Would you like to see a Haralson County government Website?

[Herr Mercator]

As early as the last year of the 20th century, 2000 (there being no
year zero), the Haralson County Commissioner of Roads and Revenues,
i.e. the principal official organ of Haralson County government,
published a site on the World Wide Web. (See
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.haralsoncountyga.org/ ) But as
we write this, no such Web site now operates.

The State of Georgia provides official indexing Web pages for each of
its constituent counties at http://www.georgia.gov/00/topic_index_channel/0,2092,4802_5083,00.html
The indexing page for Haralson County is posted at
http://haralsoncounty.georgia.gov/03/home/0,2230,9010924,00.html
and reports that no county Web site is available. But an e-mail
address is listed: h_...@bellsouth.net . Do you think e-mail sent
there is answered? Do the experiment yourself - send a short RSVP
there and wait for a reply. Then report back here.

It's true that Polk County no more has a Web site than does Haralson
County. But Haralson's two other neighboring Georgia counties, Carroll
and Paulding, do. Even three of the four incorporated cities in
Haralson County have Web sites. The smallest of these three, Buchanan,
shows over FIVE THOUSAND "hits" on its home page between April 1, 2008
and now (May 22, 2009). That's about about a dozen times as many as
the number of its households. And just ONE social networking complex
on just ONE social networking service, xanga, which seems to be
created largely by Haralson County teens, at http://www.xanga.com/groups/group.aspx?id=387944
now has over 100 participants. Yes, vast numbers of county teens have
their own home page on the Web - but the principal organ of Haralson
County government does not!

Do you think it would break the county budget to support a Web site
(free hosting is readily available with third-party ads)? Or would it
be too hard for the county to manage what typical non-expert county
teens do already? Maybe you think it would save the county money if it
used the Web to publish, instead of using paper mailed through the
USPS or picked up by residents in person, who have to drive to do so.
A county Web site could even embed YouTube videos in which its
officers make presentations. YouTube charges video creators nothing to
host videos and camcorders now cost less than half what a washing
machine does. There could easily be a Haralson County government
channel on YouTube.

As best anyone knows, no careful census of Internet use in Haralson
County has ever been conducted. But aside from casual evidence like
the Buchanan home page hit count and the number of county teen home
pages, we have careful US Census estimates of Internet use in rural
Georgia (and many other places). The latest numbers show that an
overwhelming number of rural Georgia households - about 3 in 5 - have
Internet access at home, almost all of it via a fast "broadband"
connection. Check out the details here:
http://groups.google.com/group/haralson-county-uncensored/web/household-internet-use-usa-2007

For the present, one can access a lot of information about Haralson
County using a
data portal at http://bellsouthpwp.net/d/o/docdtv/Haralson/ -
including links to Web sites run by the Haralson County Sheriff's
Office, the Haralson County school system, and other official local
agencies.

Would you like to see a Haralson County government Website?

HM