SNAIL MAIL TO THE RESCUE
Just because a government sets up a useful Web site doesn't mean people will to flock to it. They have to know it exists. Governments are finding that the way to pull people into the electronic future is to woo them with good old-fashioned 20th-century marketing techniques.The Texas Workforce Commission has turned to snail mailings, paper brochures and media phone calls to alert people to HIRE Texas, its free online job-match system. When the site went live last May, about 40 applicants a day found it by word of mouth. Then a mid-summer marketing blitz sent a flurry of flyers, buttons, posters and letters to workforce development boards, community based organizations, universities, libraries, federal contractors and employers. The commission faxed news releases to 900 news outlets one day, garnering 140 news articles.
Since the $15,000 marketing effort began, traffic to the site has more than quadrupled, to 200 applicants a day. "Things really started cooking," says Leslie Mueller, the Workforce Commission's director of special proj-ects. "We have picked up employers who never worked with us before." In many cases, until the marketing push, employers did not know that HIRE Texas existed.
CLICK ON THE DOTTED LINE
April 30 is the target for Nevada to get every existing state form residents might need up online. It's just the first step of a plan Governor Kenny Guinn has dubbed "Silver Source--the Nevada Citizen Connection" that will require all state agencies to set up Web sites."The information is very basic," says Marlene Lockard, director of the Department of Information Technology. "It should be available to any citizen at their convenience and location of choice, without involving state employees."
A considerable number of forms already are online at various departments. Agencies now are sending their forms to a clearinghouse to be compiled. The state will set up a site with a search engine that will allow residents to describe what they're looking for without having to know which agency the form is from.
OVERSIGHT INSIGHT
Many governments have learned the hard way that when taking on a $40 million to $50 million technology project, it's hard to avoid winding up in court. But North Carolina has taken pains to avoid such an outcome with a measure passed during last year's legislative session that beefs up a technology project oversight system.Every technology project must undergo a quality assessment throughout its life; the state's Information Resource Management Commission is supposed to pull the plug if a project gets off budget or way behind. Each project that costs more than $500,000 and lower-cost ones that have statewide implications are to be scrutinized by information resource management staff at the outset.
The commission then will decide whether to certify the proj-ect. If the project does go forward, it will undergo periodic reviews throughout its life. The state is contracting out with private companies for these independent, third-party reviews. "It's an early detection system," says state Controller Ed Renfrow.
EDUCATION+COMPUTERS=DISCONNECT
Reading, writing, 'rithmetic and technology. It may lack for alliteration, but no one in education these days wants to do without the fourth concept. The Arlington Independent School District in Texas has created a top-level position to oversee it: assistant superintendent for technology.The district, the eighth-largest in Texas with 57,000 students in 65 schools, recently hired Steven Harvey, a former teacher and executive director of technology for the Irving Independent School District, for the new post. The job's existence reflects something of a trend: At least two other Texas school districts have created similar assistant superintendent-level positions.
What prompted the new Arlington position? After voters last year overwhelmingly approved a $30 million bond issue for technology in the schools, a consulting firm, Deloitte & Touche, pointed out that, as is typical of school districts, Arlington's technology focus is split. On one side are the administrative systems that print paychecks and report cards and monitor the district's budget; on the other is instruction. School districts have been much more willing to spend money to buy technology, notes Hunt Holsomback, a senior manager at the firm, "but there's still a disconnect when technology hits the classroom."
Which is why Harvey's position was created, says Arlington Superintendent Mac Bernd. "We need a technology champion in the school district."
