THE 50 STATES

MARYLAND

UP, UP AND AWAY. The State Agency for Surplus Property conducted an online auction sale of a 1968 Piper airplane that formerly belonged to the Maryland Aviation Administration through www.bid4assets.com. The auction began with a minimum bid of $35,000 and within a day had attracted 11 bids that increased the price to almost $40,000. Bid4assets.com Inc. of Silver Spring, Md., previously has auctioned vehicles and construction equipment for the state.

MASSACHUSETTS

I HAVE TO WAIT HOW LONG? The Registry of Motor Vehicles posted information on its site, at www.massrmv.com, about the waiting times at its offices. The system uses software from Q-Matic International Inc. of Molndal, Sweden, to tell motorists at a given time how long they can expect to wait in line for both driver's license and registration transactions.

MICHIGAN

ANY PORT IN A STORM. The Natural Resources Department unveiled a system for boaters to make harbor reservations through its Web site, at www.dnr.state.mi.us. It covers reservations at nine northeastern Michigan harbors so far, with more harbors to be added later.

MINNESOTA

ARE YOU BEING SERVED? Minneapolis is consolidating its applications and Web services on an ES7000 server from Unisys Corp. running Microsoft Windows 2000. The city expects cost savings by developing a fault-tolerant network and reducing the cost of maintaining several servers. The project, which will serve about 2,000 e-mail users, is expected to cost about $700,000 and to be completed by late 2002. The city has hired Bitsolutions Inc. of White Bear Lake and Microsoft Corp. to help build the system.

MISSISSIPPI

IT'S IN THE CARDS. The Human Services Department will launch a pilot electronic benefits transfer program in Rankin County in March. Recipients of food stamps and Temporary Assistance to Needy Families will receive debit cards and personal identification numbers to replace paper forms. Lockheed Martin IMS, a division of Lockheed Martin Corp., received a five-year, $26 million contract to implement the EBT system.

MONTANA

BIG GIS COUNTRY. Every public school classroom in Montana, from kindergarten through Grade 12, will be getting free copies of geographic information system software next year through a program sponsored by NASA, Environmental Systems Research Institute of Redlands, Calif., and Erdas Inc. of Atlanta. Each school will receive digital satellite images of Montana from NASA's Earth Observing System project and copies of ArcView Image Analysis extension, which is image processing software developed jointly by ESRI and Erdas.

MISSOURI

NO MORE PENCILS. How did teachers in five school districts spend their summer vacations? Grading exams over the Internet. The teachers spent three weeks scoring the state-required Missouri Assessment Program exams, which measure student performance in math, science, social studies and communication arts. The exams were scanned and saved as digital files by officials at CTB/McGraw-Hill of Monterey, Calif.

NEBRASKA

EMPLOYEE UNION. Omaha and Douglas County are consolidating their financial, procurement, payroll and human resources data using Oracle Corp.'s E-business Suite. The integrated system will automate administrative tasks for the more than 6,000 city and county employees in the area.

NEVADA

A REST FOR NOMADS. Gov. Kenny Guinn announced that the state welfare computer system, the Nevada Operations Multi-Automated System, won certification from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, bringing the state into compliance with federal requirements. For years, NOMADS suffered from missed deadlines and user complaints [GCN/State & Local, June 1999, Page 8 and March 20, Page 8].

NEW HAMPSHIRE

GRANITE STATE GRANT. The Department of Resources and Economic Development received a $100,000 state economic development grant, to be matched by federal funds, for spurring deployment of broadband services. As part of its Telecommunications Planning and Development Initiative, the department plans to expand its E-Trade Federation, which provides videoconferencing and broadband services to small businesses and rural areas.

NEW JERSEY

CLASS ACT. The Garden State has beaten its goal of installing at least one classroom computer for every five students a year. The state government devoted $250 million to the project, supplemented by millions from local governments. Students in kindergarten through high school now share multimedia computers in a ratio of 1-to-4.5 students, up from a ratio of 1-to-7 in 1999.

NEW MEXICO

GOOD CATCH. A city Web site gave out misinformation to Albuquerque voters, who were asked in a May 30 special election if the city should issue up to $15 million in general obligation bonds for a baseball stadium. The city council's Web site, at www.ci.albuquerque.nm.us, mistakenly told voters they couldn't vote on a second question'should funds be used to renovate the city's existing stadium or should the city build an entirely new stadium'if they did not vote 'yes' for the first question. In fact, a voter could answer yes or no to either question. The city fixed the error within an hour of learning about it, but absentee and early voting already were under way.

NEW YORK

FREE TO GOOD HOME. Westchester County has donated about 150 unneeded computers to 10 local, nonprofit social service agencies. No speed demons, the PCs have Intel 486 or low-end Pentium processors. The county has another 250 PCs ready to donate and is collecting more for future distribution.

NORTH CAROLINA

TARHEELS MAP IT OUT. Charlotte launched a four-month strategic planning process to develop a citywide geographic information system. The GIS will include information about roads, utility lines and buildings as well as crime and population data. The city has allocated nearly $1 million in its fiscal 2002 budget to build the system.

NORTH DAKOTA

WETWARE. Two state departments, Tax and Information Technology, adopted LiquidOffice forms software from Cardiff Software Inc. of San Diego. LiquidOffice is written in Extensible Markup Language and uses Adobe Portable Document Format to route forms on the Web. Cardiff officials estimate the software can save between $30 and $150 per transaction compared with paper transactions.

