A new home page went "live" on Jan. 7 and the city's dozens of other Web sites will be redesigned in the coming months.

"We've spent the past three years upgrading the city's hardware and software infrastructure as a precursor to this latest development," Hannemann said in a news release. "As I noted in my 2005 state-of-the-city address, the city may have been among the early leaders nationwide in adopting advancements in information technology to better serve the public. But our Honolulu-dot-gov Web site was a patina masking major shortcomings in our information infrastructure.

"Our new Enterprise Resource Planning financial system went live on July 1, 2007, culminating one of our goals to improve the fiscal management of the city. This new multimillion-dollar system was delivered on-time and on-budget. We expect to reap its rewards over the next year with improved fiscal reporting and services."

In December, the city also completed an 18-month project to replace its outdated mainframe systems with new state-of-the art technologies, Hannemann said. He said the upgrade was completed without any impact on the delivery of services and essentially no increase in the Department of Information Technology's budget.

"The foundation has now been established to make significant improvements to the city's Web site," said Gordon Bruce, city director of Information technology. "This first phase is just the beginning of an aggressive one-year effort to expand online access to government agencies and information, and improve the availability of more public services through the Internet," Bruce said. "I encourage people to subscribe to the 'Stay Informed' section at the bottom of the home page to receive regular updates of our progress."

Last year, the Center for Digital Government's "Survey of American Cities" named Honolulu eighth in the major metro category (cities with populations greater than 300,000) for the quality and scope of its online services.