TO: INFORMATION RESOURCE OF MAINE (InforME) BOARD

FROM: CARRIE GOTT, INFORME STAFF

DATE: SEPTEMBER 27, 2000

RE: MINUTES OF THE SEPTEMBER 27, 2000 INFORME BOARD MEETING

ATTENDANCE:

Secretary of State Dan A. Gwadosky, Chair of the Board

Deborah B. Carson, Financial Operations Officer, Judicial Branch

Richard Davies, Public Member

Tamara Dukes, President, New England Interactive (NEI)

Linda Monica, Maine Trial Lawyers Association

Rudolph Naples, Representing Executive Branch

Anne Schink, Maine League of Women Voters

GUESTS:

Kara A. LaPierre, NIC eGovernment Initiatives

Sam Levy, Department of Education

Val Wood, Bureau of Information Services

STAFF:

Carrie Gott, Staff to InforME Board

John Rusinak, Staff to InforME Board

Rebecca Wyke, Chief Deputy, Office of Secretary of State

WELCOME

Chairman, Secretary of State Gwadosky, begins the meeting by welcoming all board members present.

MANAGEMENT REPORT

CURRENT PROJECTS

Rapid Renewal

Office of Licensing and Registration

Corporate, UCC and Marks Interactive Records

Violations IVR payment

AWARDS

The State of Maine web portal (http://www.state.me.us) has been awarded Honorable Mention from the Best of the Web. There were185 entries, 3 winners and 3 honorably mentioned. Everyone can share in the victory. The website team spent a lot of time working with focus groups, including the InforME board.

Congratulations from Chairman Gwadosky to the InforME staff.

RAPID RENEWAL

Overall going very well. Expecting rollout of the pilot piece in October. The InforME staff has traveled to 7 of the 10 pilot towns/cities to offer training and to meet the staff and how they work. It has been an educational process in which we have learned more about the user process and the challenges of coordinating staff with varying degrees of Internet experience, working with various software vendors, and banking institutions. InforME has worked closely with the banks as well. There is quite a bit of interest from the local level in additional services, such as property tax, ATV/snowmobile/ boat registration.

Q: Will the pains of coordinating all the players in building a municipal electronic service be as great during the next phase of Rapid Renewal Service?

A: The payment piece will be easier. So too will the vendor piece. However, due to what we have learned in the pilot, we are considering a phased rollout for expanding the service to other towns.

** The question of sponsorship to be submitted to the agenda for next month’s board meeting.

Office of Licensing and Registration license renewal and website is scheduled for delivery October 2^nd.

Echecks–we have contracted with NPC. We will launch the echeck option after about a month of rapid renewal. This will allow the user to choose to pay by credit card or electronic check. We are hoping to make it inviting to users because echecks are far less expensive than credit cards. The towns and BMV are both enthused about adding this functionality.

CAMP GROUND RESERVATIONS

InforME has been asked by the Governor to see if we can improve the online campground registration application. We may outsource this project to NIC Technologies so as not to bump anything from our current project schedule.

KIOSK: This is a federal initiative under the vice presidents office to bring technology to the people. A kiosk at the Wal Mart in Bangor was delivered last month. InforME assisted with the content population for this KIOSK.

LIBRARY WEBSITE

InforME has been approached by the library staff and asked to assist with creating a new design for the Maine InfoNet.

PERSONNEL:

John Rusinak Jr. will be completing his time with InforME and moving on to the Virginia network.

Scott Talcove starts October 2^nd as the Marketing Executive. He has a Masters in Public Administration and has served as a town manager in Maine for five years.

Noli Santos has been with us since September 5^th. He is a programmer.

InforME is exploring the possibility of expanding and hiring a tenth person to serve as site editor.

NIC PRESS RELEASES

NIC, New England Interactive’s parent company has been featured in the press since it’s warning of earnings shortfall to Wall Street. The earnings shortfall is due to poor revenue performance of NIC’s two major acquisitions. The state portal division is the most profitable area of the company, and has increased in growth profitability. InforME and the well being of InforME are in no danger whatsoever.

