The 2001 Washington State Information Technology Performance Report

Contents

A Message from the Director

Extending the Value of Digital Government
Strategy and Execution

Enterprise Infrastructure for a Digital Government
The Statewide Enterprise Network
The IGN streamlines state and local government operations
The K-20 Network
Enterprise Computing in the State
Enterprise Digital Government Architecture

Managing the Transition -- The Digital Government Plan
A Learning Environment For Doing Government In A New Way
Respect for Privacy and Intellectual Property
Recruiting and Retaining Knowledge Workers in the Digital State

Managing the State IT Portfolio -- The Investment
Stewardship through Portfolio Management
IT Projects Under Oversight
IT Projects Under Oversight During the 1999 - 01 Biennium
The Year 2000 Management Challenge -- A Retrospective

Immediate and Residual Value of the State's Management Approach

Future Watch Toward a New Way of Governance -- Digital Government as a Core Competence

Anatomy of the Digital State
Electronic Commerce and Business Regulation
Taxation and Revenue
Social Services
Law Enforcement and the Courts
Digital Democracy
Management/Administration
Education
K-12 Education

Conclusion: Managing the Digital State
Appendix: Financial Information

A Message from the Director

Washington State's information technology (IT) program attracted worldwide attention during the 1999-01 Biennium -- both for how it is managed and also for how it changes the relationship between citizens and their government. Washington's approach is nationally recognized and documented, including in a July 2001 Government Technology cover story as this report -- Managing the Digital State: The 1999-01 Biennial IT Performance Report -- was being finalized. In this cover story, an interview with Governor Gary Locke captured the central themes of Washington's award-winning IT program: I've always believed that technology was important as a tool for not only making government more accessible and user friendly for our citizens, but also to streamline government and to free up dollars that we need for police, jails, prisons and parks.

The key to taking advantage of the opportunities of the New Economy is to make sure that communities across Washington have modern, advanced telecommunications infrastructure so that businesses, homeowners and schools can take advantage of technology. Without the proper infrastructure, you're not going to be able to take advantage of technology.

Three consecutive Digital State awards show Washington residents that their government is working to be as good at delivering services on the Internet as the private sector. Every year we win that award, it means that Washington residents can do more than ever before with their government, at their convenience.

I've really pushed the agencies to be willing to take risk, to be ambitious in their projects, knowing that they may not all meet our expectations or the expectations and high standards set by the agencies themselves. But the agencies have to shoot high. I tell them, 'Be as bold and creative and as quick as the private sector.'

The central themes of the program are also the central themes of this performance report, being submitted under statute to provide a detailed review of the state's investment in technology. In doing so, it demonstrates the commitment of agencies from across government to streamline processes and improve service delivery.

Respectfully submitted,
Gary Robinson, Acting Director

Extending the Value of Technology by Moving to Digital Government

The 1999-01 Biennium closed with conclusive evidence that the digital revolution had reached critical mass in Washington State government.

In rapid succession during the biennium's final days, Washington introduced faster, better, and cheaper ways to deal with government procurement, vehicle registration (car tabs), master business licensing, and corporate renewals. New Internet applications allowed Washington citizens and businesses to experience what it was like to go from in line to online. "Wow!" read one citizen's e-mail message, "I never knew government could act like this."

That sentiment was exactly the point when Governor Locke called for the development of those four marquee applications as part of a larger campaign called digital government. In response, those applications are providing service to citizens today-as are approximately 300 Internet applications that share a common infrastructure and planning framework.

The 1999-01 biennial IT performance report documents how we got here. And it has not been without the unexpected. In fact, the unexpected validated the strength of the state's information technology infrastructure to maintain mission critical public services-even after a 6.8 magnitude earthquake.

The Nisqually earthquake that rocked western Washington on February 28, 2001, damaged many state buildings while at the same time demonstrating the reliability and durability of the state's infrastructure -- even in times of an emergency. The building that houses the state information operators was evacuated immediately after the quake, so telecommunications staff pulled their phones through open windows, set up card tables, and resumed operations on the lawn, as the state's telecommunications infrastructure -- telephone switches, phone lines, network nodes, and operator services-all performed as expected. When the White House and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) called to establish connections with Governor Locke, state operators took the calls and provided information that helped connect with the Governor.

Diesel generators automatically came on after the quake and maintained electrical power to the state's data center. Data center operations managers immediately switched monitoring systems to a remote location, evacuated the building, and continued mission critical operations. The earthquake occurred on the last day of a month, which is when many of the state's financial transactions are processed at the data center. Batch work (processing warrants) was interrupted the evening of the earthquake in order to allow the computer-aided dispatch for public safety and law enforcement to keep working. The next evening, when staff were allowed back into the data center, batch processing resumed. The quake did not affect Washington's Internet portal, Access Washington^TM, while inbound Internet traffic to state agencies increased approximately 200 percent above normal during the hours immediately following the earthquake.

The K-20 Educational Network was also unaffected, save for a few scattered local events such as power outages. Agencies learned what they need to do to better prepare for the next big disaster—prepare more detailed communications plans and equipment, and more important, ensure that mission critical servers and the corresponding data and documentation are in a physically secure, accessible, and recoverable environment. The state's mission critical operations continued without interruption under difficult and unexpected circumstances because of good IT planning and appropriate infrastructure investments that helped to prevent disruption to vital public services. This thoughtful planning is characteristic of the state's overall approach to IT management: public information technology resources are investments that must be carefully made and then carefully tended to.

Strategy and Execution

In the time since Washington's Strategic Information Technology Plan was issued in October 1996, state agencies have worked hard toward bringing to life the strategic plan's four goals:

Goal 1
Improve service delivery to the public through the use of information technology.

Goal 2
Make information more accessible through an affordable, shared, and widely available information technology infrastructure.

Goal 3
Use information technology to respond quickly to changing business requirements.

Goal 4
Invest in people, tools, methods, and partnerships necessary to improve the knowledge and skills of human resources within the information technology community.

Also, in the time since the strategic plan was issued, IT has developed in ways that could not be foreseen, at speeds that could not be anticipated. Nonetheless, Washington's IT planning has paced these changes, and in the intervening years, we have introduced and managed digital technologies to improve services and service delivery, make information accessible, streamline operations, and increase citizen participation in the democratic process. It has become clear that technology does not merely supplant older processes; word processors, for example, are far more than souped-up typewriters. Rather, technology changes the processes and the procedures that it is applied to, and thereby also changes the entity of which those processes and procedures are a part.

Realizing this, Washington has worked hard to manage its transition to Internet-based services delivery, or digital government, rather than just letting it happen. We understand that digital government takes place on two levels and that they are equally important. On one level, the behind-the-scenes work ensures security, reliability, and back-end integration. Many of these elements have to do with internal government operations. The other level is, by contrast, highly visible. This is the side of government that citizens and businesses see and deal with, the individuals and the programs that make up most peoples' experience with government.

We want citizens' relationship with digital government to be as every day as their relationship with household utilities such as running water: when they turn on a tap, potable water comes out, every time. We do not want them to have to think about harmful microorganisms or wonder about availability. We want them to know that they can count on having what they need: clean, healthful water in their homes, when they want it and where they want it, consistently and reliably. By analogy, digital government should be available at a time and place of the citizen's choosing, it should be secure and safe from threats to personally identifiable information or financial data, and it too should be available consistently and reliably.

We know that there are no shortcuts to bringing about this vision of digital government. To provide overall guidance and direction, we have already published the state's Digital Government Plan, which details the transformation to Internet service delivery. We also continue to thoughtfully and purposefully build a shared statewide IT infrastructure that provides the necessary components for digital government. The results of Washington's work are reflected in our earning the Digital State Award three consecutive times it has been awarded. This award is given by the Progress and Freedom Foundation, the Center for Digital Government, and Government Technology magazine. The award documents how state governments are adopting and managing digital technologies in a number of areas. Excerpts from Washington's responses to this year's Digital State survey questions are included in this report in the section called Anatomy of the Digital State, and demonstrate, in the words of Information Services Board (ISB) citizen member Emilio Cantu, how "[w]e've earned every bit of it...we are not buying our way into it" merely through myriad IT acquisitions." ¹

Washington's IT efforts were also recognized by the Government Performance Project's "Grading the States" project, a collaborative effort of Governing magazine and the Maxwell School of Syracuse University that evaluates state government performance and management and issues report cards. Washington again earned an "A," the highest mark, for its IT management. Our report card comments read, "...Washington is so good at so many things in this field that it sometimes seems to be playing in a different league from the other 49 states." The details are reported in the section titled "Managing the State's Portfolio."

The leadership evidenced by the digital state award is integral to a larger public-private strategy to solidify Washington's role as an internationally competitive technology leader. The action agenda underlying Washington's Strategy for the Innovation Economy includes moving "our award-winning Digital Government to the next level to meet the ever-growing expectations of businesses and the public for responsive, effective, real-time government." ²

Enterprise Infrastructure for a Digital Government

Washington was ready to make its expedited transition to digital government because of its already-mature and robust networking, computing, and desktop environments. The state's shared bedrock infrastructure continues to be built thoughtfully to satisfy the transition to digital government. We have made careful and deliberate infrastructure decisions over time, and the Legislature has provided necessary funding. We have maximized our technology investments, ensuring coordinated and coherent systems that serve our heterogeneous user base with its widely varying levels of computing equipment. Careful management also assures that customers receive 100 percent reliability and 24/7 availability with no downtime.

Accordingly, agencies can now approach the issue of providing Internet-delivered services to their customers as a business decision, not as an infrastructure issue, because they can build their digital government applications using the common framework of portals, security, trust, and payments.

