TO: INFORMATION RESOURCE OF MAINE (InforME) BOARD
FROM: KELLY HOKKANEN, INFORME STAFF
DATE: JULY 25, 2001
RE: MINUTES OF THE JULY 25, 2001 INFORME BOARD MEETING
MEMBERS IN ATTENDANCE:
Secretary of State Dan Gwadosky
Tamara Dukes
John Eldridge
Jaynie Higgins
Deb Carson
Dick Davies
Marilyn Lutz
Linda Monica
Gary Nichols
Rick Record
OTHERS IN ATTENDANCE:
Kelly Hokkanen, InforME Staff
Shaye Robbins, InforME Staff
Rebecca Wyke, Chief Deputy, Office of Secretary of
State
WELCOME
Chairman, Secretary of State Gwadosky, began the meeting
by welcoming all board members present.
GM REPORT
Dukes presented the highlights of the General Manager's
Report.
CIVIC.COM AWARD
The State of Maine received the Civic.com award for
Rapid Renewal. This is great recognition for a very
important application, as the first inter-branch application
in the country. Rapid Renewal now has:
· 13 live towns
· 6 in beta
· 44 towns that have asked to participate
NEW PORTAL DESIGN
Changes to the portal were launched in early July,
reflecting the greater focus on Section 508 guidelines
for accessibility for people with disabilities. The
Report includes an article Kelly wrote for the MIST
newsletter explaining the changes that were made.
UPCOMING SERVICES
We are busy with finishing touches on 3 big services:
· UCC Search - imminent activation
· UCC filing - September timeframe
· QuickTix - the first application to be delivered
by IVR and web (both)
OTHER PROJECT NOTES
We have been actively participating in the digital
signatures workgroup. We'll keep the Board posted
about developments in that area.
Campground Reservations has a launch timeline of December.
AnyDeer has been very successful. 4,099 applications have been processed through InforME as of today - about 5% of the total AnyDeer applications.
Portland Parking Tickets, currently under development, will be our second application with a municipality.
The new RemindME service is online now. This was going to be featured prominently on the portal front page but the Governor did not want it posted there, so it is listed under "What's New".
STAFFING
We are still looking to fill a marketing executive
position. In the meantime, we will be hosting a couple
of NIC pipeline candidates for a few months.
FINANCIAL
Revenues continue to be on track. Not as good a year
as last year, but the changes in Special Request law
resulted in an unusual influx of revenue last year.
The ICS adoption rate is up already.
Eldridge: Are you showing gross RR revenue in the
financial report?
Dukes: Actually it varies. Our accountants have asked
us to change to reporting net amounts, so there will
be an adjustment in our reports soon. For items where
we only collect an agent fee but don't actually process
a record, we only show the fee. For example, for hunting/fishing
licenses, we only show the $2 fee. The gross profit
is gross revenue minus cost of sales.
Chair: Please explain how the hunting and fishing
licenses work
Dukes: We are still handwriting licenses right now
until the change over to MOSES occurs. When MOSES
in full effect people will print out their licenses
so we won't be doing the fulfillment.
Lutz: Could you give us highlights of the NIC strategic
planning session you attended?
Dukes: NIC experienced some of what many Internet
companies experienced when the NASDAQ went down. We
don't see ourselves as a dot-com Internet company.
But our stock is very low right now. Just recently
we told Wall Street that we will beat our projections
this year - that is the good news. NIC did a lot of
cutting in the other divisions they had purchased
- an e-procurement company, a software company, and
Conquest (Secretary of State backend work). Two of
those divisions did not achieve their business plans
in 2000 by a significant margin. The state portal
division has been profitable since day one and continues
to be. The company as a whole was not profitable but
expects to be cash flow positive by Second Quarter
2002. We continue to win new state portals: Rhode
Island and Oklahoma are the newest. We discussed the
status of our core business - and what if any other
areas are we going to invest in. There was discussion
of vertical portals, for example, a portal focused
on an industry that works with states, like the insurance
industry.
Carson: How many state contracts does NIC have now?
Dukes: We have 15 now. RI, OK, MT, TN are the newer
ones.
Carson: Does NIC project how many of the states it
will win?
Dukes: We do not have any of the big 10. It has been
mostly mid-tier states who have embraced the self
funded model. We talked about that. We need a strategy
for big states. That's one thing we're developing.
Under our current market potential there are probably
10 more states we should be able to go out and get.
Chair: Any other questions about the GM report? [The Board has no questions.]
STRATEGIC PLAN - FINAL REVISIONS
The final draft version of the strategic plan, incorporating the suggestions from previous meetings, is attached.
SUBSCRIBER SURVEY
Shaye Robbins presented the highlights of the subscriber
survey.
100 subscribers were surveyed
94 % reported satisfaction with InforME's services.
Our goal was 95%.
There was only one person who had negative feedback.
The biggest thing we noticed was that people were
not aware of a service we offer - the account management
feature. 25% did not know about the feature. As a
result of this, we began contacting all subscribers
to let them know about the feature. We also added
a new page at www.informe.org/interactive to take
them right to the account management feature. 36%
had called in for customer service, and they rated
it at 3.58 out of 4. They were satisfied with the
service.
FUTURE MEETINGS
No meeting in August
Tuesday, September 11, 1-3 p.m.
Wednesday, October 17, 1-3 p.m.