Q: If we are asked, is there a way we should respond that relays the financial stability of InforME?

A: NIC corporate or Tamara would be happy to answer any questions in this area. NIC has a cash reserve of 57 million dollars and is in a position of strength despite the current stock value.

AOL Partnership

Kara LaPierre, from NIC eGovernment Initiatives shares the following:

AOL has chosen NIC to be our partner with Government searches.

We have contracted with AOL to provide extensive information and search/navigation capability. We will be guiding users to the specific portal applications. There are currently twenty-four million AOL subscribers; AOL owns Netscape so that in reality there are approximately 63 million subscribers that could potentially be guided to various government portals. Essentially, NIC provides the content and enhanced services. The site launch is anticipated late October, early November. Over 8,000 Maine visitors in the month of August came from AOL search. Will be able to advertise for free for specific searches. AOL will significantly increase the profile of online services in Maine.

Q: Kara, would you mind talking more about the privacy initiative?

A: Sure. NIC has taken a leadership role in the development of a National Privacy Coalition. One of the goals of this coalition is to create model privacy statements that can be posted on the State portal sites. The challenges are enabling local, state and federal governments to work together, identify what needs are to be provided. The National Academy of Administration will provide support to the coalition by creating a website, identifying a budget, and providing staff. IBM , Oracle, Sysco, and more are involved in the initiative.

Q: How many AOL Subscribers are there in Maine?

A: Don’t know, but will find out and tell Tamara.

Q: Will the alliance help with acquiring portals?

A: Not necessarily. It will reinforce that we have a strong government presence, which is more to the benefit of current state portals.

Tamara: Accesses of the State of Maine portal has had a hit increased from 4.2 million in February to 7.6 million in August. This is very large growth.

Q: Is there user tracking on the site to see where and how users move?

A: No. Not at this point.

TECHNICAL REPORT

EPayments are still being developed
A full technical team is in place
Frontpage extensions have been installed on another webserver at InforME. Department of Environmental Protection and Department of Education are acting as the test pages to be migrated to the UNIX server. Once we know it is successful, BIS will be providing a list of all agencies on Janus so we can contact them. The future of Janus will be left to BIS and the Legislature.

We had met with the Legislature and the House of Representatives together to discuss the possibility of moving Bill Status over to InforME from Janus. However, it is likely that they will purchase their own server.

FINANCIAL REPORT

Financially, all is going well. Choice Point has narrowed their customer base, so many of their customers have moved to InforME so that revenues are normal. We have a secure enough business plan here that expansion can continue.

Q: If Choice Point can’t sell to certain customers based on State law, then what are InforME’s rules with selling to those customers?

A: We follow Federal and State of Maine laws to dictate who we sell to.

Q: Can you please talk about those projects that NIC may push, but may not be a good fit, such as IF&W hunting and fishing licenses?

A: Yes, we must all be good stewards to InforME and be sure that we choose projects that we can cover the costs of development, etc, plus eventually draw revenue.

If&W is presently not revenue positive. We have not added much value to the paper situation. And, we have put too many human resources into Hunting and Fishing Licenses. We did choose to do it because it is a very good citizen service. However, because it is so intensive, we have employee costs, plus postage, and phone as well. We are not breaking even on this service. The agency is revising its backend by creating the new MOSES system. The current method will remain in place one more year.

C: Perhaps you could speak with the Legislative Committee meeting leader to help push them?

The point is, is it fair for InforME to allocate so many resources if we are not making money? The board must think about priority with future projects.

Chairman: Perhaps we should add this to next months meeting agenda.

EVENTS

November 16^th Tamara be presenting to the Bankers Association.

Tamara: I would like to recognize Linda Monica for her help with connecting InforME with the trial lawyers association, community bankers association and others, as we try to reach out to make contact in our external marketing efforts.

Comment: **Please use full names rather than in acronyms**

UCC/CORP, MARK PRESENTATION

John walks through the Interactive eGovernment service prototype and receives positive response form the board.

NEXT MEETING DATE:

November 15th, Wednesday, 1:00 p.m.