Bringing government to your home
Released February 2004 

      We talk a lot about e-government around here. We discuss it, promote it and get excited when we see the numbers grow.
        But does everyone know what it means? E-government, or electronic government, is transacting state business over a secure computer network, by using credit or debit cards.
        We here at the State Treasurer’s Office have jumped into the fray, by supplying the network by which state agencies, educational institutions and other entities can collect revenue.
        Our Information and Technology staff has supplied “encryption language” that enables the various entities’ Web sites and our network to communicate. Just as importantly, this language assures that anyone doing on-line business with the state may do so without worrying about the threat of hackers stealing a credit card number.
        This security is paying off in more than safety.
        Students at Marshall and West Virginia universities and Shepherd College, for example, need no longer stand in long lines to pay tuition.
        By simply logging onto their respective school Web sites, and subsequently our network, students there have paid a cumulative $24.4 million in tuition and fees on-line since the program’s launch in August of 2000.
        Growth has been most dramatic from the close of the 2003 fiscal year to the present. Marshall’s students have transacted approximately $7 million in tuition and fees, while WVU represents $6.3 million of that total.
         In all, our e-government program has accounted for $15.6 million in revenue at the halfway point this fiscal year, as opposed to $8.5 million in all of fiscal 2003.
        Hunters and fishermen bought 15,000 licenses last fiscal year, generating nearly $1 million in revenue.
        All this sounds impressive, we hope, but we’re not here to simply throw numbers around. E-government makes sense, both in terms of customer service and fiscal responsibility.
        Taxpayers, after all, are customers of government. You pay your hard-earned money for services, whether it’s a Secretary of State record search or a tuition bill at Marshall.
        If it’s more convenient – and I’m sure it is – to do this at home, then that’s all the better.
        E-government also makes financial sense for the state. The fewer paper checks we process the more money we save.
       A Treasurer’s Office analysis shows that each paper check, once it passes through all the necessary channels, costs 30 cents each.
       Under our administration, we have reduced the number of paper checks from more than four million a year to about 2.7 million. We want to continue lowering that number.
      So look for us to keep nudging the state into the new millennium, pushing for more and more e-government.
      We want you to be as excited about it as we are.