The Statewide Enterprise Network (SEN) is the private statewide intranet for state and local government. It is a secure, standards-based TCP/IP network that connects together over 1,100 sites statewide and provides reliable and economical voice, data, and video communications for state agencies, commissions, and boards. The SEN is built on a leased SONET fiber optic backbone infrastructure deployed among seven node sites in Washington. High-speed Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) and Frame Relay switches and routers at each node location support the SEN. The SEN then uses Frame Relay and T1 circuits purchased from local telephone companies to connect remote customer sites to the Department of Information Services (DIS) node sites across the state. DIS manages the total network structure of fiber optic digital backbone connected to local Frame Relay and T1 circuits creating a single integrated enterprise network meeting the needs of government. Because the SEN is a shared private network, it allows state agencies, commissions, and boards to communicate together easily in a very secure and trusted environment.

Since 1995, the SEN has grown between 15 percent and 25 percent annually. This growth can be measured in many different ways, such as number and type of customers, the number of sites connected, size of circuits to each site, and the amount of traffic traversing the network. Between 1995 and 1999, the number of organizations supported by the SEN increased from 22 to just over 80. Originally deployed to support large agencies such as the Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) and the Department of Licensing (DOL), it now also supports many smaller agencies such as Department of Services for the Blind and the Transportation Improvement Board. The total number of remote sites connected has increased by 1,100 percent in the same time period. This growth in the number of sites does not reflect the growth in bandwidth. A site connected in 1995 with a 56,000 bits per second circuit that is today connected with a 1.5 million bits per second T1 circuit only counts as a single site while its bandwidth has increased 24 fold.

In the past year, DIS has added a new wireless service to the SEN. Cellular Digital Packet Data (CDPD) is a wireless technology that supports the transmission of data at speeds up to 19,200 bits per second over existing cellular networks. Today CDPD is used by police departments to provide access to Washington State Patrol data via terminals in police cars.

The IGN streamlines state and local government operations

The IGN improves government operations by reducing costs, dramatically reducing paperwork, and combining service delivery across traditional agency boundaries. For example, one IGN tenant, the Information Network of Public Health Officials (INPHO) provides Internet access to local public health jurisdictions and functions as an intranet among the local jurisdictions and the state Department of Health. INPHO allows these agencies to rapidly exchange information about public health issues such as e. coli or salmonella outbreaks. Before INPHO, such information was disseminated via telephone trees and FAX, which are far less efficient and timely, and which required multiple circuits previously connected to every jurisdiction. These have now been now replaced with a single cost effective, high speed network connection.

The JIN connects the criminal justice community. Also riding on the IGN is the rapidly expanding Justice Information Network (JIN), which connects state and local government criminal justice organizations.

By offering online access to fingerprints, court documents, photos, licensing information, criminal histories, and more, JIN will enable the criminal justice community to quickly identify dangerous offenders, assemble complete criminal histories for trials, and perform fast and accurate background checks. It will connect all levels of courts, link them to centrally maintained applications and data, and collect and deliver data to law enforcement, licensing, and corrections agencies. JIN also connects a dozen local law enforcement agencies to the Washington State Patrol.

One of JIN's notable qualities is the fact that its participants are independent entities. Each town, city, and county has its own criminal justice community — officers, sheriffs, prosecutors, courts, jails -- and each member of each community has its own funding sources. As a result, each jurisdiction historically has concentrated on keeping track of what occurs within its own boundaries. Offenders, however, do not pay attention to jurisdictional boundaries, and repeat offenders sometimes evade the attention of the patchwork quilt of jurisdictions. The state's decision to step in to build a network to connect all state and local criminal justice entities is consistent with our longstanding "build it once" IT policy.

JIN's development is guided by an implementation blueprint that was recently updated. The intent of this new blueprint is to expand the information delivery capability through the Summary Offender Profile (SOP), a web-based application that aggregates justice data from multiple sources and makes it available from a single source. SOP and Phase 2 of the SOP-SOP-2-will provide answers to the three most important questions about any offender: Who are you? Where are you? And, what have you done?

K-20 Network

In December 1999, the final K-12 school district was connected to the statewide K-20 Educational Telecommunications Network. This network puts the Internet, distance learning, and videoconferencing classes and training within reach of all of the state's public school students and faculty, kindergarten through graduate school. Already the network has spurred the creation of innovative learning opportunities. Hearing-impaired children learn to read and write via videoconferencing, high school students take classes by video to get a running start on college, and the state's universities let community college graduates earn a business degree using interactive video and online instruction.

The Northwest Indian College, the only tribal college in Washington, was connected to the network in 2000 and already collaborates with Washington State University (WSU) and Western Washington University (WWU). Located on the Lummi reservation near Bellingham, NWIC is headquarters of a national network of 30 tribal colleges that uses a satellite-based delivery system for video instruction. It also has satellite downlinks to seven tribal communities in Washington. NWIC plans to integrate its satellite system with the K-20 Network's switched video capabilities to increase two-way collaboration with neighboring WWU, WSU, and the University of Washington.

A recent report details 47 examples of how the Northwest Indian College and many other educational institutions, educators, and students are using the network to help students of all ages flourish academically and professionally. In these first 47 stories, the report documents how the K-20 network changed the educational experience for 144,005 Washingtonians.³
These stories are only the beginning, as educators and students learn to use technology to bring creative ideas and practices to life and as schools identify the means to fully tap the network's vast potential.

The challenge for the state enterprise network is to anticipate changes in technology and the business needs of the diverse users -- health, education, justice, intergovernmental, and general state government. What these users have in common is the expectation of greater bandwidth, uninterrupted availability, and higher security coupled with the need for continued cost effectiveness.

Enterprise Computing in the State

The state's enterprise network is paired with an enterprise computing environment that is anchored at two primary data centers in state government -- one at DIS and the other at the Department of Transportation. The consolidated DIS data center is the third largest in the Pacific Northwest, behind only those at Microsoft and Boeing, and in it combines both client server and mainframe computing in a secure, controlled environment. When setting up and operating its data center, DIS anticipated the trend toward continued mainframe consolidation. Since 1990, the production processing capacity on the Unisys platform has increased by over 339 percent, while the IBM production platform has grown by more than 903 percent.

This steep growth in computing capacity has taken place as the state augmented its mainframe systems to keep pace with increased agency demand. Figures 1 and 2 show the exponential growth in both billable CPU minutes on the IBM System 390 computing platform and Unisys transactions since 1992. Even the last two years, the billable CPU minutes on the IBM System 390 computing platform rose from a little over 7 million to nearly 11 million minutes. Unlike IBM, Unisys relies on online production processes — or "transactions" — as the key indicator of system usage. By that measure, there is continuing strong demand on this platform as well. By the end of 2000, the IBM System 390 computing platform had the capacity to process 350 million instructions per second. The DIS data center also had enough capacity to store over 4 trillion characters of online data.

A number of other agencies and public institutions house their computer applications in their own computing environments. Some of the larger operations include the Office of the Administrator for the Courts, the Legislative Service Center, and data centers located in major universities and colleges. Smaller data centers, many operating on Tandem or PRIME computing platforms, are found at the Departments of Revenue, Personnel, and in the Office of the State Treasurer. Meanwhile, agencies continued to migrate an increasing number of mid-size processors and servers to shared floor space at DIS. These client server systems encompass a cross-section of computing industry vendors, with hardware from Sun, Hewlett Packard, Compaq, IBM, and others, along with an equally diverse array of system software products.

DIS's rates were the subject of a recent Gartner Group study commissioned by the Senate Ways and Means Committee. In it, DIS rates were compared to market rates for comparably sized IT environments.

The services included in the study were: SCAN long distance telephone service, SCAN Plus calling cards, Centrex telephone service, PBX telephone service, System 390 processing (CPU and MIPS), and System 390 storage management. The study found that overall DIS rates for these services were 16 percent below market rates, given the same workload. DIS collects revenues of about $26.9 million, while at market rates, DIS workload would yield revenues of about $32.1 million. All of these savings are to the public benefit. ⁴

DIS officially opened its Servers à la Carte service area in September 2000. This service allows state agencies to take advantage of the DIS infrastructure while still maintaining and servicing their own servers. The Office of Financial Management was the first agency to put its servers into the new service area, and the Office of Minority and Women's Business Enterprises also helped pilot the service.

The central computing and network services are largely invisible to citizens, business, and the majority of public employees. That hidden infrastructure supports a broad range of applications that are vital to government service delivery. What is seen and touched are the desktop PCs used by the public employees to access the underlying applications, and a generally common set of commercial productivity tools. The twenty largest agencies in state government have consolidated around the Microsoft Windows and Novell Netware operating systems, and all use Microsoft office product suites. All are also TCP/IP compliant. Seventeen of them report at least 100-200 percent increase in their LAN/WAN traffic over the past 24 months, with one agency estimating that it's LAN/WAN traffic increased over 500 percent in that period.

Three-quarters of these agencies have an established replace/refresh cycle for their PCs. In total, these twenty agencies replaced or refreshed about 22,000 PCs during the past 24 months. (See detail in the Appendix.) During the same time period, these agencies donated well over 11,000 PCs to schools, either directly or through the Computers 4 Kids program, which is a partnership among the Department of Corrections, the Department of General Administration, the Department of Ecology, the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, the Community Colleges of Spokane, and the Association of Washington Business.

The centrally-provided enterprise network and computing services have provided Washington a significant advantage over other states in ensuring a sufficiently nimble and robust infrastructure that supports the changing needs of government and public service. The advantage is clearly seen in the state's pioneering and scalable digital government infrastructure. The digital government initiatives extend the value of the core infrastructure, make possible online applications, transactions and relationships that would be impossible without them, and transform the underlying architecture from purposefully closed to purposefully open.

