The Gateway Prototype was designed to offer some features and applications to all users and to limit other applications to specific users based on their functional roles. In the Prototype three functions were made available to all state and local users.

• Links to Resources on information about laws and regulations, professional associations, data resources, and other helpful information selected to be of value to state and local officials.
• A searchable, unified Contact Directory of state and local government professionals. This electronic repository of contact information allowed users to identify state and local government officials and use the information for mailings and other purposes.
• User support functions including FAQs and Help features.

Under the role-based scheme, each user had access to additional functions that pertained to his or her job. Roles were assigned based on official job title with some additional adjustments made to fit special local conditions. Three role-restricted applications were selected to represent common categories of state-local business functions, so that the learning generated by the Prototype could be generalized beyond these specific cases.

• Contact Repository Application. This electronic repository contained contact information about state and local government officials such as title, organization, address, phone number, and job function. All contact information was updated electronically through a decentralized process that made each locality or state agency its own data owner. Users who had access to this application were designated data owners who managed their own contact information and contact information for other officials in their agency or jurisdiction. This business process was chosen to represent an authentic shared data resource and was modeled after a similar effort at the New York State Office of the State Comptroller.
• Dog Licensing Application. This application supported transactions that take place between the NYS Department of Agriculture and Markets and city, town, and village clerks. The application included searching for registered dogs in multiple municipalities in NYS, registering a new dog, renewing a dog license, and transferring a license to a new owner. In addition, the application made it possible to create and print reports on new and delinquent or expired licenses. This application was chosen to represent a high volume G2G transaction process.
• Parcel Transfer Verification Check Application. This application performed an automated data quality check to flag possible errors that require further investigation to either adjust or validate the record. The application involved the New York State Office of Real Property Services (ORPS), county real property officials, and town and city assessors. The county forwarded property transfer records to the Gateway Prototype for checking. The application applied nine business rules to each record and flagged records that may have had errors, thus alerting assessors to review them. This application represented rule-based exception reporting.

The role-based access feature was built into the sign-on function and limited access to each application based on individually assigned roles. For example, town clerks generally processed dog licenses and contact information, but not property transfer records. Therefore, when a town clerk signed on to the Gateway Prototype she had immediate access to both the Contact Repository Application and the Dog Licensing Applications, but not to the Parcel Transfer Verification Check Application.