Often in the digital age, the public sector lags behind when it comes to innovation, which makes it difficult to reach out to citizens who are more connected than ever before. The City of Southlake, Texas aspired to be different, however. Instead of continuing on a path of “business as usual”, the City strived to harness the power of the digital revolution to engage citizens and provide a mechanism for them to participate and be informed. The result of this was MySouthlakeNews.com, which established a digital portal for the entire community to access news and important information.

Southlake, Texas is a community of 26,917 located in the heart of the DFW Metroplex. The demographics of the community, which is made up of affluent, highly- educated citizens, tend to be technology savvy and have a desire for the City engage and provide information in a digital format. Despite this need, it was often difficult to find news of importance to the community that was centrally housed, leaving visitors to the City’s website to have to search across many pages for articles of importance for them. This situation provided the impetus for the MySouthlakeNews.com project, which sought to centralize and standardize the way Southlake residents get their community news.