Enterprise Digital Government Architecture

The Information Services Board (ISB) added the first digital government infrastructure component to the state's IT infrastructure in 1992, when it adopted the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) as the Internet-networking standard for interoperability among state telecommunications networks. The selection of TCP/IP and an allied e-mail protocol built upon the ISB's tradition of developing or adopting statewide standards that are crucial to interoperability. Since 1992, TCP/IP has become virtually ubiquitous across the state and around the world. TCP/IP is also the hallmark of open networks, allowing the Internet to eclipse closed proprietary networks and seamlessly connect people with each other, educational institutions, business, and government. 1999-01 is the first biennium of the new Internet-based government services delivery model.

Portals are an important infrastructure element. They are the gateways to digital government, its information, and its services. When it was launched in November 1998, Access Washington^TM access.wa.gov was one the first state government portals. It currently gets over one million page views per month. Access Washington^TM offers online government services to businesses and citizens and allows customers to interact with the state as a single enterprise, although they may be accessing services from multiple agencies. An intuitive directory system lets users find information and services by topics, without having to know which agency they need to contact.

Another portal, Inside Washington^TM, is the state's intranet and provides secure online services within government behind the state's firewall. Inside Washington^TM is the hub for agency-to-agency services and employer-to-employee information. During the current phase 2.0 of digital government, it will begin serving local government via the Intergovernmental Network (IGN), offering opportunities for intergovernmental business online.

Transact Washington^TM is the newest component of the portal infrastructure. Washington recognized the need to develop policies, standards, and procedures for protecting sensitive data and confidential business transactions, and preventing unauthorized data access, misuse of data, viruses, and component failures. The state adopted policies, standards, and guidelines to ensure an enterprise approach to the integrity of transactions and establish a trusted, secure environment for information. These policies, standards, and guidelines require agencies to operate in a common security architecture that protects sensitive data and transactional applications.

In order to meet the requirements in these policies, DIS developed Transact Washington^TM, an authentication gateway to secure government services. Transact Washington^TM is an extension of Access Washington^TM, the state's Internet portal, and leverages Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) and digital certificate technology to identify and authenticate users. Using a single digital certificate, users can access numerous secure services offered by multiple state agencies in a single Internet session. Agencies locate their secure services behind the Transact Washington^TM gateway and maintain control of their own applications while relying on the gateway to manage identification and authentication. Washington developed its own Certificate Policy, but outsourced Certification Authority (CA) and Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) functions to a trusted third party. In this way, the state is able to define the process by which certificates are issued and managed, while at the same time leveraging the knowledge, resources, and expertise of the private industry, thus freeing agencies to focus on service development. Agencies maintain control of their own applications, and determine the level of security required to access a particular application based on the state's policy.

PKI is a framework of applications, policies, standards, practices, and laws that enables secure, enforceable, and legally binding electronic transactions via the Internet. A digital certificate is an electronic piece of identification that enables the subscriber to prove his or her identity in online transactions. Digital certificates are issued, registered, and guaranteed by a trusted third party called a Certification Authority, and contain, among other things, a subscriber's name and public key, as well as the name of the issuer and the expiration date of the certificate.

Washington has contracted with a third party provider, Digital Signature Trust (DST), to issue digital certificates under the Washington State Certificate Policy for use in Transact Washington^TM. DST is a CA licensed by the Secretary of State's office. The state adopted a procedure for licensing CAs through the Electronic Authentication Act (EAA), passed by the Legislature in 1996. The EAA establishes a number of stringent requirements for becoming a CA, including a thorough review of the company's security and operating procedures, an audit of its computer systems, testing, and certification of its operating personnel, and a bond or other guarantee of up to $50,000. These requirements ensure public confidence and trust that appropriate levels of identity verification were sought before the digital certificate was issued.

DST offers Transact Washington^TM users digital certificates issued in accordance with Washington's Certificate Policy. Certificates are issued under this policy with three different levels of security assurance: standard, intermediate, and high. The certificate assurance level required to access a service is determined by the agency offering the service, based on its security requirements. For example, a certificate with a high level of assurance might be necessary for high-dollar transactions, while a certificate with a lower level of assurance may be all that's needed when purchasing certain types of permits.

Every agency must ensure its online services meet the requirements set forth in the state's IT Security Standards. Without the common security framework available through Transact Washington^TM, each agency would be required to dedicate resources to ensure that updates in technology and new coding requirements remained current in each application. By placing applications behind the Transact Washington^TM gateway, agencies can rely upon Transact Washington^TM to remain current with technology, thus eliminating constant, duplicate development efforts.

Prior to the deployment of Transact Washington^TM, citizens and businesses using the Internet to conduct secure transactions with the state were required to sign in and out of multiple agency Web sites, using different user IDs and passwords, often with different procedures for using those IDs and passwords. With Transact Washington^TM, a user presents his or her digital certificate once, and when identity and authenticity are determined, that person can access many applications from different agencies in a single sign-on Internet session. Users can access these applications at their convenience, around the clock.

Access to applications is granted only by the agency offering the service. This allows the agency to maintain control of the service, while Transact Washington manages identification and authentication of the certificates used to access the application. Applications are in production today from the Department of Labor and Industries and the Department of Revenue. Other applications are planned from the Departments of Health, Social and Health Services, and Employment Security. Washington's security infrastructure is the subject of a recent Gartner Group case study. Gartner examined how Washington overcame the technical, legal, and policy difficulties associated with a shared security infrastructure. It found that our Public Key Infrastructure (PKI)-based authentication and authorization framework, Transact Washington^TM, is the "ideal candidate" for implementation as shared infrastructure, and recommended that "[s]kills-strapped state governments should leverage external PKI service providers". ⁵

Another portal feature is Ask George^TM, a search engine that allows users to obtain information and services by asking questions in plain English. Users type a question in the query box and the search results screen will display either a direct answer or a population of relevant Web sites within Access Washington^TM with possible answers. For example, if a user types, "How do get a copy of my birth certificate?" Ask George^TM will direct that person to the Department of Health Web site, which has a link specifically for ordering copies of birth certificates. Or another user may ask, "I've lost my job, how do I find another?" Ask George^TM will bring up an answer such as Worksource Washington, an application that lists job orders, training information, and a way for job seekers to apply for jobs over the Internet. It will also deliver links to other useful applications for the job seeker, such as the online application for unemployment insurance benefits.

Representatives of several agencies worked on topics and common inquiries expected by Ask George^TM. These topics are based on e-mails, phone logs, and other questions that are frequently asked by users of Access Washington^TM, the State Library, and other agencies. Ask George^TM is based on Ask Jeeves technology and tracks the information and services most frequently requested. Users can Ask George^TM at access.wa.gov.

Another digital government infrastructure element is the ability to accept online payments. The Office of the State Treasurer has signed a statewide Merchant Bank contract with Bank of America that specifies the firms that state agencies may use to process Internet credit card transactions. A subsidiary agreement with Cybersource, an Internet credit card processor, has also been signed so that agencies can accept online payments. To complete the electronic payment infrastructure, DIS offers a hosted environment with a secure, cost-effective, reliable, and recoverable infrastructure that meets agency needs for credit card processing, thus relieving agencies of the need to host their own secure environments.

Other options for payment will be implemented during the second phase of infrastructure development and will include a procurement for a service to provide ad hoc electronic funds transfers, also known as Internet checks. These will ultimately be available to the state's trading partners, which are the businesses and citizens who conduct transactions regularly enough to warrant establishing an ongoing funds transfer relationship with the state.

One digital government infrastructure element that is invisible to the public is middleware, the network-aware system software that is layered between an application, the operating system, and the network transport layers to facilitate some aspect of cooperative processing. Examples include directory services, message passing mechanisms, distributed transaction processing monitors, object request brokers, remote procedure call services, and database gateways. DIS and its customer agencies are increasingly using MQ Series middleware products to communicate and transfer data across the state's very diverse set of computing environments, providing a bridge from Internet applications on the front end to a heterogeneous server environment on the back end -- from midrange machines to mainframes.

Online help desk services are another important digital government infrastructure element. DIS established a master contract with SafeHarbor Technology Corporation, a private Washington-based company that specializes in online customer help, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Using the master contract, individual agencies can take advantage of the economies of scale while offering fast, cost-effective services to citizens. A customer needing online help can consult a list of questions that are typically asked about a service, review clear answers online, chat with a trained consultant via e-mail, or pick up the phone and talk to a consultant directly.

SafeHarbor is the anchor tenant at the Satsop Business Park, site of one of the Washington Public Power Supply System's unfinished nuclear power plants, in a region that has been hard hit by declining timber and salmon industries. The park is under the Grays Harbor Public Development Authority, which invested in a telecommunications infrastructure that can power 20 buildings and 24,000 phone lines. The uninterruptible power supply system guarantees continuous service to high-tech customers.

Record retention and archiving are statutory requirements that must be addressed by both paper-based and digital government. DIS established an e-storage service to assist agencies in meeting the record retention requirements for electronic transactions and e-mail. In the first phase of e-storage, pertinent information is saved in its original format to CD-ROM. The CDs are stored at the agency responsible for the data and remain available for research and audits. In the next phase, the e-storage initiative will investigate storing the information at a central location and in some cases, may transfer the information from the agency to the State Archives for long-term retention — that is, longer than six years.

If the first rule of real estate is "location, location, location," then the first rule of digital government is "applications, applications, applications." When fully realized, digital government is a full suite of citizen- and business- facing applications that will fulfill the promise of digital government-and maximize the return on the investment in the underlying infrastructure.

Managing the Transition
The Digital Government Plan

      

Washington has created a comprehensive plan and learning environment to realize the promise of digital government. Like software, the Digital Government Plan is released in versions. Release 1.0 of the plan cast a vision of a one citizen, one government relationship in which real people do real business with their government in real time -- at a time and a place of the citizen's choosing. The initial release also outlined a plan for the concurrent development of infrastructure, policy, and applications.

