896k $936k $841k $928k

Staffing has not kept up with growth of the website.  The chart below compares number of page views on the site to the size of the central web team.