A three-part series from Governing magazine that discusses the paths several states took after deciding to establish public-private partnerships to manage their eGovernment services.
Local governments across the country are facing budget shortfalls due to the economic recession. To save money, many are turning to shared services where jurisdictions collaborate on technology solutions rather than each maintaining separate systems. This allows costs to be distributed across multiple agencies. Examples discussed include Fort Collins, Colorado housing their email services with the local school district to save $55,000 annually, and a consortium in Minnesota implementing shared ticket-writing software for police. Shared services are seen as a way for governments to obtain sophisticated applications they could not otherwise afford on their own.
This document discusses essential partnerships between government entities and private suppliers for delivering IT services. It provides an example of a successful partnership between the state of Utah and the National Information Consortium (NIC) to develop Utah's government website and online services. Some keys to the partnership's success included NIC developing flexible funding models, leveraging experience with other governments, and being responsive and willing to reduce costs. The state of Utah was pleased with NIC's services and recently extended their contract for another four years.
Deling av data: ”Tenke det, ønske det, ville det med, men gjøre det...?”Stian Danenbarger
Presentation on sharing of open data held for the Norwegian government's "Forum for Large Public Web Sites", early in June 2009, soon after Data.gov went live. The talk was in Norwegian, but the PPT actually contains more English than Norwegian text...
To find a lawyer becomes a headache for business organization or general people. Sometimes people face many difficulties to find proper lawyer as their requirements, because of information gap. In addition, it is also difficult to find experienced lawyer. Usually, in order to hire a lawyer people need to meet him physically which is time-consuming and expensive. The delivery of legal services remains largely fragmented, outdated, and inefficient.The main purpose of this paper is to do empirical research about how the Internet is currently failing laypeople who are searching online for the legal help to their life problems and what a future agenda of user-centered standards and practices for better legal help on the Internet could be. It initially looks at the existing literature about how the Internet can best be used as legal asset and the situation quo of lawful help websites. Then it metering and looks at negative client reports and Investigates of legal help websites. Finally, it presents the primary study of how people search for resources to solve a legal problem, how they scorn and counts legal aid services online, and their recompose on which existing lawful help websites they consider to be the most usable, the most faithful, and the most valued. This data is necessary to propose new best exercises about how these tech-based services can best serve people, in terms of usability, characteristic of service, and safeguard of the users' interests. It also ensures the importance of the Internet as a lawful help service and highlights the need for more experiment and development on better online legal service help websites that fit general people needs and preferences
ONLINE LEGAL SERVICE: THE PRESENT AND FUTUREijcsit
To find a lawyer becomes a headache for business organization or general people. Sometimes people face many difficulties to find proper lawyer as their requirements, because of information gap. In addition, it is also difficult to find experienced lawyer. Usually, in order to hire a lawyer people need to meet him physically which is time-consuming and expensive. The delivery of legal services remains largely fragmented, outdated, and inefficient.The main purpose of this paper is to do empirical research about how the Internet is currently failing laypeople who are searching online for the legal help to their life problems and what a future agenda of user-centered standards and practices for better legal help on the Internet could be. It initially looks at the existing literature about how the Internet can best be used as legal asset and the situation quo of lawful help websites. Then it metering and looks at negative client reports and Investigates of legal help websites. Finally, it presents the primary study of how people search for resources to solve a legal problem, how they scorn and counts legal aid services online, and their recompose on which existing lawful help websites they consider to be the most usable, the most faithful, and the most valued. This data is necessary to propose new best exercises about how these tech-based services can best serve people, in terms of usability, characteristic of service, and safeguard of the users' interests. It also ensures the importance of the Internet as a lawful help service and highlights the need for more experiment and development on better online legal service help websites that fit general people needs and preferences.
An update on Clicklaw, formerly known as the PLEI Portal, a project to create a unified point of access on the Internet to legal information, education, and help for British Columbians.
Local governments across the country are facing budget shortfalls due to the economic recession. To save money, many are turning to shared services where jurisdictions collaborate on technology solutions rather than each maintaining separate systems. This allows costs to be distributed across multiple agencies. Examples discussed include Fort Collins, Colorado housing their email services with the local school district to save $55,000 annually, and a consortium in Minnesota implementing shared ticket-writing software for police. Shared services are seen as a way for governments to obtain sophisticated applications they could not otherwise afford on their own.
This document discusses essential partnerships between government entities and private suppliers for delivering IT services. It provides an example of a successful partnership between the state of Utah and the National Information Consortium (NIC) to develop Utah's government website and online services. Some keys to the partnership's success included NIC developing flexible funding models, leveraging experience with other governments, and being responsive and willing to reduce costs. The state of Utah was pleased with NIC's services and recently extended their contract for another four years.
Deling av data: ”Tenke det, ønske det, ville det med, men gjøre det...?”Stian Danenbarger
Presentation on sharing of open data held for the Norwegian government's "Forum for Large Public Web Sites", early in June 2009, soon after Data.gov went live. The talk was in Norwegian, but the PPT actually contains more English than Norwegian text...
To find a lawyer becomes a headache for business organization or general people. Sometimes people face many difficulties to find proper lawyer as their requirements, because of information gap. In addition, it is also difficult to find experienced lawyer. Usually, in order to hire a lawyer people need to meet him physically which is time-consuming and expensive. The delivery of legal services remains largely fragmented, outdated, and inefficient.The main purpose of this paper is to do empirical research about how the Internet is currently failing laypeople who are searching online for the legal help to their life problems and what a future agenda of user-centered standards and practices for better legal help on the Internet could be. It initially looks at the existing literature about how the Internet can best be used as legal asset and the situation quo of lawful help websites. Then it metering and looks at negative client reports and Investigates of legal help websites. Finally, it presents the primary study of how people search for resources to solve a legal problem, how they scorn and counts legal aid services online, and their recompose on which existing lawful help websites they consider to be the most usable, the most faithful, and the most valued. This data is necessary to propose new best exercises about how these tech-based services can best serve people, in terms of usability, characteristic of service, and safeguard of the users' interests. It also ensures the importance of the Internet as a lawful help service and highlights the need for more experiment and development on better online legal service help websites that fit general people needs and preferences
ONLINE LEGAL SERVICE: THE PRESENT AND FUTUREijcsit
To find a lawyer becomes a headache for business organization or general people. Sometimes people face many difficulties to find proper lawyer as their requirements, because of information gap. In addition, it is also difficult to find experienced lawyer. Usually, in order to hire a lawyer people need to meet him physically which is time-consuming and expensive. The delivery of legal services remains largely fragmented, outdated, and inefficient.The main purpose of this paper is to do empirical research about how the Internet is currently failing laypeople who are searching online for the legal help to their life problems and what a future agenda of user-centered standards and practices for better legal help on the Internet could be. It initially looks at the existing literature about how the Internet can best be used as legal asset and the situation quo of lawful help websites. Then it metering and looks at negative client reports and Investigates of legal help websites. Finally, it presents the primary study of how people search for resources to solve a legal problem, how they scorn and counts legal aid services online, and their recompose on which existing lawful help websites they consider to be the most usable, the most faithful, and the most valued. This data is necessary to propose new best exercises about how these tech-based services can best serve people, in terms of usability, characteristic of service, and safeguard of the users' interests. It also ensures the importance of the Internet as a lawful help service and highlights the need for more experiment and development on better online legal service help websites that fit general people needs and preferences.
An update on Clicklaw, formerly known as the PLEI Portal, a project to create a unified point of access on the Internet to legal information, education, and help for British Columbians.
The rewards for those who persevere far exceed the pain that must precede the victory.
~ Ted Engstrom and R. Alec Mackenzie
Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who dared believe that something inside of them was superior to circumstance.
~ Bruce Barton
Every job is a self-portrait of the person who did it. Autograph your work with excellence.
~ Motorola World Class Ambassador Club
The City of Detroit's Mayor's Office applied to Code for America to address issues related to blight and vacant properties. Through meetings with over 200 city staff and community leaders, the team gathered information to focus on increasing access to information and community group capacity. They developed the LocalData platform to help community groups collect and visualize neighborhood data, and the TextMyBus service to provide real-time bus arrival information via text. Both projects aimed to support existing community efforts and improve connections between groups and the city government.
