Prince William County Expanding Online Communication Efforts

WOODBRIDGE, Va. — Are you an effective communicator? Prince William County may soon want to hear from you.

The county’s communications office is hiring and will place a greater focus on how it communicates to county residents via the web. The move comes as officials on the Board of Supervisors aim to make to make it easier to obtain information pertaining to everything from local government issues, taxes, to where to obtain a dog license.

As the county rebrands its communication efforts with a web focus, its Prince William County Reports newsletters printed on glossy paper and mailed to residents four times per year will now be produced and mailed just two times per year, said Communications Director Jason Grant. They’ll be distributed in January and will feature a end-of-year wrap up, and another will go out in May and will feature an update of the finalized county normally approved each spring.

With the $100,000 per year savings expected with the printing cuts, a portion of that money will go to fund a $20,000 increase in the salary range of a previously unfilled position to pay a new full-time employee who will create and implement new applications and new ways of communicating with residents via the county’s website.

“With the rebranding of our office, we will focus on what our office has and does not have when it comes to making communicating with citizens easier and effectively, to improve the customer experience, and put more focus and emphasis on our website,” said Grant.

The new Senior Online Communications Manager job is one of two positions in Grant’s office that have previously gone unfilled. A move Tuesday by the Prince William County Board of Supervisors, in part, means he’ll be able to reclassify one open position to higher pay grade, bringing it more in line to a starting salary range of $64,000 per year.

The new hire will focus solely on the web and developing new communications processes. Though the county has an internal IT department, they are not capable of producing or maintaining the type of new communication product sought by the office, and outsourcing the position isn’t favored as web contractors often maintain several different websites for multiple clients at once, said Grant.

A candidate for a second open position that has gone unfilled, Public Information Officer I, will also be hired. This person will create content for the web — producing text stories and taking photos — as well as responding to questions from residents.

Job descriptions for the postions are expected to be posted within the next two to three weeks, said Grant. Once filled, the new hires will be tasked with a holistic review of Prince William’s website and to look for ways to improve it. Websites for individual Supervisors on the Board will continue to be maintained by staff in their respective offices and not by Prince William County’s central communications office.

The reorganization comes as a daily newspaper that served Prince William County for more than 140 years, News & Messenger, ceased publication last month.