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Last updated on Thursday, June 8, 2017
(BLOOMINGTON) - City officials unveiled the Bloomington Business Quickstart tool, a new feature of the city’s upgraded website designed to help new business owners get started.
"Bloomington loves our small businesses," Mayor John Hamilton said. "They are the foundation of our community -- together they employ the majority of our workforce -- and we want to make sure we're doing everything we can to help them succeed. Using our website to streamline the start-up process is a common sense innovation making it easier to open a new small business in Bloomington."
The portal can be accessed on the City's alpha website at bloomington.in.gov/alpha/business/start.
The new Quickstart tool was developed as a collaboration between Leadership Bloomington/ Monroe County (LBMC) and several City of Bloomington departments, including Information & Technology Services (ITS), Economic & Sustainable Development (ESD), and the newly formed Office of Innovation. LBMC member and City of Bloomington Utilities employee Tamara Roberts helped bring together city and county staff to start the process. Building on the work done by the LBMC class, Director of Innovation Tom Miller worked with city staff in ITS and ESD to turn the paper brochure created by LBMC into a functioning website.
"This has been a citywide effort and our hope is to continue to grow and develop the site with community input," Director of Innovation Tom Miller said. "As a city we have high standards for our businesses, but we want to make sure that folks have a clear understanding of those standards, how they impact their business, and how the city can help them comply with those standards. As a city we want to remove barriers to business activity. This tool is a great addition to that effort."
The recent Community Survey revealed that for 67 percent of residents the City website was their top destination for information about the city. Informed by that survey, the city has been working to improve its online communications efforts.
"Our City's website is the single best way for us to communicate with the public and provide digital services we all need," ITS Director Rick Dietz said. "This new business tool and a host of other features in the forthcoming website revision will help us better serve the public. And you are invited to help by suggesting new ideas for us to improve our City's digital services."
The City's alpha website can be accessed at bloomington.in.gov/alpha. Feedback can be provided at the top of the page using the "feedback" button. After the new website is launched later this month, the City will continue to seek feedback to continuously improve website content, services and user experience.
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