An October 2010 white paper that outlines the benefits of a self-funded digital government approach -- including greater efficiencies, additional cost savings, and higher constituent satisfaction with state government.
NIC Inc., Tennessee Division, 2015 Annual ReportNIC Inc | EGOV
The document summarizes the 15-year partnership between NIC and the state of Tennessee to develop and manage online government services on TN.gov. It discusses how over 15 million transactions and $6 billion are processed annually through TN.gov applications. It also highlights new services launched, awards received, and increasing mobile traffic to the site.
The document discusses the open data movement and increasing openness of government data. It provides examples of policies from President Obama and the governor of New Mexico supporting more open data. The objectives are outlined as making government data openly available in its original format to facilitate transparency, participation, and new uses. International examples of open data projects are briefly mentioned and next steps proposed include developing an open data project for New Mexico.
This document summarizes innovations in Utah's online government services. It discusses new exam software that allows agencies to create customizable online exams. It also discusses how mobile access is increasingly important as over 90% of Americans now have smartphones. The document also advises not to rush security breach notifications and to thoroughly investigate before sharing information to avoid providing inaccurate details. It highlights how Utah's online services have saved $46 million over five years through lower costs compared to offline services.
The document provides an overview of the successes of the first year of the eGovernment partnership between the Wisconsin Interactive Network (WIN) and the state of Wisconsin. Some key accomplishments include launching 21 services, including 5 mobile apps, 9 participating agencies, and handling over 29,000 customer support requests. Looking ahead, WIN plans to launch more services and mobile apps in 2015 and revamp some agency websites.
The document also summarizes some specific services launched in the first year, including an online and phone deer harvest registration system for the Department of Natural Resources that has registered over 10,000 deer, and two mobile apps related to fishing/wildlife and state parks that have been downloaded over 100,000 times total. It also discusses
The testimony provides support for HB632, which relates to making state government data sets openly available to the public. It believes the bill will increase transparency, drive civic engagement, and support the software development industry by making more data accessible. While protecting privacy, the bill leverages existing digital data collection with minimal costs. The testimony encourages adopting data policies over administrative rules for flexibility. Overall, the testimonies support open data and the bill's goals of a more open and innovative government.
The document discusses the potential consequences of open public data and presents differing scenarios. It outlines both positive outcomes like transparency, new services, and citizen empowerment, as well as potential negative consequences like unequal access to data and privatization of public services. The document explores levers that could influence these outcomes, such as data licensing and public sector funding, and calls for an ongoing discussion on managing open data.
Open Government and local community foundations: Getting involvedHack the Hood
What is Open Government and what opportunities does it offer for you as a community foundation? Attend this webinar and learn more about how partnerships between technologists and city, county, state and federal governments can result in greater transparency and accountability, more access to data for citizens, and even cost-savings—and what role local organizations like yours are playing.
http://www.knightdigitalmediacenter.org/learning-module/open-gov-and-what-it-means-community-foundations
Ponencia de Dave Harte sobre Lo que viene: concepto 3.0 del día 14 de Enero del I Encuentro de Profesionales de la Comunicación 2.0 12 en Layos, Toledo.
Transforming government through e-democracyPropylon
Presented at Cutter Consortium Summit 2010. Case study outlining KLISS - Kansas Legislative InformTransforming government through e democracy - panel discussion and case study propylon-version2ation Systems and Services. Original presentation included panel discussion 'Transforming government through e democracy'
Information Organisation for the Future Web: with Emphasis to Local CIRs inventionjournals
Semantic Web is evolving as meaningful extension of present web using ontology. Ontology can play an important role in structuring the content in the current web to lead this as new generation web. Domain information can be organized using ontology to help machine to interact with the data for the retrieval of exact information quickly. Present paper tries to organize community information resources covering the area of local information need and evaluate the system using SPARQL from the developed ontology.
How the Net can support local and state governance and citizen engagement.
Slides from a speech by Steven Clift to the NewOut.Org conference in Boston.
Speech Maarten Brouwer at Open Data for Development Camp, May 2011, Amsterdamopenforchange
1) Maarten Brouwer addressed an audience at the Open Data Development Camp, arguing that open data is the way forward for the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs and offers enormous opportunities for development.
2) He acknowledged criticism of foreign aid for perceived lack of results and efficiency, and argued transparency of aid flows through open data standards can help address this by improving coordination and involvement of recipients and beneficiaries.
3) Examples from the Development Camp showed how open data platforms and mobile applications can make development work more visible, engage communities, and facilitate feedback to improve monitoring and results.
This document contains testimony from the Chief Information Officer (CIO) of Hawaii in support of bill HB632 relating to open data. The CIO discusses how open data is a priority in the state's IT transformation plan and how the state has already made progress in making data available through its open data portal. While supporting the intent of the bill, the CIO raises some operational and technical concerns with the current language and recommends clarifying roles and responsibilities, defining data ownership, and ensuring policies guide implementation over administrative rules.
With the help of sensors on roadways and applications on the phones of drivers, cities all around the world are actively collecting real-time data about traffic patterns. The data is more than just useful for drivers and interesting for city developers, it has the potential to revolutionise the way cities manage their roadways, reduce congestion and develop neighbourhoods. But in order to utilise the data effectively, cities must often first address a gaping disconnection between the value of the data they collect and the resources available to put them to work—starting with strong leadership.
In the information age, eGovernment is helping the public sector redefine itself by putting value-added services on the Internet. This document highlights state and local eGovernment success stories.
The rewards for those who persevere far exceed the pain that must precede the victory.
~ Ted Engstrom and R. Alec Mackenzie
Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who dared believe that something inside of them was superior to circumstance.
~ Bruce Barton
Every job is a self-portrait of the person who did it. Autograph your work with excellence.
~ Motorola World Class Ambassador Club
The City of Detroit's Mayor's Office applied to Code for America to address issues related to blight and vacant properties. Through meetings with over 200 city staff and community leaders, the team gathered information to focus on increasing access to information and community group capacity. They developed the LocalData platform to help community groups collect and visualize neighborhood data, and the TextMyBus service to provide real-time bus arrival information via text. Both projects aimed to support existing community efforts and improve connections between groups and the city government.
An October 2010 white paper that outlines the benefits of a self-funded digital government approach -- including greater efficiencies, additional cost savings, and higher constituent satisfaction with state government.
NIC Inc., Tennessee Division, 2015 Annual ReportNIC Inc | EGOV
The document summarizes the 15-year partnership between NIC and the state of Tennessee to develop and manage online government services on TN.gov. It discusses how over 15 million transactions and $6 billion are processed annually through TN.gov applications. It also highlights new services launched, awards received, and increasing mobile traffic to the site.
The document discusses the open data movement and increasing openness of government data. It provides examples of policies from President Obama and the governor of New Mexico supporting more open data. The objectives are outlined as making government data openly available in its original format to facilitate transparency, participation, and new uses. International examples of open data projects are briefly mentioned and next steps proposed include developing an open data project for New Mexico.
This document summarizes innovations in Utah's online government services. It discusses new exam software that allows agencies to create customizable online exams. It also discusses how mobile access is increasingly important as over 90% of Americans now have smartphones. The document also advises not to rush security breach notifications and to thoroughly investigate before sharing information to avoid providing inaccurate details. It highlights how Utah's online services have saved $46 million over five years through lower costs compared to offline services.
The document provides an overview of the successes of the first year of the eGovernment partnership between the Wisconsin Interactive Network (WIN) and the state of Wisconsin. Some key accomplishments include launching 21 services, including 5 mobile apps, 9 participating agencies, and handling over 29,000 customer support requests. Looking ahead, WIN plans to launch more services and mobile apps in 2015 and revamp some agency websites.
The document also summarizes some specific services launched in the first year, including an online and phone deer harvest registration system for the Department of Natural Resources that has registered over 10,000 deer, and two mobile apps related to fishing/wildlife and state parks that have been downloaded over 100,000 times total. It also discusses
The testimony provides support for HB632, which relates to making state government data sets openly available to the public. It believes the bill will increase transparency, drive civic engagement, and support the software development industry by making more data accessible. While protecting privacy, the bill leverages existing digital data collection with minimal costs. The testimony encourages adopting data policies over administrative rules for flexibility. Overall, the testimonies support open data and the bill's goals of a more open and innovative government.
