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. For example, in the Prototype, the idea of a single authentic directory of data maintained and shared by state and local governments was used with contact information (as shown by the Contact Repository Application) but other areas of government including child health and well being, education or law enforcement have data that could be maintained and shared in much the same way.

• Contact Repository Application. This business process was chosen to represent an authentic shared data resource and was modeled after a similar effort at the NYS Office of the State Comptroller. The 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.
• Dog Licensing Application. This application was chosen to represent a high volume G2G transaction process. It 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.
• Parcel Transfer Verification Check Application . This application represented rule-based exception reporting. It 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 NYS Office of Real Property Services (ORPS), county real property officials, and town and city assessors. The county forwarded property transfer records to the 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.

The role-based access feature was built into the Gateway’s 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 Prototype, she had immediate accesses to both the Contact Repository Application and the Dog Licensing Application, but not to the Parcel Transfer Verification Check Application.