Phila. offers services to city over WWW

As the world honored ENIAC's 50th birthday last week, the city of Philadelphia celebrated the one-week anniversary of its official home page. More than 70,000 people have visited the city's official Internet site since it was made accessible to the public two weeks ago. The city established a partnership with Strategic Global Concepts, a private firm, in order to create the site. Partnerships were also made with quasi-governmental agencies and nonprofit organizations including Convention and Visitor's Bureau, Welcome America! and Liberty Net. The city's Strategic Information Technology Plan, which is scheduled for release March 1, 1996, addresses initiatives in four categories: community services, general city services, justice and public safety and internal services. The city Internet site is a separate initiative under the community services portfolio. According to Philadelphia Chief Information Officer John Carrow, the site is "an easily accessible repository of information designed to solve almost any problem." The web site is divided into four sections: Philadelphia Marketplace, Philadelphia City Services, Community Links and "Touch and See Philadelphia." "Philadelphia Marketplace" contains listings of 270,000 businesses in the city and surrounding region. The listings are free to all businesses. "Philadelphia City Services" includes information on the four categories targeted under the city's Strategic Information Technology Plan. City forms are also available online under the city services category. The "Community Links" category includes access to connections for transportation services, healthcare services and employment and human services. The "Touch and See Philadelphia" section provides information on hotel accommodations, dining, shopping and various other points of interest in the city. "We hope that the information provided will be a stimulus for increased tourism," Carrow said. "We also hope that the site will provide a better understanding of Philadelphia business and attract business to the city." The design firm of Tierney and Partners helped the city to explore web pages for more than 80 cities before they designed Philadelphia's official site. City Program Manager for Community Services Sherry Rubin said the page was designed to include corporate and artistic cooperation in Philadelphia. The information will be imported from the tourism section of the web site, which can be found at http://www.phila.gov/main.html.