The document discusses the potential consequences of open public data and presents differing scenarios. It outlines both positive outcomes like transparency, new services, and citizen empowerment, as well as potential negative consequences like unequal access to data and privatization of public services. The document explores levers that could influence these outcomes, such as data licensing and public sector funding, and calls for an ongoing discussion on managing open data.
Open Government and local community foundations: Getting involvedHack the Hood
What is Open Government and what opportunities does it offer for you as a community foundation? Attend this webinar and learn more about how partnerships between technologists and city, county, state and federal governments can result in greater transparency and accountability, more access to data for citizens, and even cost-savings—and what role local organizations like yours are playing.
http://www.knightdigitalmediacenter.org/learning-module/open-gov-and-what-it-means-community-foundations
Ponencia de Dave Harte sobre Lo que viene: concepto 3.0 del día 14 de Enero del I Encuentro de Profesionales de la Comunicación 2.0 12 en Layos, Toledo.
Transforming government through e-democracyPropylon
Presented at Cutter Consortium Summit 2010. Case study outlining KLISS - Kansas Legislative InformTransforming government through e democracy - panel discussion and case study propylon-version2ation Systems and Services. Original presentation included panel discussion 'Transforming government through e democracy'
Information Organisation for the Future Web: with Emphasis to Local CIRs inventionjournals
Semantic Web is evolving as meaningful extension of present web using ontology. Ontology can play an important role in structuring the content in the current web to lead this as new generation web. Domain information can be organized using ontology to help machine to interact with the data for the retrieval of exact information quickly. Present paper tries to organize community information resources covering the area of local information need and evaluate the system using SPARQL from the developed ontology.
How the Net can support local and state governance and citizen engagement.
Slides from a speech by Steven Clift to the NewOut.Org conference in Boston.
Speech Maarten Brouwer at Open Data for Development Camp, May 2011, Amsterdamopenforchange
1) Maarten Brouwer addressed an audience at the Open Data Development Camp, arguing that open data is the way forward for the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs and offers enormous opportunities for development.
2) He acknowledged criticism of foreign aid for perceived lack of results and efficiency, and argued transparency of aid flows through open data standards can help address this by improving coordination and involvement of recipients and beneficiaries.
3) Examples from the Development Camp showed how open data platforms and mobile applications can make development work more visible, engage communities, and facilitate feedback to improve monitoring and results.
This document contains testimony from the Chief Information Officer (CIO) of Hawaii in support of bill HB632 relating to open data. The CIO discusses how open data is a priority in the state's IT transformation plan and how the state has already made progress in making data available through its open data portal. While supporting the intent of the bill, the CIO raises some operational and technical concerns with the current language and recommends clarifying roles and responsibilities, defining data ownership, and ensuring policies guide implementation over administrative rules.
With the help of sensors on roadways and applications on the phones of drivers, cities all around the world are actively collecting real-time data about traffic patterns. The data is more than just useful for drivers and interesting for city developers, it has the potential to revolutionise the way cities manage their roadways, reduce congestion and develop neighbourhoods. But in order to utilise the data effectively, cities must often first address a gaping disconnection between the value of the data they collect and the resources available to put them to work—starting with strong leadership.
In the information age, eGovernment is helping the public sector redefine itself by putting value-added services on the Internet. This document highlights state and local eGovernment success stories.
NIC 2013 Annual Report: It's All About Access -- Anatomy of Modern GovernmentNIC Inc | EGOV
The document discusses NIC Inc., a company that builds online government services to improve access to government. It summarizes that NIC has been applying technology to connect citizens directly to government for over 20 years, making the process more accessible, responsive, understandable and simple. It details NIC's focus on innovation, partnerships with governments, and commitment to communities as key to its success and mission of enhancing access to government through technology.
The document discusses how governments can reduce IT costs and better serve the public through technology. It suggests that governments adopt web-based and free technologies over proprietary ones to reduce long-term costs. It also recommends investing in web capabilities and skills, and allowing more user participation to create applications and content. The document provides several examples of governments that have successfully increased online services to reduce costs and better engage with constituents.
Citizen Centric e-Governance in India - History and futureVikas Kanungo
The document discusses strategies for implementing effective e-governance in India. It outlines how e-governance can support elected representatives' need to communicate with constituents and other politicians. While some progress has been made, such as providing laptops and websites to politicians, challenges remain like lack of IT literacy, underutilization of existing infrastructure, and lack of standards and integration across government agencies. The document calls for a strategic vision and action plan to fully realize the benefits of e-governance for citizens.
The document announces a new system implemented by the Pennsylvania Department of Labor & Industry and the Pennsylvania Justice Network (JNET) to identify and stop unemployment benefit payments to incarcerated claimants. It is estimated to save nearly $12 million annually by stopping payments when claimants are incarcerated based on real-time matching. Diverse Technology Consultants has provided support to JNET since 2001 and helped advance its information exchange capabilities.
The document announces a new system implemented by the Pennsylvania Department of Labor & Industry and the Pennsylvania Justice Network (JNET) to identify and stop unemployment benefit payments to incarcerated claimants. It is estimated to save nearly $12 million annually by stopping payments when claimants are incarcerated based on real-time matching. Diverse Technology Consultants has provided support to JNET since 2001 and helped advance its information exchange capabilities.
1) The document discusses how government use of the web has evolved from static HTML pages with limited content and participation in 1997 to today's highly interactive services, rich multimedia, and encouragement of citizen participation through Web 2.0 technologies.
2) It provides definitions of Web 2.0 and discusses how Web 2.0 can help increase government transparency, citizen involvement, and public-private collaboration through tools like mashups, wikis, blogs, and data sharing.
3) Key challenges discussed include balancing security needs with open data sharing, understanding changing user demographics, and measuring the success of Web 2.0 initiatives.
Move to e-commerce long overdue by US Secretary of State offices. The era of electronic filing has been with us now for twenty years. The world’s first fully electronic online business register emerged in New Zealand back in 1996. Since then, many uniform laws have been drafted in the U.S. to encourage the use of online record submissions and searching.
This white paper sets out the reasons for government to adopt contemporary technology solutions to deliver electronic registries.
This document discusses civic innovation and how it can help communities solve their own problems through new approaches. Some examples of civic innovation provided include helping a local government release crime data, using sensors to collect air quality information, and making it easier for people to learn about political candidates. The document explains that civic innovation is important because technology can improve civic services and processes, everyone relies on and benefits from better public services, and it can empower stakeholders by better distributing information. Several civic innovation projects are then described, such as tools to help release authentic government data, create an open data portal for a state, add captions to live TV, make data more useful to non-experts, and help people identify information that requires more careful consideration.
Віктор Гурський “Як заробити на відкритих державних даних”Lviv Startup Club
This document proposes establishing an open government data incubator in Ukraine to spur the growth of under-digitalized sectors like agriculture, energy, and infrastructure through public-private partnerships. It provides examples of startups in other countries created using open data and envisions the incubator combining efforts from government, IT companies, volunteers, and investors to provide data-driven solutions. The incubator would offer tailored mentorship and resources to startups while improving government services and decision-making through extensive use of open data.
Copying fees for public records vary widely between counties in Kansas, from free to $10 per record. The Kansas Open Records Act provides guidance for state offices to charge 25 cents per page but allows local authorities to set their own fees. However, setting excessively high fees could discourage public access to information and run counter to the intent of the law. As digital cameras and cell phones are now used to copy records, the law also needs clarification on how fees apply to digital copying methods. Legislators should amend the law to set reasonable copying fees and address this issue with new technologies.
Government agencies across the U.S. are increasingly prioritizing digital services and online engagement with citizens. Five major trends are guiding this transition: citizen-centric design, mobility, open source technology, treating information as a service, and innovative marketing. The document explores these trends, discusses challenges of digital governance, and provides examples of digital innovation in government. It also offers guidance to help agencies start their own digital initiatives. While technology is important, cultural change within agencies is key to successfully adopting new digital strategies and service models.
