Innovative Solution Wins Utah.Gov Prestigious Award

Innovative Solution Wins Utah.Gov Prestigious Award

Public Technology Institution Recognizes Utah.Gov Master Data Index

SALT LAKE CITY--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Today Mark VanOrden, Chief Information Officer for the State of Utah, announced Utah.Gov has won the Public Technology Institution's (PTI) Web 2.0 Award. PTI recognizes public institutions that excel at engaging citizens, demonstrating government accountability and enabling department operations online. Criteria for the award includes: measuring specific tools, goals, participation rates, system integration, standards and policies, interoperability, data access and sharing, channel coordination and performance metrics.

"In this third year of the awards program," said Dale Bowen, Deputy Executive Director for Program Development of the Public Technology Institute, "the Web 2.0 and social media applications demonstrate a new level of sophistication."

Utah.gov won the award for its Master Data Index, which connects citizens to vital information and critical government services. It encourages cross-agency information sharing; enables real-time, efficient and interactive communications; engages the public in government decision-making, and empowers government staff through data access and streamlined processes.

Utah is the first state to build a Master Index of all state online services, websites, data sources, and social media sites (Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Instagram, Pinterest, SlideShare, etc.), including 30 different content types, giving applicable state employees the capability to add new types as needed from a convenient user interface. All sources are tagged so that they can be utilized across multiple platforms and portals. The top categories currently indexed are business, health, jobs, voting and elections, public safety and corrections.

"The result is two fold," said VanOrden. "New websites can easily pull applicable social media feeds based on multiple points of data. The Master Index also allows staff to aggregate social media feeds to one page, the Connect Portal where citizens can see all the social media. In addition, the new Master Index allows us to generate customized webpages to display data to citizens in an infinite number of ways."

Government employees aware of new social media accounts or data sources now have the ability to maintain and add any indexed item, without requiring additional resources from the Utah.gov design team. This not only saves time, it also allows for the most current and relevant data to be displayed to citizens. Citizens benefit from enriched searching due to tagged data and the structure allows for more qualified, up to date, and relevant information.

To find out more information about Utah.Gov visit:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/UtahGov
Facebook: http://www.utah.gov/facebook/
RSS feeds: http://www.utah.gov/connect/feeds.html
Utah blogs: http://www.utah.gov/blogs/

About Utah.Gov

Utah.gov is the entry point to over 1000 online services and benefits over 2.7 million residents in the State of Utah. Utah.gov provides citizens and businesses with more convenient options for interacting with government. Through Utah.gov, citizens can find public meetings, renew their vehicle registration, buy a hunting and fishing license, register a business, find a transparent state budget, and much more. In 2011 alone, Utah.gov received an unprecedented 17 awards making it the nation's most honored state website.

Utah.gov is the official Web portal for the State of Utah (http://www.Utah.Gov). It is managed and operated without tax funds through a public-private partnership between the state and Utah Interactive, the Salt Lake City-based official eGovernment partner for the state of Utah. Utah Interactive is part of eGovernment firm NIC's family of companies.

About NIC

NIC (NAS: EGOV) is the nation's leading provider of government Web sites, online services, and secure payment processing solutions. The company's innovative eGovernment services help reduce costs and increase efficiencies for government agencies, citizens, and businesses across the country. The NIC family of companies provides eGovernment solutions for more than 3,500 federal, state, and local agencies across the United States. Additional information is available at http://www.egov.com.

The State of Utah
David Fletcher, 801-538-3476
Chief Technology Officer
dfletcher@utah.gov
or
Utah Interactive
Rich Olsen, 801-983-0275
General Manager
rich@utahinteractive.org

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