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GCN Home > 10/11/04 issue

Maine’s move to online services picks up speed—and users

By Mary Mosquera, GCN Staff

Many states have put services for citizens and businesses online. What sets the efforts of Maine apart is how extensively users have adopted them.

Over the last two years, the state has implemented services such as license renewals, electronic tax filing, document ordering and payment options at www.SOSonline.org. User response has been overwhelming.

Since the services became available online, 99 percent of all driver record searches and 95 percent of all searches of the Uniform Commercial Code have been completed online. Of 50,000 annual reports Maine used to receive on paper, 69 percent are submitted online.

The state has pulled in an average of more than $1.3 million in revenue per month from its online operations this year. And businesses retrieved and filed more than 4.5 million records in the first half of this year.

In January, Maine plans to notify car owners online of insurance suspensions in an effort to motivate them to maintain their car insurance.

Maine secretary of state Dan Gwadosky has been the driving force behind the e-government projects, said Carrie Gott, general manager of InforME, which is a collaboration between the state and a subsidiary of NIC Inc. of Olathe, Kan., which hosts SOSonline.org.

Gwadosky brought business organizations into the process as the state developed and tested its online services. Developers asked businesses what services they wanted online and how they should be presented.

And the state marketed the new services through the media and direct mailings, establishing a mantra for SOSonline: “Get online, not in line.”

Maine provides user support for its online service by telephone and e-mail and makes payment and billing easier for users by providing a variety of options.

One of the first services the site offered was Rapid Renewal for car registration, which let users avoid the hassle of waiting in lines at government offices. In Maine, car owners must pay an excise tax to renew vehicle registrations.

Before the state began offering the service online, car owners had to pay the tax in the towns where vehicles were registered, then complete the renewals at a branch of the Motor Vehicles Department. The online service made the process much simpler.

“We started small, with 10 towns, which sold the service for us through word of mouth,” Gwadosky said. Now, 63 towns offer Rapid Renewal and have completed 75,000 transactions.

More, and more often

To market the service, Gwadosky’s office sent notices to car owners about renewing online. “It was one of the first intergovernmental e-commerce applications in the country because it allowed someone to interface with two branches of government, in this case state and local, in a single application,” he said.

More news on related topics: Executive Center, Great Managers, IT Infrastructure, IT in Action, Management, State & Local, Web Strategies



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