The Pennsylvania Department of Labor & Industry and Pennsylvania Justice Network (JNET) announced a new system to identify unemployment compensation claimants who are incarcerated to stop improper benefit payments. The system cross-checks incarceration records and is estimated to save nearly $12 million annually. When a new inmate enters a participating county prison, their information is automatically compared to unemployment rolls and benefits are immediately stopped if they match, saving taxpayer money. Diverse Technology Consultants has supported JNET since 2001 by providing project management, development, and helping transition JNET to a service-oriented architecture and standard messaging formats, allowing efficient information sharing across agencies.
The document discusses the concept of "Democratizing Data" which involves making data accessible, structured, and syndicated so it can be used by various applications and devices. This approach integrates transparency with efficiency, streamlined reporting, "smart regulation", and crowdsourcing. Democratizing data provides benefits like more informed policymaking, consensus building, better legislation, transparency, and lower costs. It also allows citizens to become "co-creators" by developing applications using open government data. The document advocates switching to a more data-centric approach across government and private organizations.
The document discusses network neutrality and opposing views on the topic. It summarizes Barbara van Schewick's view that without network neutrality rules, users' ability to access lawful internet content of their choice is not guaranteed. It also summarizes David Farber's opposing view that the internet developed without government intervention and that regulating it now would slow its evolution. The document provides context on both sides of the network neutrality debate.
Unleashing blockchain for smart project managementPmobytes
Blockchain has the potential to resolve two major issues that exist on the internet today - establishing trust of identity in the digital environment, and enabling true peer-to-peer relationships between consumers and product owners. By providing an immutable record of transactions, blockchain can authenticate digital identities and cut out intermediaries, allowing for direct relationships. This could empower users to control their own data and decide how it is used, while still enabling efficient validation of identities. Blockchain may also reduce bureaucracy and improve governance in complex projects by facilitating trust between stakeholders.
Unit-12 Saukaryam- ICT Project in Visakhapatnam Municipal Corporation, Andhra...vjkolaventy
The document discusses Project Saukaryam, an ICT project initiated by the Visakhapatnam Municipal Corporation in Andhra Pradesh, India. The project aims to provide online civic services to improve governance and citizen satisfaction. It established a website and city civic centers connected by a broadband network. Citizens can access services like certificates, utility connections, complaints, and payments online or at civic centers. The project was developed using a public-private partnership model to overcome funding constraints. While innovative, the project also faced some limitations.
The future of online government will likely see:
1) Government services becoming more invisible and only contacting citizens when needed to reduce issues or for additional input.
2) Digital technology challenging nation states as corporations and individuals push boundaries, requiring governments to thoughtfully embrace rather than resist digital change.
3) Potential for governments to have live data on public opinions, but also needing to help society progress on issues where majority opinions could hinder equality. Overall, governments must adapt to constant digital transformation and an increasingly networked world.
The document discusses how the rise of the Internet of Things will require organizations to adapt their corporate structures and executive roles. As IoT connects more devices and generates unprecedented data, executives must work together across functions like operations, technology, information, marketing and human resources. The CEO must recognize opportunities in big data while the CIO manages vast information flows. As privacy and security challenges emerge, the CSO and CLO must collaborate to ensure compliance. Overall, success in the IoT era will depend on innovation through interdependent relationships between C-level executives.
Similar to The Case For Portals -- When Citizens Demand Online Access to Their Government, States Turn to the Experts (20)
Vermont Information Consortium 2014 ReportNIC Inc | EGOV
This document provides an overview of the Vermont portal's achievements over its first seven years and introduces some upcoming services. It discusses the launch of the electronic Current Use application (eCUSE) which allows landowners to apply for the Current Use Tax program online. It also summarizes an article about not rushing security breach notifications and following an incident response plan. Finally, it announces a new flexible template for the Content Management System that was designed to meet Vermont's needs and allow agencies to communicate more effectively with citizens.
The document discusses SC.gov being selected to continue as South Carolina's eGovernment provider through 2021. It highlights the growth of Palmetto Pay for online payments processing and new features like encrypted card swipes. It also summarizes the online consumer complaint system developed with the Department of Consumer Affairs that won an award and how the Department of Natural Resources implemented a new online licensing system.
Pre-Employment Screening Program 2014 ReportNIC Inc | EGOV
The PSP annual report summarizes the program's accomplishments in 2014. Key points include:
1) The PSP customer service team was awarded for excellent service metrics like answering calls within 30 seconds and responding to emails the same day.
2) Over 97% of audited companies could provide driver consent forms as required. Education efforts helped improve compliance for companies that initially failed audits.
3) Enhancements to reflect FMCSA's new adjudicated citation policy were successfully implemented, and an education campaign prepared users for the changes.
MSI partnered with the Mississippi Department of Finance and Administration (DFA) to expand government transparency. They redeveloped the State Transparency Website (transparency.mississippi.gov) which features regularly updated budget, expenditure, and workforce data for agencies. Citizens can search this data to view the financial activities of government. MSI also helped launch the Public Meeting Notices website and Online Contract and Procurement Search to further transparency. These initiatives allow citizens and businesses to more easily view and engage with state government activities and opportunities.
This document summarizes Kentucky Interactive's work in 2014 to make Kentucky government services mobile-friendly and accessible online. Some key points:
- Kentucky Interactive launched over 275 mobile-friendly websites and applications using responsive design since 2012. This ensures consistent experience across devices.
- In 2014, they processed over $2.5 billion in payments for 117 government agencies and developed 133 new eGovernment projects, most at no cost to the agencies.
- They have helped more agencies offer services like business registration, license renewal, and bill payment online through the Kentucky.gov portal. This increases access and convenience for citizens.
The document provides an overview of Hawaii Information Consortium's (HIC) activities and accomplishments in 2014. Key points include:
- HIC partnered with over 95% of Hawaii government agencies to provide online services to citizens at no cost to the state.
- In 2014, HIC launched 11 new services, upgraded 17 existing services, launched 4 websites and 1 mobile app. They also processed over $1.6 billion in payments.
- HIC provided over 23,000 hours of labor to partners at no cost, saving the state over $5 million in costs. Further engagement could save $10-15 million more.
Colorado Interactive was awarded a new five-year contract with two additional two-year renewals to continue providing services to Colorado through 2023. The contract includes improved service levels and commitments to world-class service. Colorado Interactive has enhanced its infrastructure, training, and project management to improve services. In 2014, over 3 million transactions were processed and nearly $1 billion was collected and distributed to government agencies across Colorado.
1) The document discusses a survey of 200 Federal managers about how budget cuts are impacting their agencies. 62% have personally experienced tighter budgets and 73% believe budgets will be even lower in 2015.
2) Respondents say budget cuts are having a devastating (12%) or significant (58%) impact on their agency's ability to perform its mission.
3) The document finds that about 1 in 5 Federal employees can be considered "innovators" who are more open to alternative approaches like new funding methods or outsourcing to address budget cuts. Innovators believe up to 25% of their agency's budget could come from new sources.
NIC 2012 Annual Report: We Build on InnovationNIC Inc | EGOV
NIC had a very successful year in 2012, with record revenues and earnings. The company continued its strategy of innovation, focusing on mobile technologies and expanding its portfolio of government services. It also grew its business through new partnerships, contract renewals, and sole-source agreements. A key study found that NIC's self-funded eGovernment model has helped states avoid millions in costs.
The document provides an executive summary and overview of projects completed in 2012 by Arizona Interactive for the state of Arizona. Some key accomplishments include launching the first successful online hunt draw application for the Arizona Game and Fish Department, redesigning the state's official website AZ.gov in Drupal, and establishing a secondary disaster recovery site to ensure continuity of operations. In total, Arizona Interactive completed 30 projects for state agencies and 39 internal projects.
This annual report summarizes Kansas.gov's activities and accomplishments in 2012. Key points include:
- Kansas.gov celebrated its 20th anniversary of providing online government services to Kansas.
- The report discusses challenges faced in 2012 like an application maintenance backlog, and efforts made to address issues and improve performance.
- New business development managers were hired to strengthen relationships with partners and identify new opportunities.
- Employees supported the Topeka Rescue Mission through donations of items and volunteering, helping provide meals and services to those in need.