Release 2.0 extended the vision, which had been summarized by Governor Locke as, "turning government to face the people." The second release went further treating the state, with all its various components, as a single enterprise. Moreover, previously discrete agencies come together to build a community called Digital Washington. Like all well-ordered communities, Digital Washington has a building code to ensure consistency across applications, a common infrastructure to avoid unnecessary duplication, and helpful neighbors who provide mutual assistance in the spirit of barn raisings of old.

The third release, expected in the summer of 2001, presents a comprehensive digital government architecture-which speeds development, maximizes the investment of scarce resources, and ensures consistency of citizen experience across applications, across agencies, and even across jurisdictions.

Expanding the community of value. Release 1.0 introduced the Community of Value-those state government branches, agencies, boards, committees, and other entities that initially collaborated to build the foundation for Digital Washington. In Release 2.0, the Community of Value expanded to include local and federal agencies, which holds the promise of forging new relationships among government, citizens, and businesses.

These new community members are already working together across governmental lines through interconnectivity and data sharing networks and projects. Additionally, specialized communities have come together, also across governmental lines, and similarly established interconnectivity and data sharing tailored for their needs. These communities include the criminal justice community's Justice Information Network (JIN), and the educational sectors' K-20 Educational Telecommunications Network.

Local governments also participate in digital government through the Association of Counties and Cities Information Systems (ACCIS), which is working towards a uniform approach to security within and among political subdivisions. Other community groups are the Justice Information Committee (JIC), Criminal Justice Information Act (CJIA) Executive Committee, and Washington State Geographic Information Council (WAGIC).

The plan synthesizes the work of the ISB, the Digital Government Executive Steering Committee (DGESC), the Technology Architecture Advisory Group (TAAG), and the DIS Customer Advisory Board (CAB).

The growth both in the number of applications and in the number of agencies developing applications indicates Washington's digital government initiative has been successful on two levels. First, the transformation from in line to online is taking hold. As a matter of course, agencies now approach planning their service delivery from an Internet perspective, transforming internal operations, service delivery, and information into customer-friendly, 24/7 operations.

Second, the increasing number of agencies that choose to develop their applications using the digital government vision demonstrates that a cultural transformation is underway. Agencies recognize the importance of working together to give all online services a single look and feel, while still maintaining their own control and responsibility for their applications. The benefits of using cost- and time-saving devices such as application development templates, a shared e-commerce infrastructure, and shared databases are evident to all members of the digital government community. The result: agencies are moving from traditionally independent, "stovepipe" application development to the concept of the state as a single enterprise. ⁶

Together, the releases form a comprehensive and transformational plan for digital government and digital governance. Governor Locke has declared that simply reproducing bureaucracy online is not acceptable; rather, state government must provide clear pathways to the day-to-day functions that people need.

Everything that is learned is captured and published online as the Applications Template and Outfitting Model (ATOM^TM). ATOM is an online guide that provides project teams with a step by step approach to developing Internet applications by providing a list of issues to consider and steps to take. It ensures a final product that meets state standards by assembling the necessary policies, infrastructure components, and useful technologies, and integrating them into a start-to-finish timeline for the lifecycle of the project. It helps avoid missed steps, restarts, and duplications of effort that cost both time and money. ATOM can be followed step by step, or it can be separated into the specific elements needed to build a particular application.

ATOM brings four significant benefits to the users and developers of Digital Washington:

1. Citizens and businesses will have a common experience with all Digital Washington Internet applications.
2. No application will interfere with the operation of another, either within the shared environment or on the user's desktop.
3. Development costs are pared down because neither the agency nor the contractor has to create from scratch the 10 common components of Internet development.
4. All parties, including agencies and contract developers, are free to focus on the areas where they add unique value, such as business transformation, back-end integration, business rules, and marketing.

ATOM is based on Washington's five-plus years of experience in managing and prototyping emerging technologies, and was developed through multi-agency collaboration. Project teams in a number of agencies then used components of the ATOM model, and key public sector stakeholders reviewed the ATOM processes. A number of customer agencies and a number of entities in the authorizing environment — most notably, the Office of Financial Management, the Office of the State Treasurer, the Office of the State Auditor, and the Information Services Board — have validated ATOM and each of its elements.

ATOM provides ready access to best practices developed elsewhere. There may be none more important to earning the public's trust in digital government than safeguarding personally identifiable information.

Respect for Privacy and Intellectual Property

Privacy is a growing public concern. A privacy bill introduced by the Attorney General during the 2000 legislative session was not enacted, so Governor Locke issued Executive Order 00-03, which ordered executive agencies to take specific steps to protect citizens' personally identifiable information as fully as possible while still complying with public disclosure laws. The Executive Order requires that sensitive personal information not go into databases where it could be obtained by unauthorized parties, and establishes specific rules for guarding citizens' personal information in state computers and paper records. The Order directed DIS, in consultation with other state agencies, to develop a model privacy notice for state Web sites. The model notice has been incorporated into the application templates, ensuring that all replicated applications will be compliant with the Executive Order at launch. The Order also requires all executive agencies to use this model and to publish privacy statements on their Web sites, linking the notice to each page where personally identifiable information is collected or requested.

On November 8, 2000, a report announced that 74 agencies including 28 cabinet agencies and 46 other agencies, including boards and commissions, higher education institutions, and agencies managed by statewide elected officials, have complied at least partially with Executive Order 00-03. Some large agencies need more time to complete reviewing many hundreds of records that may contain personally identifiable information. The report also stated that 57 agencies have posted a privacy policy on their Web sites; 59 agencies have procedures and practices for handling and disposing of sensitive personal information; 50 agencies now have public notices telling citizens what personal information may be disclosed as a public record, the circumstances under which disclosure may occur, and procedures by which individuals may review and correct records; 48 agencies have removed Social Security numbers from forms and documents that may be viewed by the public; and 16 agencies have modified their contracts with private firms to ensure that personal information is protected. Other agencies are in the process of changing their contracts for the same reason. Finally, the Department of Personnel has removed Social Security numbers and personal bank account numbers from state employees' paychecks. Governor Locke directed agencies to provide periodic updates because good management requires regular milestones and measures of results.

Also in 2000 Governor Locke issued Executive Order 00-02 on software piracy, which makes Washington State government an exemplar in acquiring and using only properly licensed software. For example, it directs state agencies to establish procedures to ensure that computer software use complies with the law. Industry estimates show that pirated software costs our state's economy almost 4,000 jobs per year and more than $200 million in lost wages.

Both Executive Orders were subsequently adopted as policies of the Information Services Board, ensuring that their provisions would apply to state agencies outside of the executive branch.

Recruiting and Retaining Knowledge Workers in the Digital State

Among the other challenges facing the state's information technology program is the recruitment and retention of knowledge workers. This perennial problem was exacerbated during the 1999-01 Biennium by peaks in market demand for IT professionals -- the Year 2000 remediation effort and the early growth of the dot-com sector. There has been subsequent leveling through market self correction. At the same time, the state has also taken legislative, administrative, and training measures to redress the chronic challenge.

The 1996 Legislature enacted SSB 6767 (Ch. 319, Laws of 1996), which established a systematic funding mechanism for salary adjustments. Under the provisions of this bill, the Personnel Resources Board sends the Legislature a prioritized list of proposals to modify job classifications and compensation. The Legislature then decides which recommendations to fund.

State IT workers were one of the groups that was reclassified and had their compensation structure revised. It was clear that the state was losing IT staff and was unable to fill empty positions, and it was also clear that those trends were going to worsen. The Department of Personnel (DOP) conducted a study to come up with proposals to address those problems.

DOP identified six areas of work that IT staff were performing: systems/infrastructure, applications, data, telecommunications, support, and entry. These six areas were then combined into three job class series (applications/data, systems/support, and entry) that provide a straightforward career ladder. In the process, the number of job classes was reduced from 34 to about 16. Also, the examination procedure and process were simplified so that they more closely resemble industry's procedure and process, job bulletins are now open continuously, and training was restructured and offered in more locations. Finally, the compensation was adjusted. Agencies have reallocated their staff into been reduced, recruitment has increased, and retention has improved.

DIS offered SmartForce Web-based IT training to state agencies, boards, and commissions, through October 30, 2001. SmartForce provided their entire IT library, including training courses such as Lotus Notes Domino, Designing Interactive Web Applications, Project Management, and a full suite of Microsoft courses. Many of the courses fulfill requirements toward completion of technical certification programs. As of mid-April, over 2,800 employees from 52 agencies have registered to take SmartForce training, and over 2,700 course enrollments have been completed. The online training function migrates to DOP in the fall of 2001.

Washington government has sponsored four Project Management Certification courses in Olympia during the last five years taught by the University of Washington. DIS sponsored the first two courses and then transferred the sponsorship to the Department of Personnel. This program runs for a full academic year, September through May, and teaches participants the critical project management skills essential to any successful project. 100 participants have already completed the course, and 25 are enrolled in the current session.

Managing the State IT Portfolio
The Investment

State government invests more than $1.3 billion each biennium in computing, telecommunications and related services, and operational support, a level that has remained relatively stable since the mid-1990s despite aggressive expansion into Internet-based services.

Within state government, excluding educational institutions, twenty agencies account for three quarters of state IT spending. Of that amount, the investments are distributed across six sectors of public service: education, health and human services, general government, transportation, criminal justice, and natural resources.

In addition, there are other hardware and software, services acquisitions, and lower risk software development projects initiated under the sponsoring agency's delegated authority. These major categories are part of a larger set of activities and investments managed under IT portfolio management, a risk-based approach codified in statute that recognizes the balance between those investments which are best made centrally and those which are properly made under the authority of industrial agency leads.

Stewardship through Portfolio Management

Washington's IT portfolio management model -- created and administered by the Information Services Board (ISB) -- has been recognized as one of the best in the country in a national study conducted jointly by the Maxwell School of Syracuse University and Governing Magazine. The study, called "Grading the States," examines how states manage five areas of government operations: financial management, capital management, human resources, managing for results, and information technology.

