Think We Pay Them Too Much?

After looking at Virginia.gov's photos, I'm wondering if the taxpayers and VITA pay them too much? Naw. My harpist is just as good...

NIC Press Release

I just ran across this and thought it was interesting the way NIC (the parent company of Virginia Interactive, the guys who manage Virginia.gov) buried the most interesting part in the middle of an unrelated press release.

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NIC Announces Retirement of Chief Executive Officer Jeff Fraser

Harry Herington appointed Chief Executive Officer

OLATHE, Kan. – February 6, 2008 – eGovernment provider NIC Inc. (NASDAQ: EGOV) today announced the retirement of Jeff Fraser as Chief Executive Officer, effective February 4, 2008. He will continue to serve as Chairman of the Board.

The Board has named Harry Herington as Chief Executive Officer, effective February 4, 2008. Mr. Herington has served as President since 2006 and has held several leadership positions at NIC since joining the Company in 1995, including Chief Operating Officer and Executive Vice President of Portal Operations.

“Harry Herington has an outstanding track record of delivering results at NIC,” said Jeff Fraser. “I am confident that NIC will continue to grow under Harry’s highly capable and energetic leadership.”

These actions follow the conclusion of a review undertaken by the Audit Committee of the NIC Board of Directors, with the assistance of outside, independent counsel, which focused on the reimbursement of expenses by certain executive officers, including Mr. Fraser. The review covered the period from January 1, 2004, through June 30, 2007, and was conducted with full cooperation by the Company and Mr. Fraser in conjunction with an informal inquiry of expense reporting by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Mr. Fraser has reimbursed the Company approximately $97,000 in expenses as a result of the review, which followed reimbursement by him of approximately $186,000 in expenses made prior to the review. The reimbursement was made to correct expense reporting during the period from January 2004 through October 2006 that was inconsistent with the Company’s expense reimbursement policies.

The internal review also revealed that these expense reimbursement deficiencies were isolated to Mr. Fraser. NIC does not believe the amounts involved are material to its financial condition or results of operations.

Mr. Fraser co-founded the Company that would become NIC in 1992 and served as Chief Executive Officer until the end of 1999. He retired to become non-executive Chairman and relinquished day-to-day management to a new leadership team. Following an acquisition-based expansion strategy that placed NIC’s future growth at risk, the Board of Directors asked Fraser to return as Chief Executive Officer in May 2002. At his request, Fraser received a salary of $1.00 per year in 2002 and 2003 and $5,500 per year to cover medical benefits in 2004 and 2005. The Board approved a salary of $325,000 in 2006 in recognition of Fraser’s turnaround plan that refocused on the core portal business and returned NIC to profitability as a highly successful leader in the eGovernment space.

“We thank Jeff for his vision and commitment to building the industry-leading eGovernment provider from the ground up,” said Art Burtscher, Chairman of the Audit Committee of the NIC Board of Directors. “The Board of Directors is confident the current management team is capable of continuing NIC’s current track record of growth and we look forward to further success under Harry Herington’s leadership.”

BOW 2007

Secretary of Technology Announces National Web Awards
~ Virginia receives more honors than any other state ~

RICHMOND - Secretary of Technology Aneesh P. Chopra today announced that Virginia’s Web site and three state agencies have received prestigious Digital Government Achievement Awards from the Center for Digital Government.

The Center recognized the state’s official Web site, http://www.virginia.gov/, managed by the Virginia Information Technologies Agency, as a top Best of the Web winner.

Other state honorees include the Council on Virginia’s Future, the Virginia Department of Transportation and the Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy.

Additionally, Fairfax County ranked first in the nation in the county category and Virginia Beach received an honorable mention in the city category of Best of The Web.The Digital Government Achievement Award (DGAA) is a national program that recognizes outstanding agency and department Web sites and applications that enhance information interactions, transactions and/or services. The Best of Web awards program recognizes the most innovative, user-friendly state and local government portals based on their innovation, Web-delivery of public services, efficiency, economy, and functionality for improved citizen access.

“Across Virginia, we are using information technology to develop innovative and cost effective tools to improve customer service, management and business processes,” said Secretary Chopra. “These prestigious national awards for our state Web site, our agencies and our localities demonstrate our commitment to improve citizen service and the way we manage government by working smarter, not by spending more.”

