Jon Gant, an assistant professor of Public Administration at Syracuse University's Maxwell School, is studying the State of Indiana's Web portal. The portal is the result of a collaboration between the state and a private company, Indiana Interactive. It started as a partnership project to bring the state's Bureau of Motor Vehicle records online, and it has grown to a large portal with more than 175 custom-designed on-line applications and 190,000 pages of government information from more than 75 state entities.

Gant first became involved with CTG in 1999, when he and Indiana University colleague Craig Johnson were exploring how other universities were teaching information technology in public administration programs. The two visited Rockefeller College and participated in a knowledge-sharing session at the Center.

"That trip opened the door for this partnership," Gant said. "Later on, my work with Access Indiana was an ideal case for the New Models project."

Prior to his research with the Access Indiana partnership, Gant studied the attributes of State Government Web Portals with a grant from PriceWaterhouseCoopers. He also conducted research on the use of an advanced GIS application system to improve decision-making for a Meals on Wheels program in the City of Pittsburgh.

"Putting services online involves developing new work systems—figuring out how to integrate current business processes with information and communication technologies. In order to provide on-line services, your work systems and information systems must work congruently. Managers and organizations struggle with understanding that."

Fountain, Jane. (2001). Building the Virtual State: Information Technology and Institutional Change. Washington, D.C., Brookings Institution Press.

Ross, J. and C. Beath. (1996). "Develop long-term competitiveness through IT assets." Sloan Management Review. 38(1) 31-43.

Sambamurthy, V. and R. Zmud. (2000). "Research commentary: The organizing logic for an enterprise's IT Activities in the digital era—A prognosis of practice and a call for research." Information Systems Research, 11(2) 105.

The ability to access software and applications from the Internet takes the client server architecture to new levels. It enables people to share files and software over the network that would have been difficult or impossible to share before. This technology enhances the ability to share information in a more cost effective manner. In this atmosphere, the owner of the information can update the information, and it would be updated on the user's machine in real time.