The study examined the following questions:

• Do statewide and agency-level IT systems provide information that adequately supports managers' needs and strategic goals?
• Do IT systems form a coherent architecture and are strategies in place to support present and future coherence in architecture?
• Does state government conduct meaningful multi-year technology planning, including: an IT planning process that is sufficiently centralized; providing managers appropriate input into the planning process; creating statewide and agency IT plans?
• Is training adequate for end users and technology specialists?
• Can the state evaluate and validate the extent to which IT system benefits justify investment?
• Can IT systems be procured in a timely manner, with appropriate controls to prevent going over budget?
• Do IT systems support state government's ability to communicate with and provide services to its citizens?

Washington was one of two states that earned the top mark, an A, in information technology management; the average grade was B-.

IT Projects Under Oversight

As reported in the previous performance reports, agencies under the ISB's authority use a portfolio management system to manage their IT resources. Under this system, IT resources are managed along the same principles used to manage other investments, such as real estate or stocks: each proposed investment is examined in the context of that agency's current and planned investments, as well as in the context of the agency's business needs and the state's overall IT holdings. This system recognizes IT projects and acquisitions as the public assets that they are.

Thirty-five agencies have completed their baseline portfolios, which will be updated annually (see detail in Appendix C). Within these portfolios, 19 major projects were initiated or under oversight during the 1999 -01 Biennium.

1997 - 99 Biennum
Under portfolio management, projects are approached incrementally, with each phase adding value on its own accord without presuming the initiation of any subsequent phase. This approach recognizes that the eventual whole is more than the sum of its parts. Importantly, however, the phased approach has been instrumental in ensuring the successful completion of projects across state government because project size is directly related to risk. Several major IT projects under oversight were completed during the 1997 - 99 Biennium.

The Washington State Liquor Control Board completed its IT upgrade project, which improved its computing and technical support infrastructure. Funding came from the agency's revolving fund. The project was completed under budget.

The Women, Infants, and Children Client Information Management System (WIC/CIMS) helps the Department of Health provide health screening, nutrition education, food, and social service referrals to over 147,000 program participants at 300 sites across the state. This project had three phases and was completed over four years. Phase 1 automated enrollment and eligibility requirements, client nutritional assessments, prescribing of food packages, WIC check issuance and certification, and reinstatement and/or transfer of clients between clinics. Phases 2 and 3 support caseload management, compliance monitoring, nutrition reporting, outreach, tracking, evaluation, and fraud control. Funding came from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The One-Stop Career Centers project at the Employment Security Department (ESD) responds to a federally-sponsored national initiative to change the way that employment-related services are provided to both job seekers and employers. One-Stop Centers allow these customers to get services from a single career development center or at convenient affiliate or self-service sites. Before the Centers, both job seekers and employers had to travel to several agencies at different locations. This project was funded at $9.45 million over three years.

The Human Resource Data Warehouse (HRDW) at the Department of Personnel (DOP) gives access to human resources information contained in the mainframe personnel/payroll system and also consolidates general government and higher education human resources data. This data is used for management reporting and decision making purposes. It was completed on time and under budget.

1999 - 01 Biennium
The biennium under review in this report began with 12 projects that were carried forward from the previous biennium. While they were shepherded to conclusion, agencies initiated a number of new projects of sufficient risk to warrant oversight by the ISB. Among the new initiatives were three marquee digital government applications. Each is discussed in turn.

IT Projects Under Oversight During the 1999 - 01 Biennium

The Electronic Benefits Transfer Project (EBT) at the Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) was carried forward from the last biennium and completed during the current biennium. Washington is a member of the Western States EBT Alliance, a six-state group that together procured EBT and smart card services, resulting in significant cost efficiencies and improved service delivery for all participants. The appropriation through October 1999 was $7,494,761. The test pilot started on March 1, 1999, and ran successfully through May 1999. As planned, the statewide conversion began on June 1, 1999. The implementation plan called for one DSHS region to be added on the first of each month thereafter, until the last region was added in November 1999.

In the EBT project, clients are issued magnetic stripe cards that allow access to accounts in a central database. Every month, each account is updated and benefits added. Cards may be used at point-of-sale devices to pay bills or obtain cash; the cards may also be used at fee-based ATMs. Federal legislation mandates that states provide food stamps via EBT and encourages cash assistance under the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) program via EBT as well. DSHS' project includes five benefits: federal and state food stamps, federal and state TANF grants, state refugee benefits, state general assistance benefits, and state consolidated emergency assistance program benefits. The latter four programs are the only cash benefits programs that the state offers. Washington currently distributes approximately $20 million per month in combined federal and state food stamps and approximately $29.5 million per month in its four cash benefits programs. Caseloads declined over the past few years as the provisions of welfare reform made progress.

The Employment Security Department's (ESD) Telecenters, another carry over project from the 1997 - 99 Biennium when they were named Call Centers, were also completed this biennium. Telecenters allow all unemployment insurance (UI) benefits to be delivered over the phone, thus eliminating the need for claimants to go to their local Job Service Centers during business hours and wait in line to file for benefits. This project was completed on time and on budget.

The Technology Improvement Project (TIP) at the Liquor Control Board is an umbrella project that had some phases completed during the 1997-99 Biennium and others carried forward. It will modernize several business systems and processes. TIP has six independently managed sub-projects;

1. upgrade of the communication system to the point of sale applications in retail stores and vendor agencies;
2. replacement of the paper files of licensees and applicants with electronic imaging and workflow management;
3. conversion from an agency-unique payroll system to the state's central payroll system;
4. increase in the capacity and redundancy of the WAN;
5. introduction of a planned desktop IT replacement schedule; and
6. completion and implementation of an IT disaster recovery plan.

The outstanding phases of TIP are scheduled to be completed during the 1999 - 01 Biennium.

The Receivables Management System (RMS) at the Department of Retirement Systems was started during the 1997 - 99 Biennium and completed during the 1999 - 01 Biennium. RMS integrates accounts receivable, cash receipts, and associated general ledger accounting with DRS' corporate-level automated business systems and databases. It also interfaces with DRS' Member Information System, Employer Information System, and OFM's central accounting system (AFRS). RMS was completed on time and on budget.

The Washington State Patrol (WSP) started a major new IT project during the 1997 - 99 Biennium, the consolidation and rewrite of two of their systems, the Washington State Identification System (WASIS) and the Washington Crime Information Center (WACIC). These two projects are collectively called W2. WASIS contained arrest, fingerprint, and final disposition data; WACIC contained information about crimes and criminals, missing persons, and stolen property. This project was completed under budget in August 1999.

WSP's new Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS21) replaces and improves the old AFIS and will match and verify incoming arrest and crime scene fingerprints against historical prints stored in database files. It is scheduled for completion by June 30, 2001.

The Empoyment Security Department (ESD) delivered its Document Entry Storage and Retrieval Project (DESR) on budget, but not without delays. At issue was vendor performance and deliverables that did not warrant acceptance, and which would have not supported a production system. The problems were sufficiently serious that the contract was terminated. The agency took over the project management and, with the help of contractor support, completed the project on budget during the 1999 - 01 Biennium. ⁹

The One-Stop Career Centers, an ESD project, was started during the 1997 - 99 Biennium and will carry forward into the 2001 - 2003 Biennium. This project, which was renamed Service, Knowledge, Information and Exchange (SKIES), is Washington's version of the federally sponsored national initiative to change the way that employment-related services are provided to job seekers and employers. SKIES allows access to services from a single career development center or at convenient affiliated sites throughout the state. The former decentralized system required job seekers and employers to go to several agencies at different locations.

The Department of Health's (DOH) Licensing Enforcement and Automation Project (LEAP) is another carry over project from the 1997 - 99 Biennium that encountered problems during the 1999 - 01 Biennium. LEAP was to have replaced a system used to manage and process health care professional license applications, renewals, complaints, and disciplinary actions. There were, unfortunately, difficulties during contract negotiations with the successful vendor, and another state reported that it had had difficulties with both the vendor and the product. On the basis of these events, DOH decided to cancel the project before any public money was spent.

DOH's Drinking Water project will build a new core information management system to replace the aging system now used to monitor contaminants in public and private drinking water systems across the state. The current system is inadequate to support decision making about basic public health issues. This project will be funded with a combination of federal and state funds. It will carry over into the 2001-2003 biennium.

Department of Fish and Wildlife's (DFW) Washington Interactive Licensing Database project (WILD) automates the sale of hunting and fishing licenses and improve data management. There will be terminals at hunting and fishing license dealers, and licenses will also be available over the telephone and via the Internet. WILD will enforce licensing rules and provide accurate, timely accounting and will also update multiple databases. License sales information will be updated daily to support revenue projections reporting. WILD users include both license dealers and hunter and fishers. It is on budget and was in production by the scheduled completion date of June 30, 2001. WILD's Internet component marks DFW's entry into digital government.

The Department of Licensing (DOL) has a three-part Internet Payment Option (IPO) project. IPO allows online payment for license tab renewals, registrations of new master business licenses and trade names, and corporate renewals. The project is a core initiative in the state's transition to digital government that will bring significant change to the way that large numbers of citizens and businesses manage their affairs with state government. The master license application was completed in December 2000, and the other applications went into production on May and June 2001, respectively.

A number of IT projects under oversight that were initiated during the 1999 - 01 Biennium will also carry forward into the 2001 - 03 Biennium. The Ultimate Purchasing System (TUPS) at the Department of General Administration (GA) uses the Internet to automate selection, request, approval, order, receipt, and payment functions for goods and services with the state's central financial system (AFRS). GA and its private sector provider, American Management Systems (AMS), implemented a phased roll out of TUPS in May 2001.

