State’s Web Sites Long Overdue for Upgrade

By Williams, Walt

CHARLESTON – If governments were like computer software, West Virginia would be long overdue for an upgrade.

Gone are the days when participating in government simply meant a trip to the state Capitol or waiting in line to renew a license. The Information Age is here, and states across the nation are taking full advantage of the Internet and new technology to make their governments more accessible than ever to the public.

West Virginia, however, is woefully out of date, according to a handful of studies.

Visit a state agency Web site, and it likely won’t be set up in a way so people with visual impairments can use it with special software. Public documents and other forms of information, such as lobbyist records, can be hard to find or may not even be online. And if residents want to listen to a public meeting they missed, they’re out of luck because the state doesn’t archive audio or video minutes, unlike some other states.

“Some places have put audio or video recordings online, and that has become a popular feature, so that is one area where West Virginia is lagging behind the rest of the country,” said Darrell West, a political science professor at Rhode Island’s Brown University.

Every year, West compiles one of the most comprehensive studies of state and federal Web sites in the nation, looking at 1,548 different sites, almost all of them state government sites. Last year, he ranked West Virginia 49th in the nation for electronic government, or “e-government,” with only Wyoming ranking lower.

Another study by three Rochester Institute of Technology researchers pretty much reached the same conclusion in 2003, ranking West Virginia near the bottom of the list for Web presence among states. More recently, a study by a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group ranked the state next to last in the nation for putting online information about lobbyists, economic subsidies and government contracts.

West Virginia government officials said they have taken notice. Later this year, they plan to unveil a new design for the state Web portal – www.WV.gov – that they say will be easier to navigate and could serve as a single access point for residents wanting more information about all levels of government.

The upside is that most state government Web sites got their start with much less than what West Virginia has now. West said he has seen vast improvements among many government sites during the past decade, as they evolved from rudimentary Web pages to fully functional sites that feature loads of content and allow Internet users to tailor the information to their own interests.

West believes such improvements not only are important but necessary if elected officials want to start to tackle the cynicism that people feel toward their government.

“People want access to public information,” West said. “There is a lot of citizen discontent with government and a feeling that government is heading in the wrong direction, so technology is a way to bridge that gap between citizens and leaders.”

Following Examples

West Virginia may learn what it is doing wrong by looking at what West and other experts say other states are doing right.

Delaware is one state with Web sites – accessed via www.delaware.gov – that West said ranks first among states. He credits the site’s clean design with clear links to state agencies and an easy-to-navigate menu bar at the top of the pages.

Nearly all the Delaware government’s sites can be translated into several languages, including Spanish and Chinese, and navigation through the sites is easy because they follow the same basic layout, according to West.

Michigan and its Web sites www.michigan.gov – also received wide praise from West and others because of its good layout and easy navigation. There are more than 70 services available through the state’s sites, from filing taxes to reporting potholes.

In addition, the California-based Center for Digital Government reported that Michigan was able to cut its environmental compliance costs by 40 percent by using its Web services for data exchanges.

No state scored a perfect score when the Corporate Research Project of Good Jobs First – a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit group conducted a study of what information state governments were putting online about lobbying activities and economic development subsidies. West Virginia did worst than most, however, receiving an “F” in every category the organization examined.

Philip Mattera, the organization’s research director, said the study was the first of its kind for his group. It, too, is evolving as technology changes.

“In the past, we were willing to accept any kind of disclosure, but I think we reached the point where the Internet is so prevalent and accessible to people, there is no excuse for government not to make this kind of information available online,” he said.

Kyle Schafer, West Virginia’s chief technology officer, said he was aware of many of the reports. The problem was, in the past, each state agency had its own information technology department, and there was little coordination among them, he said.

The result was separate agency sites, each with a different layout and with no real consistency about the information on them. But Schafer said that soon will change under a plan that will modernize the state’s main Web site to make it a one-stop source of information about all levels of government.

“Our citizens know that (government) services are available, but a lot of times what they really don’t know is: ‘Is it a city service? Is it a county service? Is it a state service? Is it a federal service?’” he said.

Bringing in Help

Schafer said a major goal of the current effort to revamp the state’s Web presence is modeled after similar services provided by Internet search engines such as Yahoo! and Google. Both offer a person the ability to create personal pages that are updated with information important to that individual, such as local weather forecasts or news feeds focusing on topics such as entertainment or politics.

In the near future, Internet users may be able to browse the state Web site and, after typing in a zip code or logging in, get information about the city and county they live in. It also will be easier to navigate, with menus linking to a wide range of services, he said.

The new state Web portal should debut in either April or May, Schafer said. The design and administration of the site was awarded to NIC Inc., a Kansas-based company that specializes in providing Web services for state and local governments.

In fact, NIC designed many of the state government Web sites that often rank among the top of the nation in e-government studies, Schafer said. Among the company’s clients are Maine, Kentucky and Tennessee.

“So we think we really do have a strong business partner in NIC,” he said.

NIC, when it is contracted by a government, brings in an experienced management team to start up a new company within the state, said Peter Fairhurst, the company’s project manager for West Virginia.

“The idea is to create a new company and create some jobs for the area,” he said.

NIC created West Virginia Interactive, which currently employs 10 people. Its offices are not at the state Capitol campus but rather in an office building in downtown Charleston.

The company provides both the software and the hardware necessary for Web site upgrades. If the state were to decide to take over Web service in the future, there is a transition clause written into the contract to allow it to take over the equipment, he said.

NIC’s business model is such that West Virginia won’t pay any money up front for the services it provides. The company instead will collect a small portion of every fee made through an electronic transaction, such as when a person pays through a government Web site to renew his or her license.

NIC has been asked to structure payments so residents won’t see any increases in fees if they do business online, with the money instead coming from the savings resulting from less paperwork, Fairhust said.

The company is retooling only the Web sites for the executive branch of government, which includes www. WV.gov and the agency Web sites. The state Legislative Web site – www.legis.state.wv.us – is administered separately by a three-person team working at the Capitol.

The legislative site allows users to look up and track proposed bills and features a blog with a news feed that lets people follow developments at the Legislature without actually going to the site itself. There are no audio or video feeds of meetings or floor sessions, and there are no online audio archives.

David Martin, the site administrator, said Web users likely will see changes in coming months. Much of what appears on the site depends on what constituents demand and on what lawmakers decide, he said.

“A lot of that sort of thing is totally dependent on policy,” he said. “We don’t make policy – the members (of the Legislature) do. However the technology is here to do it, but there also is a fairly reasonable amount of investment involved and cost, as well as time.”

Copyright State Journal Corporation Feb 1, 2008

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