Reservations and visits to Maine State Parks up this year!

May 19, 2016

For more information contact: John Bott at: 207-287-3156

Maine receives National Award for Campground Reservations Service

AUGUSTA ? The Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry?s Campground Reservations service (www.campwithme.com) was named an IT Program of the Year by StateScoop, a national publication that features leaders and innovators in government technology. The national award comes at a time when reservations and visitations at Maine State Parks are up compared to last year?s record-setting totals. In 2015, 2,626,416 people visited Maine State Parks, the highest attendance since 1985. Through April 2016, total attendance (day use and camping) is up 45% compared to last year.

?Maine is open for business and our campground reservations service is an example of how state government is becoming more efficient, effective and responsive to taxpayers and summer visitors,? said Governor Paul R. LePage. ?Continuous improvement throughout state government is our shared goal. Hard working Maine taxpayers deserve nothing less.?

Commissioner Walt Whitcomb highlighted how the improvements directly benefit consumers. ?We want visitors to our state parks to have an enjoyable experience, starting with ease in making reservations,? said Whitcomb. ?Campers often have their hearts set on a certain site and on particular dates. It is important that our online service allows them to book what they want reliably, efficiently and securely. Awards and positive recognition from both inside and outside state government, reinforces our belief that we are meeting this goal.?

StateScoop 50 awards:

Approximately 80,000 votes were cast for the StateScoop 50 awards, narrowing down hundreds of nominations to just 50 winners in the categories of IT Program of the Year, Innovation of the Year, Industry Leadership, Up and Comer, State Leadership, and State Executives of the Year.

Maine?s Campground Reservations service:

Is a web-based reservation system allowing users to reserve nights at any of Maine?s twelve state parks. Prior to this solution, users were provided an online form to request a campsite. When the season began, nearly 3,000 people would be vying for similar sites and dates, all of which had to be manually processed by the call center staff, a process that took almost a month to complete.

Reservations are now processed online by users for Sebago State Park on the first opening day and for all other parks on the second opening day which occurs one week later. The web-based system reliably handles the opening day rush, processing hundreds of transactions in the first fifteen minutes of each opening day. What used to take weeks to process now takes roughly a half hour. The Campground Reservations service was developed through a collaboration with Maine?s eGovernment partner, Maine Information Network, LLC, a subsidiary of NIC, at no cost to taxpayers.

About Maine.gov

Maine.gov (http://www.Maine.gov) is the official Web portal of the State of Maine. Maine.gov is a service of InforME, a collaborative effort between the state of Maine and Maine Information Network, LLC, part of the NIC (NASDAQ: EGOV) family of companies.

About NIC

Founded in 1992, NIC (NASDAQ: EGOV) is the nation's leading provider of official government websites, online services, and secure payment processing solutions. The Company's innovative eGovernment services help make government more accessible to everyone through technology. The family of NIC companies provides eGovernment solutions for more than 3,500 federal, state, and local agencies in the United States. Forbes has named NIC as one of the ?100 Best Small Companies in America? six times, most recently ranked at No. 36 (2014), and the Company has been included four times on the Barron?s 400 Index. Additional information is available at http://www.egov.com

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For information on the Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry, go to: http://www.maine.gov/dacf/