Sydney Firm Wins Website Contract

MediaSpark Inc. of Sydney has won a $150,000 contract to supply the Sydney Tar Ponds Agency with website support services.

The contract includes maintenance and updating of the agency's website at www.gov.ns.ca/stpa, and several new features to be implemented over the next year.

"We plan to make the website a key part of our efforts to ensure open and transparent communications throughout the big cleanup," said Frank Potter, the agency's director of operations. "Residents, reporters, contractors and interested citizens across Canada will find it a ready source of information about every aspect of the cleanup."

Founded in 1994, MediaSpark is a software development and new media production company. Its education and business simulation software products have won many international awards. It won the contract in a competitive tender process. The contract is for one year, and can be extended on agreement of the parties.

The Sydney company will start work immediately on the installation of a web camera at the Coke Ovens, and on a gallery of several hundred historical and contemporary photographs of the Tar Ponds and Coke Ovens.

North River artist Carol Kennedy has been commissioned to take new photographs of the area. The two sites have undergone significant changes in the last three years with the removal of derelict structures and debris, and the construction of an engineered cap over the former municipal dump at the eastern edge of the Coke Ovens.

MediaSpark has experience working on the cleanup project, having developed the agency's existing website, and two sites for the Joint Action Group.

"We're excited about the website's potential to increase public understanding of Sydney's contaminated industrial sites, and to communicate events unfolding in the cleanup," said Mr. Potter. "If residents have ideas about how to make the site more interesting and useful, we're anxious to hear them."