Washington Department of Information Services States:A Fresh Approach to Serving the Citizen
BR Agencies Exploit The Internet For Big Returns Artwork by: Randy Verugstraete By Shannon Henry Innovations in Internet-related technology and the federal government's need to streamline are meeting each other head-to-head in some mutually beneficial business deals that signal a new wave of government spending on Internet service
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Agencies Exploit The Internet For Big Returns
Artwork by: Randy Verugstraete |
By Shannon Henry
Innovations in Internet-related technology and the federal government's need to streamline are meeting each other head-to-head in some mutually beneficial business deals that signal a new wave of government spending on Internet services.
And there's a huge amount of money at stake: The federal market for professional services will increase from $5.6 billion in fiscal 1997 to $7.5 billion in fiscal 2001, according to a recent study by market research firm Input in Vienna, Va.
Major factors contributing to that growth include attempts to reduce the federal deficit, increases in information technology spending, a trend toward use of commercial services, pressures to downsize the federal work force and acquisition and infotech management reforms, said the study.
Missouri photo "Part of the program's success comes from the fact that we try to drive integration across all our projects." -John A. (Tony) Wening MOREnet> |
Back in 1991, MOREnet was already using the Internet and now provides and operates Missouri's public sector Internet network.
"I think part of the program's success comes from the fact that we try to drive integration across all our projects. We also think that the cradle-to-grave approach is the way to go, for example, working with communities in train-the-trainer sessions and helping them set up their systems at the local level," explains Wening.
Unique to the Missouri Express project are two features. First, the Express project has regional assistance teams made up of individuals with strong community development expertise, who act as facilitators in helping bring key agencies and information providers together. The project almost makes them necessary since the start-up funding it offers requires an organizational structure to be in place.
The teams work with the community to prepare an agenda and goals as well as a long-term plan to keep the network going once the funds stop. Second, MOREnet takes on the tasks of systems administration and server security, leaving the community to focus its efforts on content. Thus, communities neither have to purchase a server nor learn programming to take part in the project.
The return on investment has been nothing short of spectacular. According to a published description of the project, MOREnet can offer connections, training, consulting and ongoing support to as many as 80 communities (at the 1999 project conclusion) for $6 million because the services it provides to community information networks are fully integrated into projects for higher education, K-12 school districts and public libraries.
As an example of the savings, the project is purchasing four superservers to house community networks in their virtual domain. They estimate that if each community got its own server at $25,000 each, the impact on the project, that is, 80 local communities, would be $2 million.
One of the interesting dynamics pointed out by Wening is that those communities that have been most aggressive in getting applications have been small counties rather than large cities. His explanation? They have fewer agendas, so politics drives the effort rather than technical issues.
Oregon's Consumer and Business Services Project
The state's largest regulatory and consumer protection agency, the Oregon Department of Consumer and Business Services, faced the challenge of finding ways to share information and offer services to customers 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
The DCBS project that started last year in July has, according to its creators, already paid for itself in both time and dollars. And as more state citizens and businesses get connectivity and the DCBS adds services over the Internet, the department expects the savings to increase substantially.
Among the offerings on the DCBS site are database searches, decision support capabilities, forms submission, publications, license renewals, training courses and information gathering. Benefits of the site noted by the department include reduced incidence of work-related injuries, wiser selections of insurance options, safer and more energy-efficient buildings, less transportation congestion through telecommuting, faster resolution of litigation and more timely benefit payments to injured workers.
Dan Adelman, chief information officer in the Information Management Division of the DCBS, says a major challenge in moving the project forward was organizing such a diverse agency, one that covered areas as different as real estate, workers compensation and building standards.
Oregon photo "We realized this activity allowed people to express their creativity." -Dan Adelman Oregon Department of Consumer and Business Services |
"To find the common ground is a very tough challenge," admits Adelman. "Not only in organizing the project, but in trying to understand internally how to better communicate with customers. Beyond that, another challenge was to develop a Web site as well as the infrastructure to support it. Finally, providing Internet access is a management challenge in using the resource in a businesslike manner."
Starting in December 1995 with all 15 program areas included, a committee chaired by the communications director and Adelman set a target to have the Web site up in six months. They also decided to create three committees: standards, as in netiquette, content and marketing. In two months, they developed the standards. They also initiated a rapid training program to teach individuals from the different program areas how to code pages.
"Basically, people were building Web pages from scratch," laughs Adelman. "Individuals started stepping forward to create sites whom we thought had no interest in the Internet whatsoever. We realized that this activity allowed people to come forward and express their creativity."
There are a number of lessons he's learned that Adelman eagerly shares. First, just do it - that is, set a target and put up a Web site. Second, identify content that the public wants most and offer it. You'll find you're reducing postal mail and responses to inquiries. Third, encourage creativity and innovation. It's not only good for morale, but it keeps the sites from having a uniform appearance. Fourth, market as quickly as you can, getting the word out about your site and what it has to offer. Fifth, keep your content up to date.
"We track all the documents and hits and generate a load of statistics. We have programs that keep tabs on all the documents to make sure all the links are working and that the site is getting hits. That level of feedback is good for staff and valuable for marketing activities," Adelman says.
Washington's On-Line Voters Guide
In 1996, the Washington State Department of Information Services published what was then the most comprehensive electronic voter's guide in the nation. Working with the Office of the Secretary of State, the department offered information on ballot measures and candidates to tens of thousands of Washington citizens sooner and at a much lower cost than the state's traditional pamphlet process.
Using the On-Line Voters Guide, published on the World Wide Web, citizens could use the Internet, electronic kiosks and interactive telephones to gain access to candidate statements, photographs and campaign information. Also available was information on how to register to vote and how to obtain an absentee ballot. With that success, the same type of information published in the general election voters pamphlet is now available before the primary.
And the return on investment? The program creators estimate that the $147,000 cost of the effort is little more than 10 percent of the cost of the state's printed voters pamphlet.
For Todd Sander, deputy director of the Department of Information Services, and Jerry Wardrop, Washington Information Network project director for the department, the early stages of the project were not all roses.
Washington photo To streamline the process, we try to generate information once, in HTML, for example. -Todd Sander Washington Department of Information Services |
"We first started looking at the project in May 1996 when we were contacted by the secretary of state's office. He had wanted to produce a voter's guide for the primary elections. While he had produced a paper version for the general election, he could not get funding for the primary. What intrigued him was an electronic voter's guide, accessible in a variety of ways, that is, by interactive voice response unit, kiosks, Internet, to keep costs low," explained Sander.
As it turned out, the actual project started June 1 and had to be completed by the third week in August.
"That was the biggest challenge," says Wardrop, because Washington Information Network projects usually take 12 to 18 months. "But by August we had actually fielded the kiosks. And we were gratified that a large percentage of Spanish-speaking people were accessing the information. It was the first time we had a bilingual voters guide on the kiosks."
Among the lessons shared by Sander and Wardrop are the challenge of the implementation, which is handling the information too much. Now, when the information is generated by the secretary of state's office, they try to streamline the process by generating the source once, for example, HTML code.
Another lesson comes from the translation into Spanish. They agree that one person should do the translation to ensure the meaning gets across, especially since there are numerous dialects to work with.
Asked how they deal with the cost savings involved in such projects and the expectations of the appropriation and authorization committees, Sander pointed out that the governor of Washington had established a savings plan.
Agencies that had not spent their allocated funds by the end of fiscal year have half returned to them for discretionary use while the other half goes into a special education and training fund.
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