TexasOnline Program Overview
This is an overview and brief history of the TexasOnline
Program.
Overview of
TexasOnline
In August 2000, the State of
Texas launched its official e-government site for state and local
government business. The site, called TexasOnline, not only reaches
across the agencies of our state—it links municipalities,
counties, courts and universities as well. Since going live,
TexasOnline has brought up dozens of applications and has processed
over $20 million in transactions. Texans can already go online to
renew their driver’s licenses, pay business sales taxes, and
obtain oil and gas drilling permits.
Some uses of the TexasOnline
infrastructure are not mandatory for state agencies and local
governments are not required to use TexasOnline. Even when its use
is not required, there are some good reasons for choosing
TexasOnline. From the state’s perspective, the most important
are economies of scale, interoperability and security. That’s
why the TexasOnline Authority and its predecessor, the Electronic
Government Task Force and State of Texas Department of Information
Resources forged a strong partnership with the private sector, led
by KPMG Consulting.
The web site, TexasOnline.com, is designed to serve as a portal
for both state agencies and local governments to create a
comprehensive network of services that citizens can access without
leaving their homes and businesses. Currently, citizens can
perform a variety of government services provided by the state such
as Driver’s License Renewal, Insurance Agent Renewal, and
Sales Tax Filing and Payment. While TexasOnline’s
immediate impact has been to give citizens a portal through which
to access various state services, its ultimate goal is much
greater. TexasOnline offers a pre-existing online
framework to use without the expense and technical issues involved
in building their own separate web sites. By bringing local
governments into the program, TexasOnline will eventually create a
“seamless” government services system, giving citizens
easier access to the services they need – without having to
search for the right downtown office.
Vision Statement
TexasOnline
will provide a single point of
access to government information and services that is: Private;
Secure; Convenient; Efficient; Service oriented; and
Accessible.
Public-Private
Partnership
In May 2000, DIR contracted with KPMG Consulting to develop
TexasOnline, so from the beginning TexasOnline has been a
public-private partnership, in conjunction with industry leaders in
eCommerce technologies. KPMG has assembled a team of Internet
and eCommerce industry leaders that includes Oracle, Cisco, Sun
Microsystems, and Northrop Grumman.
The solution leverages the state’s investment with central
services and standardized components that can be reused by
different agencies and governments. The component-based
technical architecture makes it easy to adapt existing components
and code to meet their unique requirements. Using Java middleware,
TexasOnline can easily connect diverse organizations, systems and
platforms—without major modifications.
Infrastructure
Components
The infrastructure for TexasOnline is hosted
at the West Texas Disaster Recovery and Operations Center in San
Angelo, where KPMG has worked with Northup Grumman to establish a
high-quality Web-hosting site. The services provided by the
infrastructure include
- 24 X 7 availability
- a call center
- outreach/marketing
- web site security
- telecommunication services
- bilingual web site
- application development services, and
- a common payment system.
The common payment system, Epay, has been recognized by Center
for Digital Government in their Digital State Survey 2001 as one of
the Best of Breed under the Electronic Commerce/Business Regulation
category.
Providing the level of security that is expected of the public
sector is another major hurdle. The success of e-government
will ultimately rest on the ability to protect the public interest
and build public trust. TexasOnline therefore offers participating
governments the highest levels of security and privacy possible. In
this area, no cost has been spared, implementing isolated networks,
multiple firewalls, continuous intrusion detection and response,
multiple levels of encryption and physical and logical segregation
of services.
Funding and Fees
TexasOnline is a self-funded endeavor in that the convenience
fees and subscription fees charged to the citizens and
participating governments respectively will fund the project.
KPMG has invested $11 million to date for the overhead costs such
as applications development and security. Under the current
contract with KPMG, the State receives 10% of the gross revenues
from state agency online applications. Once the
infrastructure is paid for, the State receives 10% of state agency
transaction and service fees and 50% of net revenues. The
state does not receive any revenue overrides from local government
online services.
A University of Texas survey
made it clear that Texans were opposed to funding e-government
services through the sale of personal information. So unlike some
other state portals, TexasOnline gathers no personal data on
individuals’ use of the site and does not sell or share any
personal data collected in the course of executing online
services.
TexasOnline Historical View &
Timeline
The above section gives an overview of what TexasOnline is
today. The following section utilizes a timeline to explain
how TexasOnline got to where it is today. Summarized below
are the decisions that have been made and the research and reports
that those decisions were based on. In addition, this section
also summarizes the various other e-government initiatives in
Texas, to give an idea of how TexasOnline fits with those other
efforts.
May
1999
Senate
Bill 974 was passed, which established an Electronic Government
(E-Government) Task Force to assess the feasibility of establishing
a common electronic system using the Internet through which state
and local governments can send documents, receive applications, and
receive required payments.
December 1999
The E-Government Task Force issued
an RFO for a Framework for Electronic Government.
The Department of Information Resources (DIR) reported the
results of the state portal survey in a report
entitled, Survey of State Portal Initiatives.
http://www.dir.state.tx.us/egov/Surveys/State_Survey/index.html
May
2000
KPMG Consulting was awarded the contract
to develop and operate the portal for the State of Texas. The
portal pilot agencies were the Comptroller of Public Accounts,
Railroad Commission, Real Estate Commission, Department of
Licensing and Regulation, Department of Insurance, and the Natural
Resources Conservation Commission.
June
2000
The Telecommunications and Information
Policy Institute at the University of Texas at Austin released the
public survey results on the public’s
Internet use, accessibility, and attitudes in using the Internet
for government services. The report is entitled
E-Government Services and Computer and Internet Use in Texas.
http://www.dir.state.tx.us/egov/surveys.htm
July
2000
DIR released the results of the
Texas state agency survey, which explored
perceived benefits and barriers to state agency participation in
online government, identified agencies’ needs to participate
in online government, and documented agencies’ progress to
providing services online. The report is entitled Survey of
State Agency Initiatives.
http://www.dir.state.tx.us/egov/Surveys/Agency_Survey/index.html
August
2000
Hill
Research Consultants issued the results of the Texas
Business Executive Survey on the corporate use of the
Internet.
http://www.dir.state.tx.us/egov/Surveys/Business_Survey/index.htm
DIR issued white papers
entitled, Seamless Government Issues, Portal Security Issues,
Privacy Issues Involved in Electronic Government, and
Internet Access Issues Involved in Electronic
Government.
November 2000
As required by SB 974, the
E-Government Task Force released a report to the Legislature
entitled TexasOnline: A Feasibility Report on Electronic
Government.
January
2001
TexasOnline status changed from
“pilot” to “operational.”
May
2001
The
Legislature passed and the Governor signed SB 187, which
establishes a 15-member authority to provide vision, leadership,
and operational oversight for the TexasOnline portal project and
requires the authority to report to the Legislature on the
feasibility of allowing the sale and placement of advertising on
TexasOnline.
DIR contracted with Calyx
Consulting to develop a benchmarking tool by which TexasOnline and
agencies can measure the per transaction cost of providing a
service before going online and after going online.
July
2001
DIR announced the results of
benchmarking the Agent License Renewal application of the Texas
Department of Insurance. DIR started looking for other
agencies willing to pilot the benchmarking templates.
November
2001
The
existing Electronic Government Task Force is abolished.
January
2002
The first meeting of the TexasOnline
Authority occured.
June 2005
Legislation is passes by the Texas Legislature and the Office of the Governor that
abolishes the TexasOnline Authority and transfers its powers and duties to DIR.
see the full-text of this bill,
H.B. 2048, on the Texas Legislature Online Web site.
|