Treasury Management System (TM$), at the Office of the State Treasurer, replaces separate mission-critical legacy applications. TM$ integrates cash and warrant management, debt management, investments, and associated financial and accounting services. It was carried over from the 1997 - 99 biennium and will be completed during the 2001 - 03 biennium.

The Offender Management Network Information program (OMNI) at Department of Corrections (DOC) was begun in the 1997 - 99 biennium (when it was named OBTS, Offender-Based Tracking System). This project will also be carried forward into the 2001 - 03 biennium. OMNI both replaces and improves the legacy systems and applications currently used to monitor and track convicted offenders while also implementing the new Offender Accountability Act (OAA). The project is divided into three build-and-implement phases; Phase 1 is scheduled for completion by June 2001.

Department of Revenue's (DRS) Electronic Document Image Management System (EDIMS) will reduce reliance on paper flow and files, thus reducing overhead and enabling staff to provide improved customer services. EDIMS will also improve security and disaster recovery capabilities. EDIMS is on schedule and on budget; its projected completion date is August 2001.

The Commercial Vehicle Information System and Networks (CVISN), initiated in August 1998 by the Department of Transportation (DOT), is our state's participation in the Federal Highway Administration's Intelligent Transportation System/Commercial Vehicle Operations (ITS/CVO) plan. CVISN will provide the ability to weigh vehicles in motion, automatically clear those that meet state transportation standards, and check vehicle licenses and permits against state records. It will also provide standards and protocols for data exchange, communications with national CVO clearinghouses, and system modules for functions that are common among all the states. Finally, CVISN will provide private sector commercial vehicle owners with the ability to electronically purchase licenses and permits. DOT, DOL, and WSP all cooperate on this project; DOT is the lead agency. Pilot testing at one station has been completed, and the project is on schedule. The overall project will carry over into the 2001 - 03 Biennium.

The Year 2000 Management Challenge
A Retrospective

An IT performance report on the 1999-01 Biennium would be incomplete without a summary of the successful Year 2000 (Y2K) mitigation effort. The effort to address the challenge of Y2K readiness included public and private organizations across all sectors of government and industry. For Washington, the Y2K project was not only the largest IT maintenance initiative in state history, but the largest management challenge to be faced collectively by state government agencies. Former President Clinton described Y2K as "the largest management challenge since World War II."

The Vanilla Project, initiated in 1993 to standardize the platforms for mainframe applications, built a foundation of cooperation that carried forward into the state's Y2K initiative. Agencies contributed financial resources for the Vanilla Project, resulting in a sense of shared investment in the strength of the state's IT infrastructure. This effort to standardize operating environments was intended to make system maintenance simpler, and many agencies reaped these benefits during the Y2K project.

DIS began working on actual Y2K remediation in the mid-1990s and formalized a Y2K Program Office for IT systems in 1997. Later that year Washington became the first state to contract with independent consultants for a formal ongoing assessment of agencies' Y2K efforts. The purpose of the assessment process was to identify the areas that needed additional assistance and resources to reach Y2K readiness.

Forty-six agencies, boards, commissions, and higher education institutions participated in the ongoing independent review of 105 individual IT projects that included several hundred individual applications, and 84 vital service projects. All cabinet-level agencies and four-year state colleges and universities participated in the process, as did several small agencies and boards and commissions. Most independently elected officials accepted invitations for their agencies to participate.

The formal statewide assessment process did not include the legislative and judicial branches, nor did it include individual school districts. While individual community colleges were not included, the Center for Information Services-the IT organization that serves community and technical colleges-did participate.

Governor Locke defined Y2K as a business problem. His goals were to have no disruption of vital public services and no loss of accountability for public resources. To meet these goals, he chartered a Y2K Executive Steering Committee, which approached Y2K as a management challenge, using proven program and project management principles and practices. To focus resources and oversight attention, the committee provided decision-making guidance to prioritize agencies' information systems into mission-critical and non-mission-critical categories.

Y2K was a discovery process with tremendous unknowns and uncertainties. Its immovable deadline and volume of work required rapid response capabilities. Business policies and process changes were frozen to enable system changes. System and application interconnectedness required close coordination and cooperation among agencies and with public and private sector organizations.

As its understanding of the effort required to address Y2K issues became more refined, the state recognized the need for additional assistance. In 1998, the Department of General Administration established a Y2K Program Office for embedded technologies. This program addressed embedded chip technologies, related service providers, and contingency plans for services that could critically impact public or employee health or safety, affect payment of benefits to the public or employees, or affect vital public resources. Most agencies also addressed the non-vital services, although these were not included in the formal monitoring process.

Also in 1998, Governor Locke established a Y2K Program Office for statewide coordination, intergovernmental and private/public industry outreach, and overall communication. The Governor's support ensured the effort was a high priority for all state agencies and their executives.

Washington's Y2K management approach emphasized collaboration. Agencies assisted each other and shared resources. Risks were identified early to improve chances for success, not to punish. Because inter-organization dependencies within state government are widespread, cooperation among agencies was critical to identify and fix dependencies that could affect vital services.

The Legislature was briefed regularly. Decision makers in the executive and legislative branches made reasonable efforts to delay many policy and process changes that could complicate Y2K fixes. DIS provided a testing environment that was made available to customer agencies for testing their applications for Y2K compliance.

Immediate and Residual Value of the State's Management Approach

The immediate value of the Y2K effort was the smooth transition during the rollover. As agency staff monitored services and technology delivery systems into the new year, the very few Y2K-related problems that occurred were minor. The Governor's goals were achieved: no disruption of vital public services, and no loss of accountability for public resources. In addition to meeting the Governor's goals for the Y2K challenge, the Y2K effort also brought residual benefits:

• The resulting inventory of the state's vital services and mission critical IT systems helped eliminate redundant or outdated applications.
• The state upgraded its ability and infrastructure for responding to all kinds of emergencies.
• Staff improved their knowledge of the complex, internal and external dependencies that the state relies upon to deliver services.
• Business staff increased their knowledge and ownership over technical issues within their agencies.
• Many agency staff expanded their project management skills, and agency executives increased their level of understanding of these practices.
• Agency software maintenance and development procedures and standards were enhanced.
• Business and technical staff increased their understanding of the positive aspects of independent performance auditing processes.
• Participants developed formal and informal inter agency networks for sharing information and best practices.
• The "corporate consciousness" of agencies increased the ability and desire to work cohesively on state wide issues and reduce traditional interagency organizational barriers.

One of the best examples of a system that was rebuilt and improved in the wake of the Y2K effort is the Washington State Patrol's revamped Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS21). AFIS21 made it possible for a WSP fingerprint expert to quickly identify an unconscious, seriously injured man in an Olympia hospital. The supervisor of WSP's Tenprint Support Unit and the Missing and Unidentified Persons Unit had just arrived home from work when she received a police dispatcher's call asking for help identifying an injured person. Officers said it was likely the man would be airlifted to a Seattle hospital. They and hospital staff wanted to identify him so they could contact a family member.

The supervisor returned to her office for fingerprinting equipment, met police at the hospital, fingerprinted the injured man, and returned again to her office to query the AFIS21 system. Within minutes, the system scoured a fingerprint database and identified the unconscious person. Officers could then locate and contact the man's mother, who headed for the hospital.

Within months after the successful rollover, the "corporate consciousness" of agencies shifted its focus from Y2K to a new statewide issue: digital government. The Y2K Executive Steering Committee became the Digital Government Executive Steering Committee, and the group began tackling its new management challenge using the lessons learned from the Y2K Project. As the biennium closed, the Executive Steering Committee renewed its focus on statewide administrative issues. With this new emphasis the Committee is now named the Enterprise Management Group (EMG).

Future Watch Toward a New Way of Governance
Digital Government as a Core Competence

Transforming service delivery using Internet technologies is a core competence of government. By doing our own digital government development, we can deliver secure, accessible, and convenient services that are responsive and cost-effective for our citizens and businesses. This approach also allows us to lead cross-jurisdictional digital government efforts.

Although we partner with the private sector on digital government development and also subcontract specific functions, Washington maintains ownership of the overall digital government enterprise. In this way, we take advantage of the best of the private sector's talents, abilities, and innovations in carefully chosen ways that do not relinquish government's basic responsibilities to citizens. We can maintain a citizen-centric vision, assure the privacy of data, and monitor the quality of service delivery. Washington's experience demonstrates many positive ways to partner with the private sector, yet not hand off citizens' and businesses' transactions with government to a third party. The continued relevance of-and public trust in-government relies upon its maintaining a direct relationship with its citizens. In the past, citizens presented themselves to a government that determined citizens' access to its services. Today digital government gives citizens direct access to services on their own terms, without regard to the agency that provides the service. Internet technologies can improve government relationships with citizens with 24/7 availability, faster service delivery, and the elimination of the inconveniences of travel, parking, and standing in lines.

Washington is purposefully managing its transition to digital government, using network technology and the Internet to turn government around to face citizens and to put citizens in charge of their relationships with government. On one level, these changes mean more day-to-day convenience for citizens and businesses. But on another level, these changes also mean that government no longer controls access to its information and services. They mark a power shift, one that industry leader Carly Fiorina, CEO of Hewlett-Packard, has compared to the Renaissance, when all of western Europe-its economy, its demographics, its religion, its politics, its intellectual and artistic lives-was re-ordered.

Even as we contemplate the re-ordering of governance itself, technology has not stopped changing. Two major changes are already visible. First, information and service delivery to nomadic and wireless devices is now a novelty, but will soon become commonplace. This development will further decrease the effect of geography and physical placement. Second, business to business (B2B) e-commerce and its technological needs will be the force that shapes the development of the Internet over the next few years. This is because technology has gone past the point of providing solutions to solve business problems and has moved on to an area where it enables new business models and methods. XML, a next-generation protocol that is more sophisticated than the current protocol HTML that is used to provide a common language for the exchange of data, will become the new standard. XML makes information more usable, which in turn creates more ways that it can be used.

