Governor announces "electronic government" proposal

All state agencies will have a Web site with all government forms, including license applications, available on the Internet in 90 days.

Those are the first goals of the "Silver Source" program announced Wednesday by Gov. Kenny Guinn and his information technology director, Marlene Lockard.

Lockard said communications technology centered on the Internet will completely reorganize the way government does business. Silver Source is Nevada's program to get the state into doing business electronically.

"Nevada is already in the business of electronic commerce," she said, pointing to state records and information from the secretary of state's business filings to election information to laws passed by the last two Legislatures and even Supreme Court opinions.

She said job opportunities in business as well as state jobs and information are posted on the state's Pre-Paid College Tuition program.

The Department of Motor Vehicles is getting ready to renew drivers' licenses and registrations on the Internet and the secretary of state will soon be handling corporate filings and similar transactions electronically.

She said the goal of Silver Source is to "make government accessible to both the public and business 24 hours a day, seven days a week."

And she said electronic commerce will enable state government to "integrate" functions so everything a person needs in a specific area can be linked even if it's actually done in different state department.

That means all social services could be accessed through one area of the state's Web page, while schools and education issues would all be tied together on another set of links.

She said separate state agencies will be replaced in the public's mind by "one-stop shopping," constituents are replaced by consumers or voters and centralized information by wide open access to data.

Lockard said the state wasn't even on the Internet in 1995 and had just 1.4 million "hits" on its site in 1996. By 1999, she said, there were nearly 47.8 million hits on state agency pages.

For the state to provide service electronically, a task force must push e-commerce in state agencies, get them on the Internet with useful information for the public and prepare legislation and budget proposals for the 2001 Legislature to expand the state's electronic offerings for both the public and business.

The plan was unveiled by Lockard at Wednesday's meeting of the Board of Examiners. Lockard prepared the presentation at the request of Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa and Secretary of State Dean Heller, who said they wanted a full report on what the state is doing to develop e-commerce. But neither attended the meeting in person, instead listening by phone from Las Vegas.

Guinn was visibly annoyed by their absence.

"I thought it was very important for the membership of the board to see this," he said in offering to postpone the presentation.

But they told him to go ahead. So he began the meeting by offering "congratulations to everybody for making it - those of you who are here."