TexasOnline - How Universities Fit

How Do Universities Fit In?

TexasOnline is the official e-government site of the State of Texas, providing seamless "one-stop shopping" access to many university, state agency, and local government services. TexasOnline allows citizens to access educational and government services online, not in line. Using online forms and payments allows students, alumni, citizens, and businesses the ability to conduct transactions with their university or government directly from their home or office.

Initiated by the 76th Legislature, the Electronic Government Task Force successfully launched the TexasOnline Internet portal to provide a single point for citizens and businesses to access e-government services in Texas. The 77th Legislature passed Senate Bill (SB) 187, which requires the TexasOnline Authority, the leadership and operational oversight body of TexasOnline, to implement a common electronic infrastructure through which local governments and state agencies may electronically:

• Send and receive documents or required payments
• Receive applications for original and renewal licenses, and
• Provide other electronic services to the public and within government.
  

SB 187 establishes the 15-member TexasOnline Authority (Authority) to provide vision, leadership and operational oversight for TexasOnline.

More Than Just a Web Site
TexasOnline is more than a Web site -- it is a technical and service infrastructure, and a public-private partnership. The TexasOnline infrastructure was developed through a public/private partnership between the State of Texas and KPMG Consulting using the latest technologies at no cost to general revenue. The infrastructure is hosted at the West Texas Disaster Recovery and Operations Center in San Angelo, Texas. The State of Texas and KPMG have a master contract that allows universities to utilize any or all of the infrastructure services. TexasOnline's technical and service infrastructure is a convenient way for universities to provide online transactions to their students, alumni, and faculty. The infrastructure was designed with the following features in mind:

• Strong Web site security, including authentication services ranging from passwords to PKI solutions
• Scalable architecture that allows for rapid expansion and changes to applications
• Availability 365 days a year, 24-hours a day
• Ability to trace transactions throughout the system
• Easy navigation
• Acceptance of credit cards, electronic funds transfer payment, and electronic checks
• Bilingual Web site
• ADA compliant Web site
• Web application development services
• Call center services (Help desk)
• Assistance to universities in marketing to their constituents
• Shared revenue from convenience or premium service fees

Benefits of TexasOnline
Public universities can benefit from participating in TexasOnline for the following reasons:

• The TexasOnline infrastructure is sufficiently robust to handle a large number of applications - building redundant infrastructures with the features described above would be costly;
• By aggregating volume, universities, state agencies, and local governments can leverage lower rates for credit card fees, lower fees for digital signatures, etc.;
• High levels of security have been built into the infrastructure to insure the integrity of the transactions and users' privacy - a less secure environment built for similar transactions could more easily be breached and compromise the public's confidence in the e-government services;
• TexasOnline's ePay service provides a secure online payment system. ePay performs credit card processing for MasterCard, VISA, AMEX, and Discover credit cards. In addition, ePay also accepts payments via Automated Clearing House (electronic checking). The secure online payment system reduces deployment, scalability, and implementation requirements;
• A common look and feel to transactions will simplify navigation for site visitors and can expedite application development through reusable code modules;
• Universities can take advantage of marketing their services with TexasOnline. Such joint marketing will increase the exposure of their individual online service and also limit their marketing expenses;
• By providing educational services through TexasOnline gives students, alumni, and faculty members the convenience of one-stop-shopping.
  

Ways to Participate in TexasOnline
It is clear that using TexasOnline will provide advantages to universities and more importantly to the educational community and the people of Texas. There are two ways to participate in TexasOnline:

• Hosting of the university's front-end application on the TexasOnline infrastructure and connection to the e-Pay credit card processing services or
• Hosting of the university's front-end application on their own platform/environment and connection to the e-Pay credit card processing services.

KPMG, another vendor of choice, and/or the internal staff of the agency may do the development of the front-end application and interface(s) to the legacy back-end system(s). Please contact DIR for the following documents that provide the hosting specifications for the TexasOnline architecture and the integration specifications for the electronic payment system: TexasOnline Systems Environment Specification and TexasOnline ePay.

Funding Your Service on TexasOnline
TexasOnline is a self-funded initiative. As such, no general revenue funds are used for developing the infrastructure or the applications. TexasOnline will generally make the investment to develop the Web front-end application. The front-end application is a Web computer program designed to collect processing information online and present the results of the processing activity back to the customer. Usually the application passes the information to a legacy system owned by the university for processing.

TexasOnline uses a variety of methods to recover its initial investment in developing and hosting universities' Web services. Some of these methods are included below:

Convenience Fees - Fees collected from the user on an individual transaction fee basis. Convenience fees consist of two charges:

Development Fees - Fees collected from the state agency to partially or completely pay for the cost of development. Universities pay this type of cost to reduce or eliminate the charge to the end user.

Convenience Fee Subsidies - Fees charged by TexasOnline on a transaction basis that the university chooses to pay or partially pay instead of passing the cost on to the Internet user.

Hosting Fees - Revenue collected for application setup and ongoing maintenance and support. These fees are generally fixed amounts both at the onset of the engagement and on a monthly basis. The fees usually relate to customer applications developed by TexasOnline or the university.

Subscription Fees - Fees collected from an entire license population to cover applications development.

(1) "Infrastructure" includes (but is not limited to) the E-Pay system and the overall security that are part of TexasOnline. "Infrastructure" does not include the development of applications and the supporting platform for electronic government projects.