Town of Dartmouth website, emails to be updated

Twenty-seven years after creating the Town of Dartmouth website, it will be receiving a new domain, shifting from town.dartmouth.ma.us to dartmouthma.gov.

This shift will include new email addresses for town officials and redeploying the financial system in Town Hall, in addition to the domain change.

“The big heavy lift for this is internal, for you and the public,” said Mike Courville, director of the Management Information Systems Department, at a Select Board meeting on Monday, Nov. 3.

He explained that the financial system is web-based and to transfer all the information from .us to .gov the system will be down for an entire day.

“It’s like we’re installing the system new,” Courville said.

Changes will begin around Monday, Nov. 17 and will start with updating email addresses and the Town of Dartmouth website.

Courville noted that the changes being made are all inline with guidance from the state.

“We just fell in line with what they’re recommending for towns across the state,” he said.

Courville noted that in the transition period there will probably be some things accidentally missed, as it’s become more complicated than just updating email addresses and websites.

“We [will] just address them as they come up, but we want to get the big ones,” he said.

The town will also be updating the Dartmouth Police Department website in the third week of December from Dartmouthpd.org to Dartmouthpolice.gov.

All of these updates are being funded through a $20,900 grant from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

“We received a grant for this, and so now we’re going to actually get this done,” Courville said.