| Washington has topped a national survey as the top state in the country for using information technology to deliver public services for the third year in a row. The ranking, called the Digital State Survey, has been conducted for the past three years by the Progress and Freedom Foundation, a national organization of policy and technology experts.
“We’re proud of this honor because of our commitment to provide excellent on-line services,” said Gov. Gary Locke. “We’re orchestrating a groundbreaking relationship between citizens and government — a dot-gov relationship that works like the best of the dot-coms. As the Digital State, Washington continues to set the performance standard for all other states to follow.”
In contrast to previous years’ Digital State Surveys, which measured the simple existence of online government functions, this year’s survey looked for marked improvements in the sophistication level of state government web sites, infrastructure, Internet access and Internet participation. Washington scored a perfect 100 in three of the eight evaluation categories, including Digital Democracy, Social Services, and Management/Administration.
Washington secured the top spot through he wide variety of opportunities for the public to complete transactions, participate in the democratic process, receive public assistance and get information easily form the state. Hundreds of specific programs from dozens of state organizations were used as the basis of Washington’s winning entry materials for the 1999-2000 Digital State Survey. Currently, Washington offers more than 240 public service applications to the public through the state Internet portal, Access Washington, at access.wa.gov. |
