You can buy hunting and fishing licenses. Fork over the registration fee for your boat or snowmobile. Renew a nursing or physician license. Report workplace injuries. Pay your taxes. You can do a lot of business with the state of Minnesota online.
But how secure is the personal and financial information that people share with the state via the Web? That became a concern after Legislative Auditor James Nobles reported this week that the state's Web-based license tab renewal system was rife with security flaws.
The Minnesota Department of Public Safety, which oversees the online license tab service, insists there's no evidence that citizens' sensitive information has been compromised. But the Public Safety Department has shut down the online service until "maintenance and upgrades" are completed.
No other audits of state systems are under way. But the auditor's office advised the Public Safety Department to look at its other online services, which range from aircraft registration to ordering bus passes, said Chris Buse, the Legislative Auditor's information technology audit manager.
Nobles says past audits have found weaknesses in the security of other state Web sites.
"They (state officials) need to pay attention to other systems as well," he said.
Other state e-government Web sites are not problematic, insists Keith Payden, the state's chief information officer.
"I feel strongly that we don't have anywhere near the same kind of exposure at other state agencies," he said Tuesday. "The (Department of Motor Vehicles) system was an anomaly, the way it was built. We are fairly deep in terms of security at many of the other agencies."
The Pawlenty administration wants to consolidate and coordinate the information technology efforts, including security, of state agencies by creating an Office of Enterprise Technology.
"We've managed security at the state in a fairly fragmented way," Payden said. "We manage it agency by agency, by and large. … Security is an issue that needs increased attention. The more we offer e-government alternatives, the stronger our emphasis on security will have to become."
Minnesotans' embrace of e-government services is still fairly low, he said.
He noted that only about 11 percent of Minnesotans renew their license tabs online. But the revenue from online registration renewals increased fivefold from 2001 to 2004.
"The public will demand more online services,'' said Payden. "And from the cost (control) perspective, we have to figure out how to deliver more services online and to do that with the confidence of the public."
Autor: Martin J. Moylan
Quelle: Pioneer Press, 20.04.2005