The document summarizes Mississippi Interactive's work with the Mississippi Department of Public Safety and other state agencies. It discusses the launch of a successful mobile Driver's Practice Test app by MSI in partnership with DPS that has been downloaded over 4,700 times. It also mentions MSI's focus on expanding Mississippi's mobile presence and developing additional mobile apps for state agencies.
New Mexico Interactive's mission is to assist the New Mexico Taxation and Revenue Department and Motor Vehicle Division in becoming more accessible and responsive through online services. In 2012, NMI continued developing new online services for TRD and MVD while maintaining existing ones. Some of the new services included feedback forms, appointment setting, and small business driver monitoring. NMI also helped redesign the TRD and MVD websites to incorporate new features. Traffic to the MVD website increased in 2012 with over 400,000 more visits and 700,000 additional page views compared to 2011. Mobile visits to the MVD site more than doubled from 2011 to 2012.
The document summarizes initiatives and projects from Tennessee in 2012. Key points:
- NIC partnered with state agencies to roll out new services like TDOT's SmartWay mobile apps and a handgun permit system. Usage of existing online services also grew.
- The Department of Safety & Homeland Security launched iPad kiosks (ASSETS project) at driver's license centers, reducing wait times by over 40% and avoiding over 8,000 staff hours annually.
- NIC adopted agile development practices for projects, using frequent feedback to focus on delivering business value, as with a new app for managing school bus driver training and certification.
The document provides an overview of the Pre-Employment Screening Program (PSP) in 2012. It discusses how the PSP allows motor carriers to access driver records through NIC without cost to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. It highlights new features launched in 2012 like PSP 2.0 which allows industry service providers direct access, a PSP iPhone app, and improved account holder audits. It also discusses how NIC conducts outreach to promote PSP adoption through presentations, webinars, and attending industry events.
NIC Technologies provides innovative digital government solutions to federal agencies using a self-funded contracting model. It has developed mobile applications to deliver campaign finance information and helps agencies manage the federal rulemaking process through its Searchable Electronic Rulemaking System, which streamlines public comments and access to regulations. The company pioneered this approach to deliver services without taxpayer cost through transaction-based models and has supported over 17 million visits and 29.5 million transactions for the Federal Election Commission.
The IN.gov Program had an exceptional year of innovation and growth in 2012. It deployed over 50 new or enhanced applications and websites, and showcased an innovative tool to increase child safety at the Indiana State Fair. The program efficiently supported over 180 existing applications and websites, fulfilling over 6,300 service requests. It focused on providing innovative solutions, reinvesting in technology infrastructure, and providing community support. The program achieved these goals through the partnership between Indiana and Indiana Interactive, and an dedicated staff.
Middle market companies are proving resilient in the face of economic uncertainty. While executives are optimistic about their own company's growth prospects, they are less confident in a broader economic recovery. To thrive, companies recognize the need for strategic agility and many expect to see growth through new products/services, marketing efforts, and technology. Maintaining flexibility is seen as key to adapting to changing market conditions.
This Old Portal -- Good Bones, Great PossibilitiesNIC Inc | EGOV
A white paper that explores the fundamental components of any eGovernment initiative -- including governance, executive championship, architecture, infrastructure, capacity planning, funding, application development, and design.
Simply Green -- A Few Steps in the Right Direction toward Integrating Sustain...NIC Inc | EGOV
A white paper that discusses various ways that technology is delivering green benefits to government -- including the value of online services in reducing paper flow and eliminating vehicle traffic for in-person office visits.
inQuba Webinar Mastering Customer Journey Management with Dr Graham HillLizaNolte
HERE IS YOUR WEBINAR CONTENT! 'Mastering Customer Journey Management with Dr. Graham Hill'. We hope you find the webinar recording both insightful and enjoyable.
In this webinar, we explored essential aspects of Customer Journey Management and personalization. Here’s a summary of the key insights and topics discussed:
Key Takeaways:
Understanding the Customer Journey: Dr. Hill emphasized the importance of mapping and understanding the complete customer journey to identify touchpoints and opportunities for improvement.
Personalization Strategies: We discussed how to leverage data and insights to create personalized experiences that resonate with customers.
Technology Integration: Insights were shared on how inQuba’s advanced technology can streamline customer interactions and drive operational efficiency.
[OReilly Superstream] Occupy the Space: A grassroots guide to engineering (an...Jason Yip
The typical problem in product engineering is not bad strategy, so much as “no strategy”. This leads to confusion, lack of motivation, and incoherent action. The next time you look for a strategy and find an empty space, instead of waiting for it to be filled, I will show you how to fill it in yourself. If you’re wrong, it forces a correction. If you’re right, it helps create focus. I’ll share how I’ve approached this in the past, both what works and lessons for what didn’t work so well.
What is an RPA CoE? Session 2 – CoE RolesDianaGray10
In this session, we will review the players involved in the CoE and how each role impacts opportunities.
Topics covered:
• What roles are essential?
• What place in the automation journey does each role play?
Speaker:
Chris Bolin, Senior Intelligent Automation Architect Anika Systems
How information systems are built or acquired puts information, which is what they should be about, in a secondary place. Our language adapted accordingly, and we no longer talk about information systems but applications. Applications evolved in a way to break data into diverse fragments, tightly coupled with applications and expensive to integrate. The result is technical debt, which is re-paid by taking even bigger "loans", resulting in an ever-increasing technical debt. Software engineering and procurement practices work in sync with market forces to maintain this trend. This talk demonstrates how natural this situation is. The question is: can something be done to reverse the trend?
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Direct losses from downtime in 1 minute = $5-$10 thousand dollars. Reputation is priceless.
As part of the talk, we will consider the architectural strategies necessary for the development of highly loaded fintech solutions. We will focus on using queues and streaming to efficiently work and manage large amounts of data in real-time and to minimize latency.
We will focus special attention on the architectural patterns used in the design of the fintech system, microservices and event-driven architecture, which ensure scalability, fault tolerance, and consistency of the entire system.
From Natural Language to Structured Solr Queries using LLMsSease
This talk draws on experimentation to enable AI applications with Solr. One important use case is to use AI for better accessibility and discoverability of the data: while User eXperience techniques, lexical search improvements, and data harmonization can take organizations to a good level of accessibility, a structural (or “cognitive” gap) remains between the data user needs and the data producer constraints.
That is where AI – and most importantly, Natural Language Processing and Large Language Model techniques – could make a difference. This natural language, conversational engine could facilitate access and usage of the data leveraging the semantics of any data source.
The objective of the presentation is to propose a technical approach and a way forward to achieve this goal.
The key concept is to enable users to express their search queries in natural language, which the LLM then enriches, interprets, and translates into structured queries based on the Solr index’s metadata.
This approach leverages the LLM’s ability to understand the nuances of natural language and the structure of documents within Apache Solr.
The LLM acts as an intermediary agent, offering a transparent experience to users automatically and potentially uncovering relevant documents that conventional search methods might overlook. The presentation will include the results of this experimental work, lessons learned, best practices, and the scope of future work that should improve the approach and make it production-ready.
Discover top-tier mobile app development services, offering innovative solutions for iOS and Android. Enhance your business with custom, user-friendly mobile applications.
ScyllaDB is making a major architecture shift. We’re moving from vNode replication to tablets – fragments of tables that are distributed independently, enabling dynamic data distribution and extreme elasticity. In this keynote, ScyllaDB co-founder and CTO Avi Kivity explains the reason for this shift, provides a look at the implementation and roadmap, and shares how this shift benefits ScyllaDB users.
Essentials of Automations: Exploring Attributes & Automation ParametersSafe Software
Building automations in FME Flow can save time, money, and help businesses scale by eliminating data silos and providing data to stakeholders in real-time. One essential component to orchestrating complex automations is the use of attributes & automation parameters (both formerly known as “keys”). In fact, it’s unlikely you’ll ever build an Automation without using these components, but what exactly are they?
Attributes & automation parameters enable the automation author to pass data values from one automation component to the next. During this webinar, our FME Flow Specialists will cover leveraging the three types of these output attributes & parameters in FME Flow: Event, Custom, and Automation. As a bonus, they’ll also be making use of the Split-Merge Block functionality.
