OIT - Partnership Epitomized
By Richard Thompson, CIO
Two weeks ago I received a phone call from Bill Nemitz of the Portland Press Herald. Bill wanted to talk about what makes Maine.gov one of the best web sites in the country. My response was to articulate the unique partnership that exists between the staff at the Office of Information Technology (OIT), agency customers and InforMe. OIT plays a critical role in contributing to Maine.gov's success.
OIT is responsible for housing and maintaining the majority of our State agency partner data. To this end, the network, servers, firewalls, and interconnectivity that needs to take place between the data and the maine.gov website falls onto the shoulders of the staff at OIT. Without their technical knowledge, keen attention to detail and willingness to support a 24x7 operation, Maine.gov would not be the award winning portal it is today. When technology was consolidated in 2005, OIT took on the various agency technology assets, to include staff, servers and databases. Maine.gov continued to thrive and win awards during this time of change, thanks to OIT's contribution.
When Bill asked what my strategy was I replied “We've come a long way, but we've done it with common sense.” Common sense is what you get when you have staff that devotes their careers to serving the public. OIT is the” behind the scenes” key success factor in delivering e-government services to the citizens of Maine .
A final quote from Bill, “the fruits of Thompson's and his colleagues' 24x7 labor should not go unnoticed. If you haven't spent a few minutes (or hours) tooling around Maine.gov lately, I'm telling you, you have no idea what you're missing.”
