Each year, the New York State Forum for Information Resource Management (the Forum) surveys its members to identify the topics and issues that most concern them as information professionals and public managers. The 1995 survey results showed that four of the top five issues were related to the Internet. In response, CTG selected the Internet as the context for a major project and worked with the Forum to define its goals.

To formulate objectives and priorities for this project, CTG and the Forum brought 170 people together in a workshop called “New York State on the Internet.” The attendees, representing state and local government and the private sector, helped craft an agenda for CTG’s Internet Testbed Projects. Participants focused on management, policy, and technology issues associated with using the Internet. They identified potential benefits and barriers to government’s use of the Internet, and defined some of the deliverables of the Testbed Projects.

The major expected benefits of using the Internet to deliver government services included the ability to provide ubiquitous access to vast amounts of information, eliminating duplication of data and effort, providing one-stop services to citizens, and making government services available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Security, both internal to an agency site and on the network itself, was identified as a major obstacle to making effective use of the Internet. Other identified barriers included lack of experience in managing networked information resources, resistance to change, and lack of knowledge about how to measure costs and benefits.

Finally, the participants identified learning objectives and products that would help the agencies progress in their use of the Web as a service delivery mechanism. A methodology was called for to identify customer needs and the potential of the Web to meet those needs. Staffing, standards, management approaches, sound information management practices, security measures, and cost and performance measurement were identified as important issues for exploration. The workshop participants wanted guidelines for design and implementation of Web-based services, recommendations for security measures, an analysis of possibilities for cross-agency data sharing and service integration, and an identification of products or services that should go on state contracts.

Using the workshop results as a framework, CTG issued a call for participation in an Internet Services Testbed in the late fall of 1995. Ten agencies applied for participation in the program. Seven agencies were selected and the project began in January 1996. These agencies were interested in reaching a variety of constituent groups through the World Wide Web.

• Empire State Development, Office of Motion Picture and TV Development
• Governor’s Traffic Safety Committee
• Hamilton County & the NYS Performance Measurement and Imrpovement System Project
• NYS Division of Housing and Community Renewal
• NYS Division of Military and Naval Affairs
• NYS Office of Alcoholism & Substance Abuse Services
• NYS Office of Real Property Services

The project team included other government and academic partners:

• NYS Archives and Records Administration
• NYS Forum for Information Resource Management
• NYS Department of Health
• NYS Department of Transportation
• Local Government Telecommunications Initiative at Hudson Valley Community College
• University at Albany faculty and staff
• CTG staff and graduate assistants

The project team was supported by nine corporate partners:

• AT&T
• Digital Equipment Corporation
• EMI Communications Corporation
• Eric Elgar
• Microsoft Corporation
• Silicon Graphics
• SUN Microsystems
• Unified Technologies

Digital Equipment Corporation provided software and training for Digital’s Workgroup WebForum product used for communications among project participants. EMI Communications Corporation, Digital, Eric Elgar, Microsoft, Silicon Graphics, SUN Microsystems, and Unified Technologies all provided technology awareness presentations, including those presented at the Security Day Seminar in April 1996. Additionally, SUN Microsystems provided a firewall system in CTG’s Government Technology Solutions Laboratory. AT&T’s donation of multi-media workstations to CTG in 1995 provided platforms for both hands-on tutorials and demonstrations of the agency Web sites at the public demonstration.