Office of Governor Gary Locke
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - September 26, 2000
Contact:  Governor's Communications Office, 360-902-4136
Alt Contact:  Ellen Langley, Department of Information Services, 360-902-3567

Washington is top state for delivering on-line services

OLYMPIA - For the third straight year, a national survey has ranked Washington the top state in the country for using information technology to deliver public services.


"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."

Washington is the sole winner of the Digital State title to date. 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.

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 websites, 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.

"We're streamlining government to make it faster, more efficient and less expensive," added Locke. "It's state government all under one roof, letting people easily access information and services with the click of a mouse."

Washington gained its first-place ranking through the wide variety of opportunities for the public to complete transactions, participate in the democratic process, receive public assistance and get information easily from 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.

"I am very proud of the technological work that goes into winning the digital state title," said Steve Kolodney, director of the state's Department of Information Services, the agency responsible for coordinating the state's technology policy leadership and infrastructure development.

The agency recently completed Release Two of the Washington State Digital Government Plan, a detailed infrastructure-planning guide for meeting citizens' highest expectations for on-line service delivery. The plan is available online at www.wa.gov/dis/e-gov/.

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