The early phases of digital government have focused on the desktop personal computer, but that method of access is changing. The next step, which has already started arriving, will be wireless Internet access. Business Week projects that the number of U.S. wireless Web users will grow from 1 million in 2000 to 86.6 million in 2005. ¹⁰ It is part of our job to stay aware of these trends, as well as others that have not even yet been born.

Anatomy of the Digital State

Washington State is a nationally recognized leader in using information technology-and the Internet specifically-in service to the citizen. In a fifty state comparison, The Progress and Freedom Foundation, the Center for Digital Government, and Government Technology magazine have named Washington the nation's only "digital state" for three consecutive years. In fact, the 1999-01 Biennium closed with word that Washington had again received a perfect score in the social services category in the opening round of the award's fourth year. Washington now keeps company with Kansas and eight other leading states that are dedicated to Internet-delivered government.

Visitors from more than twenty states and the governments of Canada, Russia, Sweden, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and England (among others) have traveled to Olympia over the last three years to better understand the anatomy of the digital state. It has been useful to show these visitors what the digital state evaluators saw-and the information on which they reached their conclusions.

What follows is an abridged view of the moment-in-time case for Washington during the 1999-2000 competition. That some of the material may seem dated provides a reminder of the rapidity of change in the electronic face of public service.

The 1999-00 Digital State award survey categories were Electronic Commerce and Business Regulation, Taxation and Revenue, Social Services, Law Enforcement and the Courts, Digital Democracy, IT Management and Administration, Higher Education, and K-12 Education. We are the only state that earned single-digit rankings in all eight categories, testament to our enterprise view and business management approach to IT.

Our responses to the 2000 Digital State survey questions described the work of 57 state agencies. Recognition as the national leader in digital government is a credit to state employees on every level, from executive management and policymakers to staff charged with design, production, and implementation. It is of particular note that virtually every agency in the state voluntarily participates in digital government. There is no central entity that compels agencies' IT activities; each conducts its own acquisitions and manages its own IT resources. Also, some agencies are headed by officials appointed by the Governor, others by independently elected officials, and others by officials named by a board or a commission. All have chosen to work together and to adopt common standards so that citizens and businesses see-and interact with-a single, unified online state government.

Another factor that sets Washington apart is that we are building the digital government infrastructure. We believe that one of government's core competencies is the transformation of service delivery through the use of Internet technologies. We have strong relationships in the private sector community, and we use contractors and vendors in carefully chosen ways that do not deny government's basic responsibilities. For example, telecommunication services are outsourced, with 89 cents of every revenue dollar going to a private vendor.

The following eight sections, which detail our activities in each of the 2000 Digital State categories, are excerpted from our responses to the survey.

Electronic Commerce and Business Regulation
Current as of August 2001

In this category, the Digital State survey examined states' progress in creating e-commerce applications that allow citizens and businesses to interact with government online. States were scored in four areas: the availability of downloadable permitting and licensing forms; the ability of citizens and businesses to apply electronically for a permit or a license; the availability of help through a general online mailbox; and the ability of citizens and businesses to contact agency staff online. The average score in this category was 70 points; Washington ranked third with 82 points. We submitted our responses to the questions in this category in the fall of 1999; by mid-2000, our agencies offered more than 240 online services to citizens and state employees.

Online forms
Every form required to obtain a license or a permit, from the mainstream to the specialized, is available online. For example, businesses and citizens can download forms to become a registered corporation, a certified public accountant, or a lottery retail outlet, or they can log on to get a commercial fishing license or a personalized license plate.

In addition to offering forms online, many agencies have online programs to help customers determine which forms they need. For example, with the Department of Ecology's Online Permit Assistance System (OPAS), an applicant answers a few questions, such as project location and nearby natural resources, and OPAS provides a list of the required state and federal permits, contacts, and other information. Similarly, for any proposed business activity, the Department of Licensing's License Information Management System (LIMS) provides a customized list of required federal, state, county, and city licenses, along with contacts for each license. On the flip side of obtaining licenses, several agencies' Web sites allow customers to check the status of already-issued licenses. For example, a Department of Licensing pilot project features online inquiries about certain professional licenses such as those for architects and engineers. Customers can check the status of contractor registrations and certifications online at the Department of Labor and Industries. And at the Liquor Control Board's site, employers can verify the status of alcohol server permits, a requirement of those whose jobs involve serving, mixing, or pouring alcohol.

Finally, customers can go online for forms for other types of government interactions. For example, they can access forms to apply for a community litter cleanup grant, report campaign contributions and expenses, file natural gas pipeline annual reports, request reopening of a workers' compensation claim, request assistance with an insurance claim, anonymously report suspected violations of liquor regulations, and complain about unsolicited e-mail ("spam").

Online applications
At the time the response to this question was submitted, there were several online citizen-to-government transactions and interactions. At the Department of Health Web site, people can order and pay online for copies of birth, death, marriage, and divorce certificates.

A Department of Transportation service helps people make and securely pay online for international ferry reservations, guaranteeing the customer's space on board and eliminating a wait in line. With an Employment Security Department online service, citizens can apply for unemployment compensation benefits.

At the Parks and Recreation Commission site, citizens can request campsite reservations online. An operator calls to confirm the reservation and obtain a credit card number for payment. In 2000, Parks and Recreation became the first agency to launch an online permit application. The application allows people to obtain and pay for an annual boat launch permit over the Internet.

The Department of Licensing has developed an application that will allow renewal and payment of vehicle registrations (license tabs) online. This transaction, which could only be conducted either in person or by mail, is one of the most common interactions that people have with state government, and one that most citizens are required to do. The Washington Traffic Safety Commission put its highway safety grant applications online for community groups and local and tribal governments, speeding up the application and review process and dramatically reducing paperwork.

Business-to-government services are also coming online. Under state law, the Liquor Control Board must review and approve prices submitted by all companies that want to sell alcohol in Washington. An online system allows vendors to log in using their license numbers and passwords, then securely post their price catalogs and update them as needed. The online service reduced the price review turnaround from two weeks to immediate notification, reduced paper flow from 3,000 pieces per month to less than 150, and redirected 3.5 FTEs to other functions.

At the Department of Labor and Industries, contractors can request mandatory electrical inspections by phone, fax, in person, or online. An online request goes directly to a computer for assignment, and is likely to result in an inspection on the next business day.

The Washington Health Care Authority oversees multiple health care programs and contracts with two community health clinics that can now submit their grant applications online.

The Washington State Patrol is the statewide repository of fingerprint-based criminal history information collected at both the state and local levels. Criminal history reports may be ordered and paid for online via Washington Access to Criminal History (WATCH). For-profit entities, such as private companies conducting background checks on prospective employees, pay $10 per report, and non-profit organizations such as Girl Scout troops receive reports without a charge. Another anticipated project will change how businesses register with the state.

The five state agencies that regulate businesses are collaborating on a proof-of-concept Unified Business Identifier (UBI) master application-filing project that will allow a business to register with the state and pay online. This project will reduce business owners' travel and interaction with multiple agencies, eliminate errors and follow-up work, provide cleaner data to the state, reduce traffic in field offices, and minimize burdensome cash handling practices.

Also going online are government-to-government services, such as the Department of General Administration's Central Stores which offers office supplies, tools, first aid items, janitorial supplies, and other products to Washington State agencies, local governments, and 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organizations. General Administration is also developing the Ultimate Purchasing System for end-to-end online procurement-requests, approvals, ordering, status reports, receiving, and paying. Vendor and contract lists will be continuously updated, customers will be able to acquire goods from sources other than state contracts—for example, from surplus—and aggregating the buying power of multiple agencies will help keep costs down.

The Department of Retirement Systems offers an end-to-end online service on the state's intranet whereby customers of seven public employee retirement systems can download, complete, digitally sign, and transmit a secure electronic form to report retirement-related data. The system saves time and paperwork for both customers and the department.

General Administration developed the first program in the state to legally electronically approve and pay invoices. The electronic A-19 form allows multiple digital signatures to be affixed to a motor pool invoice that is electronically routed. It has reduced processing time from four weeks to just hours, and transformed the late-payment penalties of the past into net-10 day discounts. It has also improved accuracy and security.

Washington is moving toward bringing many, if not most, services online. Toward this end, the Department of Information Services established a Master Contract with Digital Signature Trust (DST) of Salt Lake City, Utah. DST serves at the state's Certification Authority and provides Public Key Infrastructure services that enable agencies and their trading partners to use electronic authentication devices. This single statewide protocol provides a consistent process that simplifies transactions for businesses, citizens, and the state.

Taxation and Revenue
Current as of August 2001

In the Taxation and Revenue category, the Digital State survey ranked states on the availability of downloadable personal and business tax forms; the ability of taxpayers to file returns online and contact Department of Revenue staff online or via e-mail; and the percentage of tax records stored digitally rather than on paper. The survey also ranked state tax and revenue department Web sites for their completeness and user-friendliness. The average score of all states was 66 points, with Washington scoring 94 for the number two ranking in the category, even though we are one of the few states that does not have a personal income tax.

Online forms
Businesses can find taxpayer forms on the Web sites of the three state agencies that handle business taxes: the Department of Revenue, the Department of Labor and Industries, and the Employment Security Department.

The Department of Revenue's site includes Geographic Information System (GIS) maps that allow taxpayers to look up tax rates for the cities and counties in which they do business. This is particularly helpful for businesses that conduct business in multiple locations. The Department of Licensing's online vehicle excise tax calculator allows businesses and citizens to determine their vehicle license fees. Although this tax was repealed by Initiative 695, some still have a need to check on their 1999 tax.

