10 Technologies State Governments Are Buying

Web Services
Web services plays a prominent role in states' e-government initiatives. For example, the eFiling for Courts managed service, jointly developed by solution provider BearingPoint and Microsoft, enables attorneys to file documents and make online payments with multiple courts through one standard interface. Using Microsoft .Net, the LegalXML standard schema and Web-services standards such as Simple Object Access Protocol, eFiling for Courts integrates easily with legacy systems. BearingPoint hosts the eFiling service and charges transaction fees, sparing courts the up-front costs.

Texas is one state that is effectively using this technology.

"Use of [this] service by our courts can save attorneys time, reduce total filing costs and assist courts in becoming more efficient," says Carolyn Purcell, former CIO for the state of Texas, for which the custom solution that became eFiling for Courts was developed. "This is especially critical in these challenging economic times."

Gigabit Ethernet
Network-infrastructure upgrades provide bandwidth and intelligence that save states money and enable new, more efficient ways of doing business. In May 2003, The Louisiana 19th Circuit Judicial Court stepped up to a 3Com Gigabit Ethernet solution implemented by reseller Nsync Services. The new network eliminated duplicate data entry and the need to move paper files among three administrative sites, and it provided citizens access to all public court documents via the Internet. The Gigabit Ethernet network also enabled the court to implement videoconferencing, making hearings more convenient and reducing the risks and costs of transporting prisoners.

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"It gave us a 70 percent increase in staff productivity," says Freddie Manint, the Louisiana court's criminal justice information systems director.

VoIP
Voice-over-IP (VoIP) is another cost-effective solution for states.

For example, the Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry bought a 300-phone Cisco IP telephony system in 2000 for $435,000. This turned out to be money wisely spent for the state, as the system slashed the department's monthly phone bill from $21,700 to less than $10,000. Last summer, the department added another 150 IP phones to seven branch locations, realizing additional savings of $3,000 to $4,000 per month. Several other Minnesota agencies have implemented VoIP on their own, prompting the Department of Administration/Office of Technology to commission a VoIP implementation plan for the entire state.

Biometric Identity-Authentication
In the quest to keep track of criminals, biometric identity-authentication solutions are being adopted by state human services programs and corrections systems. The Washington State Department of Corrections (DOC), for example, uses HandKey readers from IR Recognition Systems (a division of Ingersoll-Rand) to verify the identities of more than 45,000 offenders who report to probation officers. Often, an offender doesn't need to see a probation officer. After being authenticated by an RSI handreader, the offender updates his or her address, phone number, employment and other required information via a touch-screen monitor built into a kiosk.

"It is estimated that each kiosk report saves an officer 10 to 15 minutes in processing paperwork and computer entries," says Norm Harrison, GENIE project manager for the DOC. That translates into an estimated 50,000 labor hours saved per year.

Biometrics is also being used in the health-care vertical. The state of Texas launched the Medicaid Program Integrity project in March 2004, with fingerprint biometric devices by Precise Biometrics and smart cards manufactured by Axalto. Card readers and finger scanners at 150 health-services providers will verify that the cardholder's fingerprint matches the template stored on the card. Texas hopes to store eligibility information for all of its human-services agencies on a single card, reducing fraud and abuse by verifying identities and tracking recipients' use of services. Systems integrator Atos Origin is deploying the pilot program.

Mobile Computing And Wireless Networking
Mobile computing and wireless networking save state employees many hours of unproductive time driving to and from offices in search of forgotten files or dropping off reports. Mobility even increases revenue.

In Texas, the Office of the Comptroller of Public Accounts wanted to develop a wireless business process and IT solution to help 75 enforcement officers in 20 field offices collect past-due tax revenue. Systems integrator Adea Solutions developed the Enforcement Wireless Computing Solution (EWCS) for the comptroller's field tax-enforcement officers. Deployed in April 2003, the system enabled enforcement officers to recover $4.7 million in past-due tax monies in the first three months of operation.

Incorporating tablet PCs and software from Sybase and Software AG, the solution met stringent security and reliability requirements, according to Adea. EWCS allows the comptroller's enforcement personnel to remotely view taxpayer information, document collection activity, and print vital tax information using a wireless tablet computer and bubble-jet printer, eliminating paper, redundant trips from the office to the taxpayer locations and redundant data entry. The project, which was mandated by the Texas State Legislature, took seven months to complete and cost $1.5 million.

"Mobility, wireless and related IT solutions are the key to enabling an existing [or shrinking] workforce to do more with less," says Doug Ortega, Adea's president. Ortega was a featured presenter at the 2004 Republican Governors Forum "Efficiency In State Government: A Road Map From the Private Sector" recently held in Las Vegas, where attendees gained insight into various IT solutions that have enabled state governments to reduce operating costs and/or increase revenue without adding people.