You’ll leave this webinar with a better understanding of how to maximize the potential of automations by making use of attributes & automation parameters, with the ultimate goal of setting your enterprise integration workflows up on autopilot.
"NATO Hackathon Winner: AI-Powered Drug Search", Taras KlobaFwdays
This is a session that details how PostgreSQL's features and Azure AI Services can be effectively used to significantly enhance the search functionality in any application.
In this session, we'll share insights on how we used PostgreSQL to facilitate precise searches across multiple fields in our mobile application. The techniques include using LIKE and ILIKE operators and integrating a trigram-based search to handle potential misspellings, thereby increasing the search accuracy.
We'll also discuss how the azure_ai extension on PostgreSQL databases in Azure and Azure AI Services were utilized to create vectors from user input, a feature beneficial when users wish to find specific items based on text prompts. While our application's case study involves a drug search, the techniques and principles shared in this session can be adapted to improve search functionality in a wide range of applications. Join us to learn how PostgreSQL and Azure AI can be harnessed to enhance your application's search capability.
Freshworks Rethinks NoSQL for Rapid Scaling & Cost-EfficiencyScyllaDB
Freshworks creates AI-boosted business software that helps employees work more efficiently and effectively. Managing data across multiple RDBMS and NoSQL databases was already a challenge at their current scale. To prepare for 10X growth, they knew it was time to rethink their database strategy. Learn how they architected a solution that would simplify scaling while keeping costs under control.
AppSec PNW: Android and iOS Application Security with MobSFAjin Abraham
Mobile Security Framework - MobSF is a free and open source automated mobile application security testing environment designed to help security engineers, researchers, developers, and penetration testers to identify security vulnerabilities, malicious behaviours and privacy concerns in mobile applications using static and dynamic analysis. It supports all the popular mobile application binaries and source code formats built for Android and iOS devices. In addition to automated security assessment, it also offers an interactive testing environment to build and execute scenario based test/fuzz cases against the application.
This talk covers:
Using MobSF for static analysis of mobile applications.
Interactive dynamic security assessment of Android and iOS applications.
Solving Mobile app CTF challenges.
Reverse engineering and runtime analysis of Mobile malware.
How to shift left and integrate MobSF/mobsfscan SAST and DAST in your build pipeline.
Introduction of Cybersecurity with OSS at Code Europe 2024Hiroshi SHIBATA
I develop the Ruby programming language, RubyGems, and Bundler, which are package managers for Ruby. Today, I will introduce how to enhance the security of your application using open-source software (OSS) examples from Ruby and RubyGems.
The first topic is CVE (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures). I have published CVEs many times. But what exactly is a CVE? I'll provide a basic understanding of CVEs and explain how to detect and handle vulnerabilities in OSS.
Next, let's discuss package managers. Package managers play a critical role in the OSS ecosystem. I'll explain how to manage library dependencies in your application.
I'll share insights into how the Ruby and RubyGems core team works to keep our ecosystem safe. By the end of this talk, you'll have a better understanding of how to safeguard your code.
Introduction of Cybersecurity with OSS at Code Europe 2024
The Case For Portals -- When Citizens Demand Online Access to Their Government, States Turn to the Experts
1. THE CASE FOR
PORTALS
When citizens demand online access to their
government, states turn to the experts.
“I
f we have learned one thing from the history of inven- “The public sector had and continues to have limited
tion and discovery,” wrote novelist and inventor resources to build the technological infrastructure of a por-
Arthur C. Clarke, “it is that, in the long run —and tal,” Thornburgh says. Funds for new initiatives, particularly
often in the short one — the most daring prophecies unproven ones, are usually tight. Like many states, Kansas did
seem laughably conservative.” Looking back on the advent of not employ a large staff of skilled managers who could build
electronic government in the early to mid-1990s, we find that the portal from the ground up, keep it running and enhance it
Clarke’s observation again holds true. over time.
Consider this: In 1999, the state of Kansas made applica- What the state lacked in expertise and resources, portal
tions for hunting and fishing licenses available through its developers in the private sector made up for with a demonstra-
official Web site. It’s hard to imagine today that anyone would ble track record of building online desti-
have to physically present himself to another human being, in nations for large, complex organizations.
a state office, during normal working hours, in order to obtain
or renew a simple slip of paper. Indeed, if a transaction can’t “We had the databases,
be conducted online, we doubt the professionalism of its pur- they had the technology.
veyor, or at the very least wonder why they haven’t joined the
modern age. In hindsight, Kansas’ online services hardly
It became a beautiful
seem innovative.
marriage.”
But in 1999, Kansas was considered a revolutionary. Its — Kansas Secretary of State Ron Thornburgh
electronic licensing system soon became the envy of other
state governments, which hoped to speed up sometimes slow For its part, Kansas knew what services it wanted to automate,
bureaucratic transactions and, ideally, save money in the and what information it wanted to put online. “We had the
process. In Kansas and elsewhere, chief information officers databases, they had the technology and know-how. It became
and other technology officials declared that online licensing a beautiful marriage,” Thornburgh says.
was merely a starting point. Soon, they predicted, citizens
would be renewing driver’s licenses, applying for business per- WHY OUTSOURCE?
mits, and opening new channels to interact with distant, incon- In the intervening years, state and local governments have
sistently organized agencies. Their daring prophecies were met embraced online access. The portal, once a novelty, is now an
with no small amount of skepticism. But today, dozens of expectation. If a government doesn’t make services available
states are managing their relationships with citizens through online, citizens wonder what’s wrong.
enterprise-wide Web portals, which are online destinations that Since the .gov domain—the generally preferred designation
allow businesses and individuals to interact 24/7 with a vari- for government Web sites—was made available to state and
ety of state government agencies through a single entry point. local government four years ago, almost 2,000 state and local
When Kansas began to develop its portal, Kansas.gov, noth- sites use the designation, reports the National Association of
ing like it existed, says Ron Thornburgh, Kansas’ secretary of State Chief Information Officers. Nearly all states have some
state. “Being the first in the nation, we were headed toward form of a portal, which in its optimal form is a multi-faceted
some uncharted waters.” But once the state realized that it Web site that provides information and facilitates transactions
didn’t have to act alone to get eGovernment up and running, by serving as a “one-stop shop” for citizens doing business
the process became much simpler. with the state or seeking information.
2. Why should a state construct an enterprise-wide portal? Is all agencies and to align with a private sector provider whose
there concrete value to be gained in terms of better service success depends on staying current with constantly evolving
delivery or improved use of state resources? If the answer is Internet security regulations. The financial industry also main-
yes, then there’s another fundamental question: Should this tains aggressive security policies that govern online credit
be done in-house? Or does the state need outside help? card and electronic check payments and often imposes steep
“It’s quite common for different individuals in various agen- fines for violations. “Our state partners have recognized that
cies to say, ‘Why are we going outside to do this? Why don’t we the risk is simply too high to allow agencies to manage online
build it ourselves?’ ” says Harry Herington, president of NIC security on their own,” says Herington.
Inc., which manages eGovernment services for 21 states.
Agencies have specific missions, and it is often easier for a MEETING EXPECTATIONS
third party to facilitate cross-agency collaboration and deliver This gets to perhaps the strongest and simplest reason for
an enterprise-wide solution, Herington says. This approach states to launch a portal: Citizens expect more flexibility and
allows state leaders to provide a consistent level of openness when interacting with government. Research indi-
eGovernment support across agencies and make the best use cates that states are meeting that demand.
of state budget dollars. “Collectively, states have made great strides over the past
The challenge for state governments, as for any large organ- six years in organizing their portals along lines that are gen-
ization, is to assess what they’re good at and what their core erally accepted as being intuitive to citizens,” the National
competencies are, explains Aneesh Chopra, secretary of tech- Association of State Chief Information Officers concluded in
nology for the Commonwealth of Virginia. An outside entity a March 2007 report on state governments’ Internet pres-
can tell the state what has worked and what hasn’t because ence. For example, most states allow citizens to locate a
the private sector has a broader perspective on how to design service even if they do not know which agency provides it, the
effective online services, he says. report stated.
