City employees soon will be able to communicate more efficiently thanks to a new intranet system for their use. The intranet networks city computers for employee use. Launched this week, it includes a message board where employees and departments can post important notices, a calendar of city events and other items, said Josh Foster, the citys Internet specialist, who designed the system. The system is called The CLICK, an acronym for Citys Local Intranet for Communication and Knowledge, and is accessible from any computer connected to the Internet, Foster said. Employees will be able to access it from their homes or wherever, but they will have to have a username and password to log into the system, he said. Before being allowed to access the system, city employees will have to go through an hour-long training session on the use of the system and the ethics policy established for its use, Foster said. Until they complete that course, they wont be able to use the system, he said. We felt like that it was important to provide that training, so were not issuing people user names or passwords until they complete the training. Foster is conducting training seminars throughout this month and will continue to have them as needed, he said. The intranet system will allow for notices to city employees to be posted and available for review permanently, rather than sent via e-mail or other means and then discarded, he said. With this, the employees will be able to go back and look at something they got a few months back if they need to, whereas with the citys e-mail system, a lot of times it gets clogged up with spam or whatever and so people end up deleting the messages without reading them, Foster said. The intranet will allow the city to create an online library of important documents, such as the employee handbook and other materials that have been kept only in hard copies, he said. Foster also is working on a major revamping project for the citys public Web site at www.bgky.org, he said. Im doing the trainings this month, so thats keeping me pretty busy, but hopefully after June 1 Ill be able to get to work on the redesign, he said. Were hoping to have it ready to launch by mid-summer. City Manager Chuck Coates said the city is very pleased with Fosters work on the project and is looking forward to having the intranet as a service to its employees. Its going to really improve the efficiency of our communication system, he said. That will be the biggest benefit.