Hi Steve, we are a state agency so our website is developed, updated, maintained by the state. We have an MOU with our VR agency who does the back office functions (IT, audit, fiscal/payroll, human resources, etc.) for a number of disability service agencies including Council.  There is no cost to building the site as it is all part of the MOU (We pay $37K per year, a steal for all we get).  The state has very strict IT/web standards but we have been able to use our status as a DD Council to get some exemptions to improve design.  We have had our current site for about 5 years and are in the process of redesign/rebranding.  We hope to have the new site up by April. It won’t be anything super fancy but hopefully cleaner and user friendly. The most frustrating part is that we are not able to update it ourselves. Although the agency is pretty good, technically under the MOA they get 5 days to post.  Usually they post same day but when something is time sensitive it is very problematic and we end up having to use social media and/or e-newsletter rather than a web posting. That can be a challenge during legislative session since you can’t post documents on Facebook (we are not allowed to use drop box) and we can’t get the link posted fast enough on our website.

I am sure my communications director would say that he would love to be able to contract out privately for our site.