Online tax filing
A business in any location that had taxable activity in Washington can file and pay taxes online with the Department of Revenue's Electronic Filing Project (ELF). Similar to the commercial income tax software packages, ELF automatically makes all mathematical calculations, moves them to the correct fields, and uses current tax laws and tables, thereby eliminating potential human error. ELF even fills in the taxpayer's name and address when the tax number is entered. A taxpayer can file at any time and specify an electronic funds transfer (EFT) payment for a later date. ELF reduces errors, mailing costs, and late filings, saving time and money for business and government. Many businesses have found ELF so easy that they have changed from quarterly to monthly filings, thus smoothing the agency's workflow.

A small number of employers are testing the Department of Labor and Industries' ELF pilot project, an online workers' compensation tax filing and payment system that shares ELF's navigational scheme.

The Employment Security Department's UIFastTax allows online reporting of unemployment insurance taxes that are paid by employers. It includes the capacity for one user-for example, an accountant-to report unemployment insurance taxes on behalf of multiple employers. At this time, UIFastTax does not allow online payment of taxes, however an electronic funds transfer option is being considered. After an employer has signed up for UIFastTax, the agency sends a payment envelope.

Businesses will eventually be able to file and pay Labor and Industries and Employment Security taxes online, as they now can with Revenue. Plans for a joint tax filing system are underway.

Recording, storing, and retrieving tax records
There are no agencies that store tax records on paper. The Department of Revenue has transferred most of its records from microfilm to an imaging system. At the Department of Labor and Industries, workers' compensation claims are scanned and stored digitally, and premium payment quarterly reports from employers are entered into a database. With its Document Entry Storage and Retrieval System, the Employment Security Department has been digitizing the recording, storing, and retrieval of tax records using OCR, imaging, database entry, and Computer Output Laser Disks (COLD) since July 1999.

Social Services
Current as of August 2001

Policy leaders at the national and state levels have directed an overhaul of the welfare system, but few states are using technology effectively in this area. The Digital State survey measured states' online services, and their use of new technologies such as smart cards, electronic benefits transfer (EBT), and child-support collection systems. The average score in this category was 44.8 points with only 14 states scoring above 50; Washington led the nation as number one with 100 points.

Electronic benefits transfer
Washington is a leader in the use of EBT, and one of 19 states that reported having an EBT system that covers more than 50 percent of benefits programs. Nine states reported no automated cash or food benefits programs at all. Washington is a member of a six-state group-the Western States EBT Alliance-that together procured EBT and smart card services, resulting in significant cost efficiencies and improved service delivery. (The Department of Social and Health Services anticipates that operation of the EBT program will be cost-neutral.) Washington's EBT program uses magnetic stripe cards that allow access to accounts in a central database. Every month, each account is updated and benefits added. Clients can use the cards at point-of-sale devices to pay bills or obtain cash; the cards may also be used at fee-based ATMs. Five benefits can be retrieved through the cards: federal and state food stamps, federal and state TANF grants, state refugee benefits, state general assistance benefits, and state consolidated emergency assistance program benefits. The latter four programs are the only cash benefits programs that the state offers.

Washington currently distributes approximately $20 million per month in combined federal and state food stamps and approximately $29.5 million per month in its four cash benefits programs. Over the past few years caseloads declined as the provisions of welfare reform made progress.

Automated child support system
Federal law requires an automated child support system, and Washington was one of the first states to earn federal certification for its support enforcement systems. The state does not collect a commission or hold back any portion of a child support payment before disbursing to the custodial parent. The child support program and automation investments are funded with federal money that accompanies the certification. Child support money does not fund information technology investments.

Investment in child support collection automation continues. A recent application allows EFTs for both incoming support payments and outgoing disbursements. During the late spring of 1999, a proof-of-concept project demonstrated an end-to-end Internet bill presentment and payment of a child support obligation.

The total number of dollars in child support collected over the past six fiscal years increased nearly 50 percent: $357 million in 1993, $379 million in 1994, $410 million in 1995, $468 million in 1997, $504 million in 1998, and $533 million in 1999.

Forms that can be submitted online
Several social services can be requested online. For example, citizens interested in becoming foster parents can submit a questionnaire online. The information will be sent to a foster home licensor close to the applicant. Also, applicants can request that a counselor contact them regarding services for blind and visually impaired people. And finally, job seekers can submit resumes online to the Employment Security Department.

Employers can apply online to participate in WorkFirst, a partnership among government, business, labor, and community organizations that moves people off welfare and into self-reliance.

Employers also have the option of going online to report the names and social security numbers of new hires to the Department of Social and Health Services (required by state and federal law for child support enforcement). The Department of Social and Health Services checks the information against state child support records and then sends it to Washington, D.C. where it is checked against a national database. The Employment Security Department also uses the information to find employed persons who are drawing unemployment benefits.

Forms available online
Citizens can access forms to apply for various benefits through the state's web portal, Access Washington^TM. Examples include unemployment benefits forms from the Employment Security Department's site, and workers' compensation claims forms on the Department of Labor and Industries' site, along with forms for the crime victims' compensation program. Applications for Basic Health, the state insurance program for qualifying Washington residents, are on the Health Care Authority's site. Applications for state employment can be downloaded from the Department of Personnel's site. Uniform Medical Plan providers find claims forms on the Health Care Authority's site. Medical providers can download forms from the Department of Social and Health Services' site, including room rate change forms, hospital reimbursement forms and fee schedules, and billing instructions and fee schedules.

State employees find forms online for job-related benefits. The Department of Retirement Systems offers enrollment, beneficiary designation, information change, and withdrawal forms for state retirement plans, along with forms for deferred compensation and dependent care assistance. The daily closing prices of deferred compensation plan investments, along with links to the parent investment group sites, are online.

Interactive videoconferencing
Some benefits require personal interviews, not merely forms, to determine eligibility. For example, applicants for food stamps or child support enforcement must discuss their situations with a caseworker. The Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) is using interactive videoconferencing to improve this process. When programs require a determination of eligibility, the applicant "meets" simultaneously with caseworkers from all the programs, rather than being shuttled among several offices. By discussing the situation in real time as a group, all the programs receive the same information. DSHS also plans to use interactive videoconferencing for child support conference boards, which currently travel around the state to resolve individual child support cases.

Satellite broadcasting
The Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) is using satellite broadcast training for caseworkers and foster parents, which reduces or eliminates travel time, especially for participants in rural areas. Also available are interactive foster parent training, an online caregiver support forum, and child support information in multiple languages.

Universal online access
The Access Washington style guide's focus on universal web design ensures accessibility for all users including individuals with disabilities.

Intranets for internal operations
The Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) intranet enables fast and efficient information exchange among staff and programs. For example, a caseworker can determine whether a client is receiving other DSHS services, and can check current rules or regulations about a program.

Information available online
Citizens can use the Internet to access information on social services such as senior services, mental health services, and low-income legal services. Citizens can also search for adult family homes, boarding homes, and nursing homes by variables such as location, medical facilities, or the permissibility of pets or smoking. Employees and employers can find information on workers' compensation and unemployment benefits.

The goal of WorkFirst, Washington's welfare reform program, is to help financially struggling families find jobs, keep their jobs, and build better lives for their children. WorkFirst clients-as well as other job seekers-can conduct online job searches several ways. Washington's Job Bank is a searchable database of jobs available in the state. Worksource, another searchable database, includes jobs posted by job service centers around the state and links to other job search sites, including America's Job Bank. The Employment Security Department provides links to classified advertisements in daily newspapers statewide, and an online career counselor discussion board. State government job listings can be found at the Department of Personnel's site, along with application forms that can be downloaded and links to job opportunities at state higher educational institutions. Links to job opportunities with federal, state, and local governments can be found at the Employment Security's site where job seekers also can enter their resumes online.

Law Enforcement and the Courts
Current as of August 2001

This Digital State category examined how well states are automating and integrating criminal justice information, providing online court opinions, offering e-mail access to public safety personnel, and enacting digital signature legislation. Criminal justice integration is challenging because it involves multiple agencies, multiple jurisdictions, and multiple branches of government. In this category, the average score was 58 points. Washington, with 81 points, placed eighth.

Automation and integration of criminal justice information.

Among the measures of how well our criminal justice system is automated and integrated is the ability of officers in the field to access databases and information. Approximately one-third of the Washington State Patrol's (WSP) trooper and sergeant cars are equipped with laptop computers, enabling officers to send car-to-car and terminal-to-terminal messages, write infield reports, and connect to the network ACCESS, a Centralized Computer Enforcement Support System.

Housed at WSP, ACCESS is the state's message switch that accesses multiple state and federal criminal justice and law enforcement databases, and a national telecommunications network that sends information and messages around the country. WSP, city police departments, county sheriff departments, federal and state agencies, communications centers, and other criminal justice agencies connect to ACCESS via dedicated phone line or the state's Justice Information Network (JIN). Many local law enforcement departments equip their patrol cars with laptop computers and connect with ACCESS via radio or cellular communication. ACCESS searches the following database systems:

• WSP's Washington State Identification System (WASIS), which contains information about guns, arrests, fingerprints, persons, vehicles, restraining orders, dispositions, and issues affecting officer safety;
• WSP's Washington Crime Information Center (WACIC), which contains information about criminal history, warrants, missing persons, and stolen property;
• The Department of Licensing, which contains information about vehicle and driver registrations, driver violation/infraction history, gun registration, vessel registration, and game violation history;
• The Office of the Administrator of the Courts, which contains court records and dispositions;
• The FBI's National Crime Information Center (NCIC), which contains federal information about guns, persons, vehicles, boats, and securities; and
• NCIC Interstate Identification Index, which contains federal information about criminal histories.

ACCESS also connects to the National Law Enforcement Telecommunications System, a national telecommunications network that sends information and messages around the country. WSP is in the process of providing interfaces with AFIS so that it will link fingerprint information with criminal history information. Additionally, WSP is working on a project that w