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SPECIAL REPORT: State & Local Innovations | Delaware uses VoiceXML to expand online
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Project at a glance
WHAT: Access Delaware
WHO: Delaware Department of Technology and Information
MISSION: To bring Internet access and provide government information to all citizens across the state
WHAT WAS: Internet access was not widely available in Delaware’s rural pockets, which stretch across the state, or to vacation homes along the coast. As a result, the state’s efforts to offer services over the Internet were not reaching a considerable portion of the population living outside the one metropolitan area.
WHAT IS: Through the use of VoiceXML, Access Delaware has brought the state’s online services into the homes of thousands. Citizens call an 800-number and receive information on where to find free Internet access and where to vote, as well as drought conditions and, soon, data on health emergencies.
IMPACT: Delaware officials have been able to expand the reach of their online government services, making them accessible to nearly everyone in the state.
COST: Under $100,000
In this Special Report
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Michele Ackles, deputy principal assistant at the state’s Department of Technology and Information, helped bridge that gap.
Delaware has its high-density areas and high-traffic beaches, but much of the state folds out across flat, two-lane country roads, with chicken farming a major industry.
Ackles and other DTI officials found that getting technology and Internet access to Delaware’s scattered, mostly rural population was no easy task. “We’re tiny, and our population is under 800,000,” Ackles said. “We have a very vibrant metropolitan area in Wilmington with major corporate players like DuPont. But the majority of Sussex County [which takes up the southern third of the state] is still primarily agricultural.”
Because of its dispersed population and a growing number of citizens more than 70 years old, Ackles said, Delaware officials realized that while parts of the state have crossed the digital divide, a significant portion, for various reasons, have not.
Net divide
Although many people in the state take for granted that they can hop online anytime, there are numerous homes that do not have computers and are not aware of where they can access the Internet.
This meant that the state’s online services were unavailable to a sizeable chunk of the population, and that essential information such as where citizens should go to vote could not get across the digital divide.
“We all make the assumption that everyone knows where there’s free Internet access,” Ackles said. “We also tend to lose sight of the fact that most kids are great with computers, but our parents are not.”
While not everyone has, or knows how to use, a computer, most everyone has a telephone.
So Delaware officials in 2002 launched the initial phases of Access Delaware, a project aimed at letting citizens access the Internet via an 800 number.
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