“Government is organized by geography. Where you live deter-
mines what district you’re in, which describes the delivery
An outside entity can tell the state what model for services,” says Chopra. In the world of “Web 2.0,” the
has worked and what hasn’t because the next stage of online development in which portals play a central
private sector has a broader perspective role, people are organizing themselves in new ways—for exam-
ple, through social networking sites. “That compels government
on how to design effective online services to rethink how it organizes services,” Chopra says.
An outside perspective can also help to alleviate common DELIVERING VALUE
concerns. “I remember the first time we had a discussion in As states continue to enhance online services, the payoff will
our office about whether we should allow people to have be substantial. For example, among Kansas’ first electronic
remote access to our data,” Thornburgh says. “It was an transactions was automating Universal Commercial Code serv-
excruciating conversation.” Officials feared what might hap- ices. “We thought we’d be successful if we could enhance our
pen if data was corrupted or misplaced. Services could be turnaround times on transactions and get a few people to per-
disrupted. Then there was the anxiety over hackers and form transactions electronically,” Thornburgh says. Then the
other intruders. state could free up state employees who usually manage these
Many states have found that a portal actually enhances services to perform other tasks.
security and the integrity of data, in large measure because it Kansas had twelve employees in the UCC division when the
requires an enterprise-wide strategy that takes security into initiative began, Thornburgh says. Today, the filing system is
consideration at the outset. “In Colorado, one clear driver for accessible through Kansas.gov, and the division has one full-
a portal was security,” says Gregg Rippy, executive director of time and one part-time employee. Ninety percent of all UCC
the Colorado Statewide Internet Portal Authority, and a former services are performed electronically now.
member of the state legislature. It was possible to set up It was a small step, one that in retrospect might seem
perimeter security around the portal itself, and the data sup- “laughably conservative.” But the value for the state was
plying it, rather than individual perimeters for hundreds of demonstrable, and the portal made it happen.
separate agency Web sites.
Enterprise portals offer significant security advantages for This is the first in a series of three articles. In the next installment,
learn about the building blocks of a successful portal.
protecting sensitive personal and financial information. While
citizens and businesses expect states to offer online payment
options for eGovernment services, the cost of maintaining
secure and compliant payment gateways is daunting and
should not become a burden for every agency.
Many states have concluded that the best course of action
is to establish a single payment gateway through the portal for www.nicusa.com
3. BUILD
HOW TO
A PORTAL
A successful site rests on a solid foundation.
T
he first step in creating a statewide Web portal is making the case that it was worth the state’s financial invest-
deciding whether to design it in-house or hire outside ment to improve service to citizens, the Commonwealth’s
help. As discussed in part one of this series, many first CIO, Aldona Valicenti, provided a solid foundation for
states have found it makes sense to tap a tested and Rutledge and his team to rapidly expand Kentucky’s
experienced private sector provider to help construct and run eGovernment portal services.
the portal. In Kansas, it was a group who formally championed a por-
Once a state decides to outsource, what does it take to tal and took ownership of its development. There, officials cre-
launch the portal and ensure that it has the resources and ated an oversight authority comprised of
support it needs to grow? Officials who have gone through the public sector representatives, who con-
process say there are four essential building blocks: a cham-
pion, an appropriate governance structure, a stable and long-
In Colorado, lawmakers were
term funding source, and the right private sector partner.
concerned about investing
FIND A CHAMPION scarce dollars in a relatively
Ambitious portal plans are often met with initial skepticism. In new concept.
Colorado, lawmakers were concerned about investing scarce — Gregg Rippy, executive director of the Colorado
dollars in a relatively new concept, says Gregg Rippy, the exec- Statewide Internet Portal Authority
utive director of the Colorado Statewide Internet Portal
Authority and a former state legislator. When planning for
Colorado.gov got underway in 2002, “I wouldn’t say that [law- trolled access to the state’s data, and private sector technolo-
makers’] level of understanding on information technology gy leaders, who brought real-world business acumen to the
projects was very high,” Rippy says. Nor was their confidence. table, says Secretary of State Ron Thornburgh. This team
“They had seen some previous projects not be as successful as decided what services to offer. They also developed a request
they could be and felt like throwing money at another informa- for proposals, which laid out what the panel expected the pri-
tion technology project could be a black hole.” vate sector provider to do.
To move ahead, whether in the legislature or the executive Champions are indispensable evangelists of the vision.
branch, a portal needs a champion, a key official or group to Their involvement in planning is crucial for setting expecta-
become the project’s chief advocate. This is usually a high- tions and creating benchmarks to measure progress.
level official who provides visibility and accountability to the
project before the private sector provider is ever selected. ESTABLISH GOVERNANCE
The job often falls to the state’s chief information officer With a champion and an initial plan in place, the next step is
who can enlist the public support of the governor and other to define the governance process for the portal. Who will man-
high-ranking officials. According to former Kentucky CIO age the site, secure sustainable funding and chart its future
Mark Rutledge, his predecessor was an outspoken proponent growth? Laying out the lines of responsibility at the outset
of portals and other electronic government initiatives. By avoids confusion and builds accountability.
4. Colorado and several other states followed a two-step gover- cations, enhancing the technical infrastructure, and maintain-
nance process. First, the legislature directed the state’s ing the current portal.
Information Management Commission to evaluate the feasi- “The financing was the absolutely crucial part to making
bility of building a portal. The commission identified the dif- this whole concept work,” says Kansas’ Thornburgh, echoing
ferent options, including outsourcing. his colleagues in other states. “Nobody had money to throw
Once the state had decided to hire a portal contractor, the into ‘what-ifs.’” As in most states that have chosen a transac-
second step was to create a quasi-governmental authority to tion-based funding solution, the private sector contractor pro-
implement and manage the site. This was essential in vided the initial capital to build Kansas.gov.
Colorado, where tax laws strictly limit spending by existing Champions, Thornburgh says, must demonstrate that the
agencies on new projects. To oversee Colorado.gov, lawmak- model will result in added savings. “You have to sit down with
ers created the Statewide Internet Portal Authority, an inde- [agency officials] and talk about the cost savings,” he says. An
agency may see a reduction in spending
since it does not have to hire temporary
[The] public-private partnership has proved to employees to run the portal to collect
be the cornerstone of a successful portal. those fees. “We have consistently been
able to show cost savings that come along
with the portal,” Thornburgh says.
pendent public body, governed by a board of directors that In many states, companies that regularly obtain state infor-
includes representation from key state offices as well as pri- mation are charged a small fee for obtaining it through the
vate sector leaders. portal. In Colorado, funding comes from delivering drivers’
As in other states, the portal authority became its champi- license records to insurance companies, banks and other
on, holding face-to-face meetings with agency directors and approved consumers of that data, Rippy says. The state’s por-
CIOs in localities across the state. After the portal launched, tal provider reinvests a large portion of that transaction rev-
the board conducted a 10-city tour to promote Colorado.gov enue to help Colorado deliver more services across the state,
to local technology professionals. including online motor vehicle registration renewals.
The authority entered into a partnership with Colorado
Interactive, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of NIC Inc., which SELECT A PARTNER
manages eGovernment services in 21 states. In other states, With the plan and funding model in place, the final step is
this kind of public-private partnership has proved to be the choosing the private sector provider. It may be the most sig-
cornerstone of a successful portal. It allows the government to nificant choice of all, and state officials say that outsourcing
take advantage of the private sector’s expertise, and shift a a portal constitutes a true partnership.
significant amount of financial and political risk from the When selecting a private sector provider, states are striking
state because the private sector provider has a stake in ensur- a long-term partnership that will make or break a portal,
ing the portal’s success in order to see a profit. officials stress. It’s important to look at the company’s track
record of building successful portals in other states and to take
ESTABLISH STABLE AND advantage of the lessons they have learned, says Kentucky’s
LONG-TERM FUNDING SOURCES Rutledge. “Whatever works in one state, with a little bit of
With a governing model in place, the next step is to secure change, can be adopted by another state.”
funding. State officials stress that there is no one-size-fits-all When state officials are contemplating a portal, they some-
approach to secure enough money to provide services, pay the times look to neighboring states and select the functions they’d
private sector provider, and grow the portal. But many have like to replicate, almost in “a la carte” fashion, says Jeff Fraser,
found that a “self-funding” model helps stretch limited tech- chief executive officer of NIC. If the state chooses functions or
nology budgets, creating a return on investment for the state applications that have already been built, they can be modified
and the private sector provider. to meet unique business rules and implemented quickly in
Kansas, for instance, has opted to charge small fees for cer- their state portal. This “build once, use often” philosophy has
tain commercial users of the portal, primarily business own- helped governments introduce proven online services that
ers, physicians, nurses, and other professionals who have to don’t have to be built from the ground up, Fraser says.
register with the state or obtain a license or certificate in order
to work. Kansas always collected a licensing fee for these This is the second in a series of three articles. In the final install-
transactions on paper and in-person. So by adding a conven- ment, learn how to make a portal succeed.
ience charge for issuing the license online, extra revenue was
generated to help pay for the portal’s development and ongo-
ing upkeep.