"However, technology is the enabler, while the solution lies in determining which business processes need to be changed," he adds. "A key to the success of our EWCS solution was the up-front time spent with the enforcement agents to identify process improvements." Upgrading VPNs to support wireless mobility is also a significant opportunity for VARs, he adds.

Java
Java programming tools that reduce development and maintenance costs can make or break a VAR's deal. IBM's Rational Rapid Developer helped solution provider Information Builders clinch a contract for a system that would enable those seeking employment to apply for jobs online with the Colorado Department of Human Services.

Rapid Developer "enabled us to insulate the customer's developers from having to understand so much about Java, and that was a big selling point," according to Chuck Wolff, systems engineer at Information Builders. With training from Information Builders' lead developer, Shyam Jayakumar, four state programmers who had never touched Java before developed the application in just five weeks. "If we had used something other than Rational Rapid Developer, it would have taken at least three to four months," Jayakumar says.

Security

Security is a heightened priority, thanks in part to federal laws such as HIPAA, which requires ongoing assessments of health-information security. Florida turned to Symantec's NetRecon and Enterprise Security Manager products to identify network vulnerabilities and monitor agencies' compliance with security policies. Ultimately, 142,300 workstations and mobile devices throughout more than 30 agencies will be continuously monitored.

"Many states now say, 'Don't just tell me it's secure--prove it,'" notes Ed Basset, president of security consultancy Enspherics, a division of Ciber. The Colorado Lottery hired Enspherics to assess other vendors' proposals to upgrade the lottery's retailer communications network and conduct vulnerability tests on the winning solution when it is implemented. The solution will ensure that the state's lottery systems are hackproof. That will prevent a retailer from paying a bogus "winner," or a phony ticket number from being transmitted to lottery headquarters to generate a payout validation.

"Spending on security enables e-government projects, which save money and enhance revenues," Basset says. Some state CIOs are even diverting money from other projects, increasing security to realize e-government's benefits.

Linux
Some of the money for security initiatives may also come from savings realized by using Linux and open-source software.

"Linux adoption in state government has exploded. It's everywhere and so is open source," according to Tom Adelstein, Linux consultant and founder of Government Forge (www.governmentforge.org), a Web site devoted to open-source software for state and local governments. Indeed, Linux underlies every kind of state system imaginable, from the New Jersey State Police's print servers to the Hawaii Department of Taxation's Bulk Filing System.

"The idea is that government applications--especially first-responder applications--only have to be built one time...So, using Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP, [a combination known as LAMP], government units get [software] free. The funding for the development comes from the Departments of Homeland Security and Justice," Adelstein says. But how do VARs make money with free software?

"VARs will have the ability to deploy, modify, maintain and service the applications and, thus, expand their businesses," Adelstein explains. "[Linux and open source] also lower the barriers to entry for VARs."

Adelstein reasons that it's much less costly to become an expert in open-source tools than it is to partner with enterprise-software vendors, and the solutions that open-source VARs can offer to state governments are able to be priced attractively.

Storage Management
Storage management is a prime target for consolidation and cost containment in state governments. The Florida State Technology Office (STO) had a mixture of three different backup systems and twice as many administrators serving a variety of agencies. As data volumes grew, the nightly backup window expanded until critical applications became unavailable during business hours. IBM Global Services replaced the patchwork of backup products with a centralized Tivoli Storage Manager solution. The old method took 18 to 20 hours to back up a subset of the STO's servers; backup of all 70 servers now takes a maximum of eight hours. In addition, the streamlined system requires only one-third of the former management staff.

Disaster Recovery
Disaster recovery is a growing part of every state's IT budget, but to effectively compete in this arena requires major investment in secure data centers, 24/7 staff and transportation of backup media to and from the client's site(s). Fortunately, online backup and disaster-recovery service specialists such as AmeriVault and LiveVault are partnering with VARs at a record pace.

LiveVault signed 32 new partners in 2003, and the company's revenue increased by 162 percent, according to company officials. LiveVault works by automatically and continuously backing up server data via a secure Internet connection and storing it in a secure, off-site facility, where it is available for immediate recovery.

And the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) plugged its disaster-recovery loopholes with LiveVault and records-management VAR Iron Mountain. The DEQ had 16 locations, each responsible for making nightly disk-based backups and forwarding tapes to the main location, which passed tapes on to an off-site storage site.

"It was a logistical nightmare, because we were constantly moving tapes around," says Chad Zerner, operations manager for the DEQ. "It simply was not possible for our IT staff to ensure that each of our 16 locations were performing their backups properly." Switching to LiveVault freed up "the equivalent of three full-time employees" and eliminated human error.

All of these technologies save states cash, leverage staff time and improve citizens' interactions with government. These are the keys to states' coffers.