The city of big hair and big hats is adopting e-government in a characteristically big way. Dallas’ new Web portal lets residents pay water bills, renew drivers’ licenses, register to vote or report potholes online. The site links directly to the Texas state portal and shares a common infrastructure with it, including servers and network security. The state outsourced www.texasonline.com to BearingPoint Inc. of McLean, Va., in May 2000, said Gary Miglicco, BearingPoint’s national director for e-government services.
The site has been getting a “relatively good response,” Dallas CIO Dan McFarland said. About 3 percent of the 300,000 water bills the city issues each month are being paid online, McFarland said. The site has both English and Spanish versions as well as an interactive city map.
Edocs Inc. of Natick, Mass., handles the back-end processing of payments. Residents can sign up for a password and enter a water bill account number on the site, secured by 128-bit Secure Sockets Layer browser encryption. They can pay bills by credit card or e-check.
The site also accepts employment applications online. Dallas eventually wants to put most of its city services on the Web site, McFarland said.
Quelle: Government Computer News