Under this approach, part of that fee pays the private sec-
tor provider that conducts the transaction, and part is rein-
vested in the portal to cover the costs of building new appli- www.nicusa.com
5. An eye for
The Secrets
of a
enterprise and
dialogue with
citizens helps
SUCCESSFUL PORTAL maintain and grow
online services.
art one of this series examined the benefits of out- online license renewal application, because agency Web site
P sourcing a statewide Web portal to an experienced pri-
vate sector provider, and part two identified the key
steps in building and funding the site. Once the por-
tal is up and running, how does a state ensure that it will func-
tion smoothly, meeting the needs of citizens and the govern-
managers had not set up all their data to be searchable
through the portal. Virginia.gov is now delivering more accu-
rate results by allowing agency Webmasters to easily tag their
data so it appears in enterprise portal searches.
Virginia Interactive is the Commonwealth’s portal partner
ment for years to come? and a subsidiary of NIC Inc., which manages eGovernment
sites for 21 states. Virginia Interactive led the implementation
TAKE AN ENTERPRISE APPROACH of the portal’s advanced search tool and also arranged train-
There are many different ways to measure success. “Adoption ing for agency Webmasters. The initiative illustrates two key
is always a great benchmark,” says Gregg Rippy, the executive ingredients of successful portal expansion: rely on partner-
director of the Colorado Statewide Internet Portal Authority ships and provide users with continuous training. Virginia
and a former state legislator. If state agencies are using the Interactive is a real partner, Chopra says. “We initiate the pol-
portal, rather than trying their own Web sites, that’s one of the icy goals, they assist in the implementation.”
best indications that the portal is meeting their needs. An advantage of aligning with a private sector provider is
To get those agencies onboard, it’s also important to market immediate access to an array of industry-leading solutions,
the portal as an online channel, Rippy adds. When his state says Harry Herington, president of NIC. For example, NIC’s
launched Colorado.gov, managers personally promoted the eGovernment portals are enhanced by strategic alliances with
site in face-to-face meetings with agency directors, Microsoft, Cybertrust, Electronic Clearing House,
both at the state level and in various localities. Rippy Inc. (ECHO), and Google, among others. “Our por-
says that if officials didn’t take the time to explain
the portal to those professionals, they’d be unlikely
to use it. “It’s important to find enterprise-
It’s important to find enterprise-wide opportuni- wide opportunities to grow a portal,
ties to grow a portal and to ensure that the site pro-
and to ensure that the site provides
vides value to all participants, says Aneesh Chopra,
the Secretary of Technology in the Commonwealth value to all participants.”
of Virginia. The state’s portal, Virginia.gov, had early — Aneesh Chopra, Secretary of Technology
success bringing agencies under a single banner, of the Commonwealth of Virginia
using an enterprise approach to make the portal
more sophisticated. tal offering includes outstanding solutions from other compa-
Early in 2007, Virginia entered into a strategic agreement nies, which benefits states by eliminating the time and hassle
with Google to enhance the portal’s search engine, which of issuing multiple procurements,” says Herington.
scans for keywords and terms across individual agency sites. States find that their private sector partner can bring them
The search engine mostly worked well, but results were some- the best technology and implement it at a lower cost and in
times incomplete. “Driver’s license,” for instance, didn’t call less time than the state could on its own. “States do not have
up the Department of Motor Vehicles page, which contains an the luxury of running a research and development shop,” says
6. Herington. Government leaders have also learned to avoid networking tools and blogs in particular, which are popular
building agency-specific applications that consume scarce among the next generation of voters and taxpayers, can help
resources and to instead adopt technologies that many agen- the state engage in a more nuanced conversation with citizens.
cies can use. State officials agree that collaborative technologies will
Applications on Kansas.gov, for instance, are designed attract the younger generation of citizens to the portal. Those
using an “extensible format,” which means they can be easi- future voters are in constant communication with each other
ly scaled for multiple purposes and environments. “By creat- through social networking and instant messaging. Officials
ing that extensibility, we’ve been able to roll out online servic- say that is how those citizens also expect to interact with
es easily to other agencies,” says Kansas Secretary of State their government.
Ron Thornburgh. “You don’t have to reinvent the wheel.” In the meantime, states can take advantage of collaborative
TALK TO CUSTOMERS
A portal’s ultimate customers—citizens and businesses in the Citizens and businesses in a state
state—are often the best source of insight into opportunities
for growth. “The most important thing is finding out what your are often the best source of insight
customers want,” Thornburgh says. As one of the earliest into opportunities for growth.
eGovernment pioneers, Kansas has made it a top priority to
engage in a constant dialogue with business owners, who help
provide much of the revenue base of user fees that keep the tools to deliver more timely information to citizens.
portal running. Government portals already are used to deliver updates and
The state launched the Kansas Business Center after cus- information to specific user groups, either through e-mail or
tomers said they wanted a one-stop destination for license RSS feeds, to which citizens can subscribe and receive cus-
applications, filings, tax payments, and other transactions. tomized Web-based information updates. This can be expand-
Today, users are telling officials they want to create more value ed to the population as a whole. One example: “I look at
with the information they obtain through the portal. This is an Election Day, and the kind of information we can start push-
opportunity to deliver customized information to banks, who ing to people either about their voter registration or their
might want to receive automatic updates about important polling place,” Thornburgh says.
events in the lives of their borrowers. “It makes sense that a
bank with a lien against ‘ABC Corporation’ would want to MAKING GOVERNMENT INVISIBLE
know of a change in officers or company name,” Thornburgh Ultimately, the greatest benefit of portals may be somewhat
says. Ordinarily, banks have to ask for that information. Now, ironic: they may make government invisible. As governments
it can be delivered automatically through the portal. more seamlessly deliver services, they effectively make them-
selves appear less bureaucratic, and as a result, less obvious.
FROM eGOVERNMENT TO eDEMOCRACY The premise of a portal is that citizens are more likely to inter-
States have grasped the power of portals to deliver valuable act with one central site rather than seek out individual agen-
and vital services to citizens. But what comes next? Innovative cies. As agencies unify under a single banner, they effective-
technology officials are eyeing their portals’ ability to make ly create “invisible government,” says Herington. The contri-
government more transparent and participatory. The next bution of individual agencies is no less significant—indeed, it
phase of eGovernment, they say, is eDemocracy. is more imperative. But their separate roles are less distinct
This next stage can take advantage of the proliferation in and less visible. For NIC, this is the direction in which
online communications, particularly through social network- eGovernment has always been heading.
ing sites, blogs and wikis, to create more avenues for dialogue “When people said ‘eGovernment,’ they meant electronic
between citizens and government officials. One need only look government,” Herington says. “We always saw it as ‘efficient
at the significant number of people who are voluntarily joining government’ that, when implemented properly, becomes
social networks to see the future of online communication. ‘invisible government’ to citizens and businesses.”
“We should think of citizens not by their geography, but by
This is the third in a series of three articles.
their membership in [those groups],” says Virginia’s Chopra.
“If there’s a boating community, they might need a boating
license, or a fishing license,” he explains. “There are five or
six agencies that could congregate within that social network
and provide services to this group.”
Thornburgh says the next big challenge for portal managers
is, “How do we push information out to the public, and more
importantly, receive feedback?” This relationship goes beyond
online tax and license filings. Thornburgh thinks that social- www.nicusa.com