NIC Nets Oklahoma Portal Deal

National Information Consortium Inc. has won a five-year, $1.1 million contract to build and manage an e-government portal for the state of Oklahoma, NIC announced June 26.

NIC of Overland Park, Kan., will provide the infrastructure and staff expertise required to develop, maintain and host the e-government services, while Oklahoma will retain ownership of the content, data and statutory fees.

The project will be financed with a hybrid funding model that combines traditional funding with transaction fees, NIC said.

The terms of the contract require Oklahoma to pay NIC about $1.1 million to develop the portal's infrastructure and require individual agencies to cover costs of specific applications they will use.

Once the applications are up and running, a transaction fee may be charged for a very limited number of services to support portal maintenance, said Chris Neff, a spokesman for NIC.

"It's a funding structure that we haven't seen for any other e-government project in the industry so far," he said.

The redesigned portal is scheduled to launch in the fall. An online business directory sponsored by the Office of State Finance is slated to be the first application.

Several state agencies are lined up to participate in the portal, and many additional services are planned to go live later this year.

With the Oklahoma award, NIC now manages 14 state portals and eight local portals throughout the United States and Canada.

NIC had about 360 employees and annual revenue of $27 million in fiscal 2000, according to Hoover's Online of Austin, Texas.