In its ninth generation since being created in 1996, Tampa's award-winning municipal website shows lots of reasons why it gets more than 2.5 million pageviews a month.

For one thing, the site is designed for easy access. "We don't go very deep," says Bob Austin, a manager within the city's Technology and Innovation Department who runs the site with a crew of about seven. (Forty-two different city departments also contribute content.) "We try to make it no more than two clicks to get where you want to go. That was part of a conscious decision in our redesign in 2006."

The site features more than 6,000 pages that the public can see and another 16,000 visible only to city employees.

The tools are cool, and there are plenty of them. You can generate maps, crime stats, zoning and demographic info about your neighborhood; list the top 10 traffic accident locations in the past 90 days; or produce live maps of reported crimes or fire-rescue calls for the past 1-12 hours — you choose the time frame. Clicking on a crime report location gives you the type of crime and exact location.

The site also features podcasts and RSS feeds for news about various government departments or functions. You can even sign up for a MyTampaGov free membership, which lets you customize the website to provide easier access to the part of it you use more often. More than 49,000 already have registered on that part of the website.

Of course, like other municipal sites, you can pay your bills, too. In this case, monthly parking fees downtown, parking tickets or utilities.