Virginia.gov, the state’s official Web site, moved up in the Best of the Web rankings from fourth to third place among the 50 states. This year, all Virginia agencies worked closely with Virginia.gov in a pioneering partnership with Google to simplify and improve citizen access to government information via the Web, and this honor clearly reflects their work. (Read the Governor’s press release about the Google partnership.) Other changes to the state Web site enhanced the user experience through the most current advancements in technology, best practices and design. Virginia.gov is the only portal in the nation to have ranked in the Best of the Web top five every year it has been eligible to compete since 2001; it is managed by the Virginia Information Technologies Agency through a public-private partnership with Virginia Interactive.

"2007 was an amazing year for our Best of Web and Digital Government Achievement Awards,” said Cathilea Robinett, Executive Director of the Center for Digital Government. The competition was fierce and there were many applications and portals that were top notch. It’s clear that America’s state and local governments are unrelenting in their pursuit of excellence for the citizens they serve.”

Thanks to its three outstanding agency project wins, Virginia received more honors than any other state in the 2007 recognition program.

The Council on Virginia’s Future was honored with the Digital Government Achievement Award in the Government to Citizen category for its Web site, “Virginia Performs,” http://www.vaperforms.virginia.gov/. Virginia Performs is a performance accountability system which ties rich data from many sources directly to the business of state government, greatly improving the way Virginia measures progress and reports results. It provides seamless transparency, supports broad policy decisions in pursuit of long-term objectives and engages citizens in informed dialogue about Virginia's future.

The Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy was honored with the Digital Government Achievement Award in the Government to Business category for its WaterTrans application for the Division of Mined Land Reclamation (DMLR). It provides the division and its customers with information critical to the development, permitting, regulation and operation of surface mining operations in Virginia. This application provides DMLR staff and customers, with the most up to date information in an easy-to-use and integrated fashion and is part of DMME's long-term commitment to provide cost effective information management tools that bring value to the agency and its customers.

The Department of Transportation’s Integrated Project Management system (iPM) was honored with the Digital Government Achievement Award in the Government Internal category. It is a joint technology and business effort that provides a state of the art integrated platform to manage transportation projects. iPM collects data from multiple applications and presents it as meaningful information via Web pages. iPM has improved access to project information, simplified existing work processes, improved data quality and accuracy, enabled changes in business processes, and ensured simplistic system maintenance and usability.Winners will be acknowledged at the 11th Anniversary Awards Gala in Las Vegas, Nevada on September 21, 2007. More information is available online at the Center for Digital Government’s Web site, http://www.centerdigitalgov.com/surveys.php?survey=cdg_bow.

Virginia.gov again

Well, it's that time of year again it seems. The new state banner designed by Virginia.gov - which almost everyone hates other than Virginia.gov and the SOTECH - is to have been live by today, June 1. You'd think Virginia.gov would have been one of the early adopters, but they are just now rolling out their new site. Which looks pretty much like their old site, but broken.








This raises some questions, common ones it seems.

1. Why does Virginia.gov have so much trouble getting their site live? It's not that big a site, and they're the Web experts. We know they're the experts because they keep telling us. Yet time and time again they can't get their act together.


2. Why do they get to be different? Everyone else has to follow the Standard and put out the same banner. But Virginia.gov, who came up with the thing, gets to go off in a different direction. Take a look: no goofy duplicated searches, and they use whatever colors they want when we have to use black.


3. Is "burnt urine" such a wonderful color that they can't seem to break away from it?

This time I'm even going to suggest a solution. It's one that has worked very well for us in the past. It's called "training."

