The city of Rapid City has a brand new face to show the online world.

A revamped city Web site, www.rcgov.org, went live Tuesday with a number of upgrades, including improved navigation, information and search function, IT officer Russ Tiensvold said.

Aldermen received a presentation on the site's new features Wednesday at the Legal & Finance Committee meeting.

"It's a pretty significant overhaul," Community Resources Director Kevin Thom said. "It'll be easier to navigate, have more information."

From the home page, visitors can click a button to jump to popular city departments, including the Rapid City Library, Rushmore Plaza Civic Center and RapidMap, the city-county GIS map.

Bright scenes of Rapid City's many attractions greet visitors on every page, and a permanent navigation bar links to departments, minutes and agendas, community information and employment opportunities.

Visitors looking for tourism and convention information are directed straight to the Rapid City Convention & Visitors Bureau site.

Updating the old site was a "very convoluted process," so departments didn't add information very often, Tiensvold said. With the new site, updates will be much easier, hopefully making more information available.

That will only increase government transparency, Mayor Alan Hanks said. Gone is the employee intranet, which contained information only visible to employees.

"This is an attempt that everything we do at City Hall is transparent," Hanks said. "Everything that's available is available to everyone."

The city is also getting ready to start streaming city meetings live online, Thom said before the meeting.

After the technology is in place - an upgrade of the council chamber's audio-visual equipment is needed - residents will be able to watch city meetings live on the Web site.

After the meetings, the full-length recordings will stay online, and viewers will be able to jump to view specific agenda items.

Contact Emilie Rusch at 394-8453 or emilie.rusch@rapidcityjournal.com.