Kentucky taps NIC for portal management

NIC Inc. has won a multimillion dollar, 10-year contract from Kentucky to provide the state with a new e-government portal, the company announced April 2.

Under the contract, NIC of Overland Park, Kan., will deploy a self-funded model that will provide the infrastructure and staff expertise required to develop, maintain and host the portal.

The company plans to redesign the portal by updating the structure and restructuring the content to facilitate ease of use.

As part of the contract, NIC will provide hosting services for the state's 130 existing interactive applications and will integrate all services into the expanded portal environment. In addition, state officials have asked the company to identify at least 10 additional e-gov services for possible deployment.

The new portal is expected to launch this spring. Kentucky issued its bid for e-gov services in last fall and awarded the contract to NIC following a competition that included IBM Corp., Armonk, N.Y., BearingPoint Inc., McLean, Va., and Quilogy Inc., St. Charles, Mo., company officials said.

Aldona Valicenti, Kentucky's chief information officer, said that the self-funded model would enable the state to build additional e-government services at minimal cost to Kentucky taxpayers.

The portal is managed and operated by Kentucky Interactive Inc. of Frankfort, Ky., a subsidiary of NIC. Under the agreement, Kentucky will retain ownership of the content, data and statutory fees.

Through its subsidiaries, NIC manages official state portals and outsourced e-government services for 18 states. The company has 228 employees and had annual revenue of $47.5 million in 2002.