OHIO

THROUGH A GLASS, QUICKLY. Butler County approved a $2.7 million contract with Normap Inc. of Toledo to install an 86-mile fiber-optic network. The network, to be installed next year, will connect Hamilton, Middletown, West Chester Township and Miami University.

OKLAHOMA

E-KLAHOMA. NIC of Overland Park, Kan., will build and manage Oklahoma's electronic-government portal, set to debut this fall. Oklahoma paid NIC $1.1 million to develop the portal.

OREGON

BAKER'S MAN. Baker County's one-man information systems shop, run by Bill Lee, is speeding up county services through a combination of Lotus Domino databases and IBM iSeries eServers. The system, at www.bakercounty.org, offers a citizen interface for voter registration, taxes and law enforcement. Recently an anonymous tip to the county's 'most wanted' offenders Web site helped authorities find and arrest an offender.

PENNSYLVANIA

NOT IN MY BACK YARD NEWS. The Environmental Protection Department launched an e-mail notification service for Web users who want to be alerted to environmental permit applications. Users can visit the department's site, at www.dep.state.pa.us, and register their e-mail addresses to be notified of applications for air- and water-pollution control facilities, landfills, incinerators, transfer stations, drinking water treatment plants, coal mines, quarries and radiation sources. Users can ask to be notified of new applications in particular jurisdictions and select individual applications to track through the review process.

RHODE ISLAND

DRESS: CASUAL. Rhode Islanders just might trade in casual Friday for casual 24-7. Gov. Lincoln Almond said this fall Rhode Islanders will be able to renew their car registration or obtain a business permit from the comfort of their own home computers via the state Web site, at www.state.ri.us.

SOUTH CAROLINA

WILD ABOUT HORRY. Last month Horry County School District officials announced they would use the Demandstar online bid distribution system from Onvia Inc. of Seattle. District officials said the new system will reduce costs and provide opportunities for a wider variety of businesses to bid on school district projects.

SOUTH DAKOTA

AGILE APPS. The state is using Agilera Inc. of Englewood, Colo., to host its human resources and payroll applications using Lawson's Insight financial suite from Lawson Software of St. Paul, Minn. Written in Extensible Markup Language, the Insight applications will be offered over the Web.

TENNESSEE

THE MIDDLE KINGDOM. The Office of Information Resources has finished a research project on middleware technologies. OIR worked with six other agencies to develop a report on when and how technologies such as Extensible Markup Language should be used. The study team recommended that agencies using XML adopt schema standards rather than the older, harder-to-use document type description standard for describing metadata.

TEXAS

TWO TO TANGO. The Attorney General's Office and the Transportation Department bought $25 million worth of DeskPro EN Series convertible minitower desktop PCs from Compaq Computer Corp., including peripherals and service. Each PC comes with a 733-MHz Intel Celeron processor, 128M of RAM and a 10G hard drive. The agencies will later migrate to Compaq's Evo line of PCs, which come with dual Intel Pentium III Xeon processors and Intel's i840 chip set.

UTAH

ROLL CALL. After some debate [GCN/State & Local, June 2001, Page 12] Utah lawmakers approved a plan to develop a Web site where citizens could see each state legislator's voting history at a glance. The site will link to the Legislature's Web site at www.le.state.us.

VERMONT

SCANNER SNAG. Tax commissioner Janet Ancel is beginning to see the light after the interface between the state's 5-year-old Eastman Kodak Co. scanners and IBM Corp. tax software went awry last year. The scanners had to be calibrated, or 'trained,' to read 25 different tax forms, Ancel said. But the department only trained the scanners to recognize a few standard forms. Ancel said the problems have been worked out.

VIRGINIA

SUPPORTING CHILD SUPPORT. The Social Services Department launched an enhancement to its Web site that provides child support case information to custodial and noncustodial parents. The feature, at www.dss.state.va.us/family/dcsecase.cgi, lets parents check their current case and payment information, get child support applications and forms, and find the locations of domestic relations courts and child support directors.

WASHINGTON

A CAPITAL CAPITOL. Students at Washington Middle School in Olympia are putting the finishing touches on a virtual tour of the 74-year-old Capitol building. Chuck Waiste, tour services coordinator for the state's General Services Administration, asked the students to build a Web site so that students in the eastern part of the state could tour the Capitol online. The virtual tour, when ready, will be available at access.wa.gov.

WEST VIRGINIA

POLO PLAYERS. West Virginia's kindergarten through Grade 12 teachers will participate in the Marco Polo project, a Web portal that offers teaching tools for economics, geography, art, math and science. The WorldCom foundation of Clinton, Miss., gave the state a $25,000 grant to fund the project.

WISCONSIN

JOB OF WORK. The Workforce Development Department launched a Job Order System that allows employers to post job openings on the Internet. Department computer specialists developed the system in-house over two years.

WYOMING

WYLD SIDE. You just never know when a librarian is going to go wild in Wyoming. The Wyoming State Library's new online Internet portal site, at goWyld.net, makes it easier to search the Wyoming Libraries Database (WYLD) from a home PC, said electronic-resources librarian Erin Kinney. The site's simple graphics make it easier to download information with a slower modem, said state librarian Leslie Boughton. 'And we wanted a memorable uniform resource locator,' Boughton said.