The Muscatine County Board of Supervisors on Nov. 10 authorized a $36,000 redesign of the county website by Iowa-based Neapolitan Labs and approved an update to the county’s password policy aimed at aligning with HIPAA and CJIS requirements.

Information services director Bill Riley told the board the county currently pays roughly $20,000 a year to maintain its CivicPlus website and that moving to Neapolitan Labs would reduce annual hosting and maintenance costs to an estimated $4,000–$6,000. "We're currently paying about 20,000 that will go up between 5–10% this year for Civic Plus just for our maintenance fees," Riley said. He described usability and accessibility problems with the current site and said the new vendor’s designs are more mobile-friendly and easier for residents to navigate.

Riley outlined the password-policy revisions proposed alongside the redesign: increase the minimum password length from six to 12 characters; lengthen the password-change interval to one year for accounts protected by multi-factor authentication (MFA); implement a dictionary to block commonly used weak passwords such as "Password" or "12345678"; and require hardware tokens for shared desktops used by more than 10 users.

Board members discussed procurement and budgeting; staff said the $36,000 initial redesign could be covered by surplus funds and existing maintenance allocations, and that the county could amortize costs if desired. Supervisor (Speaker 3) moved to approve the Neapolitan Labs contract and Supervisor (Speaker 8) seconded; the motion passed by voice vote. The board later voted to adopt the revised password policy (motion and second; voice vote). Riley said staff will work office-by-office to migrate users and to deploy MFA and hardware tokens where needed.

Riley said the county will not include a confidentiality provision in any engagement materials and expects the redesign to reduce long-term hosting costs while improving ADA compliance and mobile accessibility.