From the Governor’s Leadership Communique on March 12

From the Governor’s Leadership Communique on March 12: Connecting Citizen Services And State Web Presence

The National Association of State CIO’s (NASCIO) has just released Harmony Helps: A Progress Report on State Government Internet Presence. The findings in the NASCIO brief strongly reinforce Secretary Chopra’s two current Web initiatives – statewide Google search functionality and an expanded common banner with enterprise functionality for state agency Web sites. These citizen-focused initiatives support simplification of government and greater access to services, as described in the NASCIO brief:“Most marketplace websites focus on organizing their product and service offerings according to arrangements that are intuitive to the typical customer. For example, retail websites are not organized according to the governance structure of the business itself...In contrast, public sector websites…presented citizens with an organization around the way government is structured—by branch, agency, department and commission."Since the way that government is organized varies markedly across and within levels of government, a citizen may know what he or she wants to do — obtain a copy of his or her birth certificate, for example — but may not know which state agency performs that function. If the citizen goes to the state’s website, unless that service is listed separately from the agency that performs that function, the citizen may have to do what, in some cases, may be extensive searching of the state’s website in order to find out how to obtain a birth certificate.” The complete NASCIO brief is available online. Please share with your communication, Web and IT staff as a resource for understanding the continuing changes in service and information delivery via Virginia’s state Web sites. Many thanks to the agencies and their Web staffs who have already made significant contributions to this effort, both through building and implementing sitemaps and by participating in the Web Standards workgroup reviewing the proposed changes. These efforts greatly assist Virginia’s participation in the national Google pilot and help keep the Commonwealth at the forefront of effective service delivery. Sitemaps are still due from several of the pilot agencies; all have been previously contacted by Secretary Chopra and project manager Sheri Wood of Virginia Interactive. It is very important for these agencies to complete and publish their sitemaps as soon as possible to ensure Virginia’s continued participation. Assistance is available to any Webmaster; if you have questions, contact Sheri.

State Web Standards

Proposed changes to the existing Commonwealth of Virginia Web Standard:

In early January, Secretary of Technology Chopra announced two important Web initiatives: enterprise Google search functionality and a new common banner for posting at the top of all executive branch agency Web sites. To accomplish these objectives, revisions are necessary to the Commonwealth Web policies, standards and guidelines (PSG’s). Today, the suggested revisions and common top banner have been posted to ORCA, for your review and comment during the next 30 days.

The major changes include:
The agency banner space will be expanded from the current 50 pixel height to 100 pixels; agencies will be able to use banners between 50-100 pixels.
A new common top banner (50 pixels) will be deployed across state Web sites including the state portal, Virginia.gov. The intent is to provide enterprise Google search and helpful enterprise navigational aids to assist citizen users.
"Contact Us" and "Web Policy" links move to the bottom of sites.
The common banner will be posted above the agency banner of each site. It will contain a link to the state portal, Virginia.gov, as well as enterprise links including Online Services, State Web site list, and the Governor’s site. The “Skip to Content” link will be hidden within the code of the common banner to allow screen reader access at the beginning of each page.

Also included is an enterprise link to Virginia Interactive’s “Live Help” feature. Agencies do NOT have to provide any support for this feature. Virginia Interactive will provide all staffing for this service.

Finally, the common banner will contain the enterprise search feature which will allow users to access the Google search functionality across all state sites. Agency search boxes should contain the text “Search this site” to differentiate between statewide and agency search.

Why Everyone I Know Hates Virginia.gov

I have a part time job in government IT, and one thing that everyone seems to complain about all the time is the state web page at www.virginia.gov. I thought I would quickly list the top reasons everyone hates them. Shadow, feel free to add to the list.

1. They don't follow the rules - they spent years telling everyone how they should design their webpages, then when it became an official standard, they were the first ones to do whatever they felt like and ignore the standard. They spent years telling everyone to be P3P compliant, and now they aren't.
2. They're difficult to work with - they talk down to state employees, they don't manage projects well, they lie about deliverables and fees, and they generally act like whatever they think is what you should think.
3. They think they're the experts in everything - as if no one else in government has ever done anything. If you show them research or documentation that contradicts what they think, then you're a liar or the experts are wrong.
4. They take the credit for everything - they take credit for every online service ever created by Virginia government, even though they have only been involved in a sall fraction of them. They think if they link to it, they own it.
5. They're more concerned about making money that helping - they charge what they feel like it when they feel like it, ignoring market averages or common sense. It's like they charge whatever they were short in their budget,and we're supposed to shut up and pay.
6. The home page is really ugly - pretty obvious.
7. They charge too much then don't deliver - I know people who have had projects dropped because Virginia.gov wasn't making enough money off of them. I'm seen then charge as much as 500% more than the market rate for hosting and design services.
8. They're jerks - summary of above.