State of Change: A focus on e-government has taken Pennsylvania from chaos to competitiveness. (CaseStudy).

As recently as 1995, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania was known more for coal and steel than for its government's techno-savvy and with good reason. Six different e-mail systems, each one incompatible with the others, and myriad platforms, operating systems and software solutions -- most of them, again, incompatible with one another -- reflected the state's chaotic approach to technology. Pennsylvania also was one of only three states without a government Web page.

That's all in the past. Thanks to a wide-ranging series of initiatives deployed by a solidly funded and supported Office for Information Technology, Pennsylvania has emerged over the past two years as a sophisticated, wired, online leader in the new economy of e-business.

"The Internet -- and what we've been able to do with it -- has transformed our identity from that of a coal and steel state to a cyberstate to be reckoned with," says Martin Horn, Pennsylvania's secretary of administration. Indeed, in June, Pennsylvania ranked ninth in "Cyberstates 2001: A State-by-State Overview of the High-Technology Industry' an annual report released by the American Electronic Association and the Nasdaq Stock Market.

How did this transformation happen in such a short time? It began with a vision for change articulated by former Governor Tom Ridge when he took office in 1995. Today's personal computers, he noted in a speech in June, are more powerful than the computer that launched Apollo rockets to the moon. "But it's not much good," he added, "if only 5,000 state employees out of 80,000 even have one. Or if those who do can't communicate with one another because of incompatible software. Or if you need 17 separate data centers with 180 employees just to manage and process the data. When I came to office, Pennsylvania did not have a government that was forward-thinking about technology. In many cases, we didn't even use technology, let alone manage it."

"Our goal," said Ridge, "has been to use technology as a tool to improve three key things: customer service, public safety and economic competitiveness." That goal has been met. Today, an interactive Web portal called PA PowerPort (www.state.pa.us) and a robust search engine, PA PowerSearch, have heightened customer service as government agencies and functions become easier to find and use 24 hours a day. For example, residents can log on to renew a driver's license or vehicle registration, apply for a hunting or fishing license, file taxes, check on a tax refund and gain access to a multitude of other services.

Pennsylvania's Justice Network site (www.pajnet.state.pa.us) enables state, county and local public safety agencies to communicate and collaborate in new ways, enhancing the safety of Pennsylvania's streets, neighborhoods and cities.

On the economic development front, the PA Open for Business site (www.paopen4business.state.pa.us) is assisting prospective entrepreneurs who, with a few keystrokes, can find exactly what they need to know to get their businesses off the ground. When they're ready to do business, they can enter data once and it's automatically routed to the appropriate state agencies. The innovative site is logging upwards of a million hits each month by Web users on six continents.

The government's 40,000 PCs are now compatible, too, under a program called Commonwealth Connect that standardized software and e-mail for all state agencies this year. Productivity is up and costs are down, with hard dollar savings of $9.2 million projected over the next three years, and a reduction in total cost of software ownership saving the state an additional $9 million annually.

All of these programs and services rest on the foundation of one key initiative: Pennsylvania's Data PowerHouse, a $547 million project that was completed in October 2000, and is expected to save taxpayers $110 million over the next five years. Prior to construction of the Data PowerHouse, the Commonwealth's data system consisted of 17 mainframes in 14 state agencies. Most were within a stone's throw of the others, yet each required staffing, there were no economies of scale, none had disaster-recovery capacity or back-up power, and few had adequate fire suppression.

"We knew this situation could not be allowed to continue," says Horn. "We had a fundamental understanding that the world around us had changed. So we embarked on a project to consolidate (the multiple sites] into a single, state-of-the-art data center."

The data center migration took remarkably little time -- just 14 months -- which Horn attributes to leadership from the top, careful planning with their outsourcing partner, Pennsylvania-based Unisys, and a commitment on the part of both state government and Unisys to put people first.

"The biggest challenge is always the people, because you have feudal baronies and turfs and egos and pride and job security issues," says Horn. "Dealing with the people aspect is always as big a hurdle, and sometimes bigger, than the technology.

"We engaged people at all levels, from the front-line workers actually running the data centers to high-level representatives of each agency," he continues. "We appointed them to a joint steering committee where they could have a hand in designing and structuring the project, writing the RFP and selecting the vendor."

Thanks to Data PowerHouse, agencies are now able to share data quickly and efficiently, computing functions take less time, processing errors are reduced, and the system is accessible around the clock. "We now have a state government that's fluent in the language of technology," said Ridge. "It's freed our citizens. They no longer have to think about how to obtain services from or communicate with their government. Now, they just do it!"

"It's a value-added concept," adds Horn. "The Governor was always looking for places where partnerships with business add value to what government does." Horn also points to the Keystone Communications Project, a partnership with a consortium of companies aimed at delivering strategic support and furthering the development of Pennsylvania's information technology infrastructure.

This, says Horn, is a perfect of example of adding value. "Years ago, government created infrastructure by creating roads, and communities grew," he says. "Today, telecommunications networks are the backbone infrastructure that enables communities to grow, and Pennsylvania can play a role in that.

"Our vision was to make Pennsylvania a leader among states and a competitor among nations," he adds, "and we've done it. And it's fun -- fun to be on the leading edge, fun to be showing the way, fun to be proud of your state."