The monthly report to your manager

The website is often invisible to the people who fund it until something goes wrong. A short monthly report changes that. It shows the work, the risks and the decisions that need a manager, before a resident complaint or a records request makes the case for you.

This lesson gives you a one-page report you can write in half an hour from records you already keep.

The five sections

Keep the same sections every month, so your manager learns where to look.

1. Decisions needed. Put this first. One to three items, each with a recommendation and a date:

• "The Planning department has not reviewed its pages in 14 months. I recommend we ask the director to name an owner by December 1."
• "Our payment form vendor's contract ends in March. We need to decide by January whether to renew."

2. What changed. New pages, removed pages, big updates and meetings posted. Use counts and a few examples, not a full list: "Published 6 new pages, including leaf pickup and the winter parking rules. Posted all 9 meeting agendas on time."

3. What broke, and what we did. From your weekly check log, form tests and resident reports: "The permit form stopped sending on October 3 after an email change. Found on October 7, fixed the same day. Four submissions were recovered from the saved copies."

4. What residents used. If your site has analytics, the top pages and top search terms say what residents need. Report what they mean: "Leaf pickup was the most visited page in October, and 'leaf' was the top search. The schedule is now linked from the homepage."

5. Accessibility and compliance. Progress toward WCAG 2.1, Level AA under the Title II rule: documents fixed, issues found, issues still open, and the compliance date that applies to your institution. ADA.gov lists the dates: April 26, 2027 for governments serving 50,000 or more people, and April 26, 2028 for smaller governments and special districts.

Numbers you can trust

Only report numbers you can show. Good sources:

• your weekly check log and form test dates,
• your page list with owners and review dates (overdue reviews are a number),
• your site's analytics, if it has them,
• an accessibility checker's results, with the date you ran it.

If you do not have analytics, say so, and skip that section. Do not estimate.

Analytics.usa.gov is a public example from the federal government: the Digital Analytics Program publishes what people use on federal websites. Your report is private, but the questions are the same ones: what did people come for, and did they find it?

What to leave out

• Every edit you made. Your manager does not need to know you fixed a typo.
• Technical detail with no decision attached. Link to it instead.
• Blame. Say what broke and what you did, with dates.

Make it routine

Write the report on the same day each month, the day after your monthly form tests. Send it by email, keep a copy in a shared folder, and bring the decisions section to your regular meeting with your manager. Over a year, twelve reports show how the site improved, what it cost in time and where help is still needed.