May 13, 2002
InforME Board Meeting

Members Present:
Dan Gwadosky
Rudy Naples
Dick Hinkley
Dick Davies
Deb Carson
Jaynie Higgins
Marilyn Lutz
Jeff Harmon
Gary Nichols
Tamara Dukes

Others Present:
Becky Wyke, Deputy Secretary of State
Sarah Walton, Freedom of Information Coalition
Joan Gammon, InforME
Kelly Hokkanen, InforME
Todd Tolhurst, InforME

Meeting Opens
Chair welcomed the Board and began the meeting.

Agenda Reviewed

NEI Contract Extension
Review of NEI Contract Extension

Discussion:
NEI and the State are still negotiating some points of the contract, so it is not yet ready to bring before the Board for a vote. The remaining issues are mostly small details of the contract. There have been many changes in the e-government arena since the original contract was drafted and those changes need to be incorporated into the new contract.

Action:
The Chair proposes an extension of 60 days for the contract and that any remaining issues will be presented to the Board at the next meeting if the contract is not completed. The Board unanimously approved a 60 day contract extension.

Review of General Manager�s Report
Tamara Dukes reviewed the highlights from the report.

Adoption rates for UCC continue to rise and are excellent. Adoption rates have become a key point of interest within NIC, and Tamara is leading an NIC group to study ways to increase adoption of e-government services.

New Services:
Annual Reports Online has launched this month, and PayTixx will launch later this week. Bureau of Financial Institutions project completed and also started Beta testing of Rapid Renewal Manual Towns. Rapid Renewal now has 28 live towns. The Secretary of State�s office and InforME will work together to construct and implement a plan to add additional towns to the RRS.

Creative Services continues to be busy. The portal user testing report is complete -- Kelly Hokkanen, InforME�s Creative Services Director to present the results. The deadline for the first portal Photo Contest is today. We have received a good response, with many high quality entries.

Financial Report:
April was one of our highest gross revenue months, but gross profit is staying fairly steady.

Staffing Changes:
Several staffing changes are occurring at InforME over the next few weeks. Shaye Robbins, InforME Director of Marketing, is leaving the company to pursue other career options. Joan Gammon will be responsible for directing marketing efforts, and will be training Renee Loring (Marketing Associate) and Tiffany Glidden (promotion from Administrative Assistant to Marketing Associate) in marketing and project management. InforME has hired a new administrative assistant and a new developer who will be starting before the end of May.

Action:
InforME will present the Board with an updated organizational chart at the next meeting.

Report of Phase 1 User Testing Results and Conclusions
Kelly Hokkanen, InforME Director of Creative Services, presented the report from the portal phase 1 user testing.

Discussion:
Sixteen users participated in individual 30-minute test sessions, including five citizen users, five business users, six state employees, and one visually-challenged tester using screen-reader software. Users completed brief surveys, gave initial feedback on the site, gave their understanding of the navigation labels, and then attempted a series of tasks locating specific information using the site. User testing was extremely valuable and provided a lot of feedback. The report, provided to the Board, summarizes the findings with both quantitative numbers (# of clicks, completion rate), and actual user comments and observations. Kelly also provided to the Board a summary of the results from the online portal survey, from 130 respondents over 2 months.

Action:
InforME will be conducting several other user testing sessions over the next months.

Review of Subscriber Password Recommendations
Joan Gammon, InforME Deputy General Manager, presented the proposed solutions for increasing security of subscriber accounts.

Discussion:
InforME proposed three specific measures: expire all user IDs that have been inactive for one year or more; add an account administration feature to the customer database. This will allow subscribers to administer their user IDs and force periodic verification of users; force users who access private information to change their password every 90 days. The Board recommends 90 day expiration for privacy subscribers and every 6 months for non-privacy subscribers.

Action:
InforME will put this work into the programming queue (as a high priority) and will aim to complete it by September 1.

Strategic Plan Update: Online Services
Joan Gammon presented the updated Online Services section of the InforME strategic plan.

Discussion:
We are on target to meeting our goals this year. We are modifying the InforME project workbook and process based on NIC best practices and internal discussions. We have completed two �suites� of services: UCC Total Solution, and Corporate Services.

Action:
Tamara Dukes will be sharing information from the NIC study of best practices for increasing adoption rates.

Chair
Next meeting: June 5 at 1:00 p.m.

Meeting Adjourned
2:45 pm