When it comes to building effective Web sites, state governments have a long way to go

When the Nevada state government launched its Web site (silver.state.nv.us) in 1998, it had all the glitz
of the Las Vegas strip. Purple borders suggested velvet theater curtains, and flashing icons resembled
the lights on slot machines.

By KORTNEY STRINGER Wall St. Journal

But there wasn’t much behind those curtains — just the usual listing of agency telephone numbers and
press releases from the governor’s office.

"We had a lot of cutesy-pie stuff on the Web site," says
Terry Savage, Nevada’s chief information officer.

At that point only a few states had figured out how to get
something really useful online, Mr. Savage adds, and
Nevada wasn’t one of them. Nor had it improved much by
2000, when it tied with Tennessee for last place in a ranking by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP of 50
state Web sites, mostly based on navigation and ease of use. California, North Dakota and Maine
snagged the top honors.

Nevada has come a long way since, but there is still much to be done — a situation that is familiar to
visitors to state-government sites across the country. State governments in general have lagged behind
the private sector when it comes to building effective Web sites, and even the best don’t provide all the
services they could. Most states are years away from providing such services as online school
registration or welfare applications. Many states also aren’t providing the necessary software tools on
their sites for blind or deaf people, or for foreign-language speakers.

Budgetary Pressures

The problem, some say, is money. Efforts to make more government services available online have to
fight for funds not only with education, welfare and highways, but also with other technology spending.
"The biggest challenge the states face is budgetary," says Darrell M. West, a Brown University
political-science professor who has studied state efforts to develop Web-based services. Second, Mr.
West says, the state governments need to overcome fighting among their different branches. "Even
within individual states, it’s tough to get the agencies to work together so e-government can move
forward," he says.

Some states have moved aggressively onto the Web, allowing people to pay their taxes online as well
as apply for business and other kinds of licenses. In some states, students can go online to see their
results in education-assessment tests. In California, not only can residents pay their state taxes online,
they can also track the status of their refunds and receive wireless alerts about pending energy
shortages, lottery results and traffic updates through cellphones and personal digital assistants.

So far, state Web sites serve mostly as a convenience for citizens. But later, they could be a deciding
factor in whether businesses and citizens relocate to a given state. Already, some provide information
to businesses looking to relocate, including state tax rates, regulations and licensing data.

"States that lag behind are losing a competitive edge because both citizens and businesses are
growing used to being able to conduct business online," says Mr. West. "People are used to doing
things online in the private sector and now they’re demanding the same type of convenience through the
public sector."

Some struggle to provide even the most basic functions. States that are lagging behind often have
incorrect contact information on their sites and display little coordination between the sites and
bricks-and-mortar offices, says John Gant, an Indiana University assistant professor of information
systems and public management who helped conduct the 2000 PricewaterhouseCoopers study.

"Right now, the left hand isn’t talking to the right," Mr. Gant says. "Some states have done a really nice
job of sorting out the responsibilities of who’s going to do what — and some states haven’t."

Lack of coordination was a problem for Nevada when it launched its Web site in 1998. There was no
department to organize the state’s e-government efforts, and the state had little funding reserved
specifically for e-government. Each agency was responsible for maintaining its own Web site.

The lack of central coordination resulted in a Web site that had no links to more than half of the state’s
agencies, and malfunctioning links or incorrect information for many of the others.

In the spring of 2000, Gov. Kenny Guinn took action. He required all of his state’s agencies to have a
Web site with a link from the state’s site within 90 days and to make all forms available online for
downloading and printing. He also appointed Mr. Savage as the state’s first information-technology
chief, responsible for organizing the state’s e-government on the Web.

One immediate step by Mr. Savage, who spent 17 years in the defense industry, was to form a
committee to address security concerns — namely the hundreds or thousands of attacks a day the site
has to repel. Next he created committees to address specific e-government issues; each committee
has representatives from several of the 40 major state agencies and meets monthly to discuss
improvements.

"Before, agencies were kind of on their own trying to do things," Mr. Savage says. "They are now all in
the same room deciding things together."

Beauty Part

Today the state home page has given up the old colored borders and flashing icons. The site now links to thousands of downloadable forms,
including those for filing unemployment claims, applying for a state job or submitting a complaint with the state accountancy board. What’s more,
motorists can renew their driver’s licenses and vehicle registrations online, would-be beauty-shop operators can find out how to apply for a
cosmetology license, and the unemployed can change their personal information or file their weekly unemployment claim.

And to aid navigation, users can now access many of these links from the main menu without having to go through so many clicks.

The improvements have been noticed. Nevada ranked 17th last year in a Brown University study led by Mr. West that ranked state-government
sites based on the information and services presented.

Nevada officials are quick to admit they still have a ways to go. Currently there are plans for a $1.3 million, two-year project that will allow Nevada
residents to apply for social-services programs like welfare and child support online. Nevada also is in the process of reformatting thousands of the
state’s Web pages to give them a consistent look and feel as part of a Web standardization project. It’s estimated that project will cost $50,000 to
$70,000 and will be finished by the end of the year.

Still, it will be years before Nevadans find a full range of state services on the Web. Resources are the main problem. The state still only spends
about $30 million, or less than half of 1%, of its $7 billion budget on e-government initiatives.

For now, Mr. Savage’s budget has been spared major cuts. But with the slowing economy, he’s aware that next year’s funding for e-government
may be thin.

It’s hard to squeeze more money out of the legislature, he says, partly because it’s difficult to show significant cost savings from the investment.
Fewer than 10% of Nevada’s citizens use the state’s Web site to handle transactions, he says. That’s enough to demonstrate the convenience of
online services, but it’s not enough to justify a reduction of staff in state offices.

"A lot of times the real return is to the citizens in terms of convenience," says Mr. Savage. "The problem is the results right now are qualitative,
not quantitative. The question is, how much do you value a citizen’s time?"

–Ms. Stringer is a staff reporter in The Wall Street Journal’s Dallas bureau.

Write to Kortney Stringer at [email protected]

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