In the last decade, the Internet has become commonplace. More of us buy books online, place bids in electronic auctions and find deals on cars and vacations. And even this growth in consumer sales has been dwarfed by the business-to-business commerce that is increasingly conducted through the Net.
Yet City Hall has been slow to jump into cyberspace. That's surprising because government, like any for-profit enterprise, offers plenty of services the public needs, or is required to get. Further, the Web could offer the convenience and speed citizens say they want from their government. It could bring an end to those long traffic ticket lines, and we might say goodbye to being put on hold at the department of sidewalk repair.
The Internet offers benefits for government, too. Over time, Net transactions can be cheaper than the paper kind. And there are fewer chances for human error because software can correct problems before a service is completed.
To its credit, the state of Illinois has begun to make adjustments, moving to put much information online. Though state officials have tagged their Web site with a corny slogan -- "Pathway to history, portal to the future" -- Illinoisans can check the progress of state legislation, learn what obscure departments do, research a professional license, even check unclaimed property.
"This is a new way to provide government service that people will expect. We have to provide all of them, including mail, phone or over the counter," says Brent Crossland, deputy technology officer for the state's technology office. "This is a new vehicle, not a replacement."
In fact, compared to the rest of the country, Illinois' state government appears to be doing a pretty good job of entering the Internet Age. A survey in January by the Center for Digital Government ranked this state eighth in two categories: electronic commerce and taxation. The center is a think tank that follows the move onto the Net by governments nationwide. Under e-commerce, the center looked at the availability of downloadable permits and licenses, the ability to pay for them online and whether agency staff can be contacted through the Web. Georgia earned that top ranking. Under taxation, the center focused on the ability to download tax forms and file online. Kansas got the highest ranking in that category.
There are other government services that could be offered online. In Arizona, voters in the Democratic Party primary were allowed to vote online by using an assigned PIN number. And a proposal to study online voting was approved by the Illinois House this spring, though its prospects looked poor in the Senate because opponents worry about fraud.
There are other concerns about putting government online, as well. For public agencies, creating a useful Web site is more than just opening a corner store. It raises fundamental questions about how citizens interact with a government that is supposed to be serving them.
Take the question of credit, for instance. Online buyers use credit cards to complete their purchases. For-profit merchants must pay a fee to the card issuer every time a customer uses that card in their shops or on their Web sites. The fee is typically 2 percent to 4 percent of the price of the sale. And that means taxpayers pay the fee when a citizen buys something from government on credit.
But Treasurer Judy Baar Topinka argues that expenses can be reduced through economies of scale. She's lined up an Illinois affiliate of National City bank in Cleveland to handle credit card business for state agencies. Though the agreement doesn't eliminate the credit processing fee, the bank has agreed to decrease that fee as the volume of business goes up.
Whatever that cost, Topinka says, government has a financial incentive to encourage plastic over paper. "Agencies have difficulty processing checks -- they get lost, they're not signed and they bounce. When you use a credit card, we get the money up front. And we don't have to deal with collection agencies," she says.
"We want to be as paperless as possible. The private sector is doing this well already. Now government is catching up."
Illinois Issues April 2000 | 6
The pooled credit program began almost a year ago. In the last half of 1999, the bank's credit card account has processed $2.5 million in transactions, though some of that came over the phone. So far, Topinka has signed on the state's departments of transportation, agriculture, revenue and professional regulation. She's encouraging others to come aboard.
But the state agency that may have had the most success with an interactive site is the Department of Natural Resources. Last year, that department sold only 1 percent of its 1 million hunting and fishing licenses online, but those numbers may triple this year, according to Lou Matsko, manager of the department's systems and licensing division. The buyer fills out the form online, pays for it with a credit card, prints it out and signs it.
The most popular use for hunters is signing up for the required county lottery on eligibility for deer season.
"[Hunters] went after them like gangbusters because they get a receipt, and we got the correct form from them. With the mail, sometimes the form is not filled out correctly and customers miss out getting into the lottery," says Matsko.
There's been a learning curve for Matsko's agency, though. Officials thought online registrations for boat purchases would be popular. But the salesmen who have to log in the data didn't want to leave the showroom floor during the sales season. That service hasn't taken off.
Meanwhile, the Department of Revenue has been promoting electronic filing of taxes for 10 years, according to Director Glen Bower. This year, the goal is to receive 1 million returns, or 20 percent of the total expected state tax filings, through the Net and over the phone. Bower says an Internet return is about $1 cheaper to process than a standard paper tax form and filers can get their refunds faster.
There have been online growing pains in that agency, too. Going into last year's April 15 crunch time, the online filing system got bogged down. It took 45 minutes to file, hardly the speedy convenience the Internet promises. The department says it has bought equipment to fix that problem.
Both of these agencies pass credit card charges on to customers as a cost of the added convenience. There are other drawbacks for cybercitizens. Those who owe taxes to the state are in no hurry to see that debt processed faster.
Still, Illinoisans are rapidly getting used to doing business online. As is the state. Not so for local government.
Ken Alderson, director of the Illinois Municipal League, argues local officials may not think it's worth the investment. "There's a lot of pandering going on with the Internet. Government is not a competitive system like Amazon.com trying to sell the next bestseller. You don't get your water or fire protection from someone else," he says.
And if a municipal Web site does what its promoters promise, then citizens will be doing the data input that is now being done by city workers, says Alderson. Those workers, many unionized, may not appreciate less paperwork.
Nevertheless, Chicago is aiming to build a system that cuts employee input, though that system may be a year off, says Katy Herington, the city's Webmaster. "We want to modernize so the citizen enters their own information into the city's database and it's not duplicated by a city worker," says Herington. "We want the front end and back end integrated."
In fact, Chicago's Web site is loaded now with information. It was judged second best for large cities by Government Technology magazine last year.
According to an online survey and interviews with focus groups, the top requested service is the ability to pay parking tickets online, Herington says. And business users would like to be able to track the status of a building permit as it moves through the government maze.
Evanston, just north of Chicago, has even more ambitious plans. That city, home to Northwestern University, wants to connect its government, businesses, schools and citizens on one sophisticated system. In fact, interact-ivity is the next step in this technology revolution, something Chicago, and even the state, has been slow to develop. A private/public partnership is building a high-speed network that will give all of Evanston's 3,000 businesses their own Web sites, allow users to interact with government and eventually provide phone and cable television service.
The idea can be likened to a cooperative that will buy high-tech services at wholesale costs and resell them at retail prices to Evanston's 75,000 residents, says Ronald Kysiak, the executive director of e-TropolisEvanston, the group organizing the venture. He says the income generated will go to managing the system and helping to bridge the so-called "digital divide" between the computer literate and those left by the side of the cyberroad. Computers and training can be given to those who can't afford them.
Beyond some grants from the city and Northwestern, e-TropolisEvanston will pay for itself, says Kysiak.
"We are taking control of our technical future. Otherwise we have to take what [communications companies] give us," he says.
Meanwhile, Brent Crossland's state technology office is attempting to provide advice and information to communities throughout the state. The key message: Local officials could lose out on cost efficiencies that might be gained if they would band together to create their online systems. "I hate to think of 102 counties all doing this independently because it's a wasted effort," he says.
The Evanston model may be more advanced than many governments want or need. Nevertheless, online interactivity is becoming commonplace for business and consumers. Governments that drag their feet now could find themselves eating cyberdust.
Illinois Issues April 2000 | 7
