Case Study/Guide

How a Website Refresh Makes City Services More Accessible to Everyone

Author: Jay Warren

Jay Warren is the Director of Communication and Legislative Affairs for the City of Arlington, Texas, with more than a decade of leadership in transforming municipal communications through innovative digital strategies, resident-focused branding, and award-winning storytelling. A former broadcast journalist honored with a Peabody Award and the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence, he now leads one of the nation’s most recognized city communications teams, earning over 100 state and national awards for transparency, accessibility, and creative civic engagement. Jay's expertise in website overhauls, mobile-first design, and inclusive communication has made him a sought-after voice in modernizing how cities connect with their residents.

Key Summary

State and local governments face mounting pressure to maintain website content that is both trustworthy and accessible while adapting to the digital expectations of their residents. Citibot Refresh, a newly launched AI-powered solution, empowers city government professionals to overhaul their websites in record time. This white paper explores the pain points of government website management—from content consistency and accessibility demands to resident-centric navigation—and demonstrates how Citibot Refresh automates routine maintenance, provides actionable analytics, and offers unified, reliable online experiences for communities nationwide.

Key Conclusions

Citibot Refresh offers government teams the ability to:

  • Revolutionize website update cycles, shortening them from months to mere hours by automating content audits for accuracy, consistency, and currency.

  • Deliver accessible digital services, making compliance with ADA and emerging regulations seamless with thorough, automated website scans and recommendations.

  • Unify departmental voices for a cohesive resident experience, leveraging built-in analytics and content scoring.

  • Increase resident trust and engagement through transparent, regularly updated information and a robust, search-driven navigation experience.

  • Provide city managers and administrators the data—quantitative scores, improvement maps—they need to get buy-in for ongoing investment in digital transformation.

Key Quote

“Everyone wants to talk about AI, but no one wants to talk about data hygiene because it's not as sexy as AI is, evidently. But they go hand in hand, and we have to think about it in that way."
—Bratton Riley, CEO at Citibot.

Rethinking Government Websites

Local government websites have long suffered from inconsistency, siloed updates, and inaccessible information. For city managers and communication directors, updating a sprawling digital city hall typically drags on for months, riddled with department-specific jargon and broken links. Residents expect their city’s website to be as navigable as Amazon, with information available instantly and in plain language. However, the reality is frequent internal disconnects, limited resources, and compliance demands that overwhelm staff.

A single municipal website may span thousands of pages, each maintained at varying degrees of quality and timeliness. Communications professionals report the challenge of not just keeping event dates current, but also eliminating outdated PDFs and aligning every word to policies, resident needs, and ADA requirements.

As Marnie Schubert, MBA, noted, “The website… is the hub of all communications… It’s not a set it and forget it. You can’t just create the website, do your refresh, and walk away…

Introducing Automated, Resident-Centric Solutions

At the heart of Citibot Refresh is the radical commitment to resident-focused website service. Citibot Refresh uses advanced AI agents to scour entire government websites, flagging stale content, outdated formats, and accessibility issues, then delivering clear, actionable scores to managers and IT directors. It’s about automating what was previously manual—scrubbing for broken links, checking ADA compliance, unifying voices—so every department speaks to residents in a consistent, accessible way.

Buffalo Grove, a case study in municipal website transformation, replaced traditional navigation with a bold search-first approach. 

“We bravely did away with traditional navigation, betting on an amazing search bar and a robust keyword foundation,” said Molly Gillespie, Director of Communications. 

Time Savings and Data-Driven Accountability

For city managers, efficiency is measured in numbers. Citibot Refresh quantifies website health using metrics that are easily shareable with leadership. The platform maps out which sections are well maintained and where improvement is needed, leveraging analytics on traffic and content engagement to direct efforts. This has proven crucial for securing buy-in from stakeholders and prioritizing resources for digital transformation.

Jay Warren, Director of Communication for the City of Arlington, explained the impact: “We went from 2,100 pages to 981… And we did it in nine months, which… was a sprint. And I truly believe it was because we went in with a lot more research.” 

Accessibility as a Core Mandate

Emerging federal and state regulations demand greater accessibility for government digital platforms. Citibot Refresh addresses this directly, providing automated accessibility audits to flag ADA non-compliance, recommend fixes, and generate scores that can be reported at council meetings and included in RFPs. This approach shifts accessibility from a daunting challenge to a manageable, transparent process, giving local governments confidence in their compliance status and a roadmap for improvement.

Building Trust With Residents

Trust is the currency of modern government interactions. Residents who encounter outdated information, inconsistent messaging, or inaccessible pages quickly lose confidence in municipal digital services. Citibot Refresh is designed to reverse this trend, providing always-current information, instant search answers, and user-friendly service request flows. Departments are empowered to confidently manage their content, guided by data and clear standards, and freed from the burden of manual audits. This ensures every website update is resident-focused and clear.

As Molly Gillespie remarked, "It's not about just organizing things by your department... It needs to be by your users, which is your community". 

AI, Analytics, and the Future of Municipal Communication

Citibot’s technology is directly informed by the feedback and real-world experience of city managers, IT leads, and communications directors. The product is constantly evolving to address the shifting landscape of digital government—from mobile-first requirements (with up to 75% of traffic on some city sites now coming via smartphones) to new regulations for accessibility. The ability to automate audits, track improvement over time, and generate transparency in digital service has made Citibot Refresh an indispensable ally in modern municipal transformation.

Speaking the Resident's Language

Citibot's mission is clear: build trust between governments and residents through accessible, AI-powered chat solutions. The terminology reflects this focus—resident over citizen, customer over partner. Internal voice guidelines ensure that jargon is replaced with plain language, making every website more usable and each interaction more meaningful.

Practical "How-To" Recommendations

For city professionals who are ready to embrace Citibot Refresh as their transformative solution, start small. Focus on the top ten most visited pages, conduct routine audits for broken links and PDFs, and work with Citibot to establish scoring and improvement benchmarks. Leverage analytics to align your navigation with real resident needs, and don’t hesitate to involve community members for feedback that drives usability.

Conclusion

Citibot Refresh stands as a pivotal innovation in the world of local government website management. It bridges the time and complexity gap, enabling government teams to deliver up-to-date, compliant, and resident-centered online experiences with authority and ease. This new standard of digital service not only responds to community needs but sets a benchmark for modern, trustworthy government communications.

To learn more about Citibot Refresh, schedule a product demo today. Please visit https://www.citibot.io