Government is big business. In Minnesota it may be the biggest business. It had 1996-97 revenues over $19 billion. It spent $18 billion plus. It employs over 18,000 people and has almost 5,000,000 customers. Us, the citizens who pay the fifth highest state taxes in the U. S. It has a surplus of over $230 million and growing. It's a well run, well cared for business ranked in 1995 by Financial World Magazine as being in the top 10 best run state governments.

As a group, the citizens of Minnesota are one of the best connected in the state with over 50% of our population having access to the Internet somehow. The Twin Cities, where almost 80% of us live, has the highest densities of personal computers per capita in the nation. Well heeled state, well connected populace, that should make our state government Internet presence one of the best in the country. It is.

First of all it's got a name, North Star http://www.state.mn.us/. It seems appropriate that Minnesotans would brand their government web site. It's amazingly comprehensive but then the amount of government information a government contains is amazing. It's a little hard to find the information you want right off the bat. (I spent an hour trying to find the facts in the first paragraph by just plunging in and searching.) But there are many, many entities, all with their own voice, all wanting people to know what they're doing, what they're thinking. Just like a democracy.

The Minnesota Office of Technology is where it all comes together. Where we all go to get we what we need. If you think the actions of government should be accountable, so do they. If they're not moving as quickly as we want, if they don't have everything perfect right now, well neither do I. Neither do probably most of us. But like us, they are moving in the right direction, working hard to bring the government to the people.

Following is a conversation with Sydney Jensen, Production Manager, Minnesota Office of Technology.

iBiz: I remember when the North Star Site really went up. It became a central location for Minnesota government information. Can you give us a little background on how that happened?

Jensen: Before then there was an entity called the Government Information Access Council. It was made up of educators, legislators, and business interests. There were some state employees associated with that council too. GIAC’s idea was, we needed to make the government accessible to people. They were real freedom for information types. They were also extremely interested in data practices and data privacy issues. They were based on the basic philosophy that government information was hard to find and hard to get.

You know we are an eight to four-thirty shop and we don’t work weekends. Real life is also eight to four-thirty which makes it hard to find the time to find things. People have to haul themselves down to St. Paul and go to four different agencies; fill out forms; stand in line. It is basically a hassle. The idea GIAC had was, we should make this information available on-line. Then the people can get at it whenever they want it. They can look at it or download it, or whatever they want to do with it. To do this GIAC decided to do an Internet demonstration project. That was the origination of North Star.

They put up a Unix box and an Apache server and put some main frame pages up. They did a few directories like the phonebook. They then began to offer what was pretty innovative in 1994, web hotel services. Any agency that wanted to get the their feet wet on-line, did not have to buy a server, didn’t have to hire techies. All they had to do was come up with some content, put it on the main North Star server and make it accessible that way. So that was the origination. We used to count success by how many agencies had an on-line presence. It was basically a brochure. You know how when you go to a hotel and there are all of those brochures on the desk. It was kind of like that.

iBiz: When did GIAC become the Office of Technology?

Jensen: The office technology was created by executive order in the summer of 1996. The state personal who were associated with GIAC, that was five people, were transferred to OT when North Star came along.

iBiz: What happened then?

Jensen: It was extremely successful as a demonstration project. So successful that the larger agencies decided that they wanted their own servers. They wanted to do more. We still have a lot of agencies on the hotel. In the previous legislative session (winter 1997) there was a governor's budget initiative for North Star. The budget initiative for North Star was to transition from a demonstration project to an actual business system. We have proven that it can be done. It is extremely popular. We have proven that people want to use it so let’s try to make it into: A) something that is very useful: B) something that adds value: and C) a system that is cost effective.

iBiz: Well, that sounds like a business.

Jensen: We needed to move past the trial stage and try to learn how we could deliver services and information, a lot of services and information, online.

iBiz: There are a lot of services in the State Government. How are you doing this.

Jensen: Well, there was an extensive lobbying effort, of course, at the legislation to get the money for North Star. Which all and all was not as bad as it could have been. We put some things in statute, establishing North Star as the official state entity. That was okay.

iBiz: How is North Star funded, by the legislature?

Jensen: Correct. It was a budget line item. Funds were appropriated to the Office of Technology.

iBiz: When the site started to grow, did you go outside (government) for expertise? for technical expertise or design expertise? Did you hire someone to do this or did you decide to build it all inside?

Jensen: In the very beginning there was a partnership between GIAC and the University of Minnesota. They did the initial work on the beginning North Star server. The GIAC did not have a lot of expertise. They were responsible for organization and content. So the University of Minnesota did all of the tech work as far as setting the server up. Then they did the initial HTML layout.

iBiz: So it was a partnership between GIAC and the U?

Jensen: Yes

iBiz: How has that changed now under the Office of Technology?
Jensen: We still have a contract arrangement with the University of Minnesota for some of our Unix services and support. We have in-house people here at OT who maintain the core North Star pages. The agencies are responsible for their own content.

iBiz: Is this a free service or are there interdepartmental charges for residents on the server?

Jensen: It has been a completely free service to agencies and still is at this time. But the legislation is requiring us to develop some sort of framework for charging back to the agencies. This is to recover funds for the operational work of the server. So coming out of our business plan is a determination on how we are going to do that. Obviously we do not want to undercut private providers. Giving this service away for free cuts a lot of people out of the market. We would not want to undercut private providers, but we need to have the agencies pay us a little.

iBiz: That seems reasonable.

Jensen: Well you see, it isn’t really this huge cost when you think of it. You can buy web hotel space from a provider for 20 bucks a month. So it is not a huge deal for the agencies.

iBiz: How many agencies are on-line under the North Star banner?

Jensen: Over a hundred agencies and governmental entities, councils, working groups and that sort of thing. About forty agencies are on the hotel itself.

iBiz: Are you finding any resistance within agencies. Have there been any problems you have had to over come in convincing people the Internet is a good idea?

Jensen: Not anymore. Two years ago we went around singing the, "Get your agency online song." Then we really did have to convince them. We would point out that when they watched television: Sony had a web sight; Toyota had a web sight; Coke had a web site; the twelve-year-old kid next door had a web sight. Your agency should be online. We kept telling them they would be conspicuous by their absence. I think we have reached that point now.

Now we get a lot of inquiries and most of what we get are, "Why isn’t this agency online? How come I cannot do X." So agencies are really getting convinced they need to move this way. That's why we have such a high percentage of them online right now.

iBiz: Which agencies have the most active web sites?

Jensen: The Department of Revenue is a huge user. Their web site is good as well. They have tax forms, tax information, instructions. That site is pretty good sized. It gets a lot of traffic from January to Mid-April.

iBiz: Do they maintain the content and do the maintenance on the site themselves.

Jensen: Yes, they do.

Jensen: DNR (Department of Natural Resources) has recently redone their site. They recently revamped it, and it is absolutely hell on wheels. It is wonderful.

iBiz: Here in the Twin Cities we have one of the country's highest PC densities. Where do you think our effort to move our state government online is compared to other states? Do you have any feel for that?

Jensen: We are towards the top. I would say we are in the top twenty percent. Four years ago we were clear leaders. Now there are other states that have thrown tremendous amounts of resources into it. They started doing it before we did, but we are definitely in the top twenty percent. We were number six in the nation a year ago, in terms of percentage of agencies online. I have not seen a new report about that in a long time. Not only in the Twin Cities do we have a high percentage of PC’s. A 1997 survey indicated that 56% of adult Minnesota’s have access to the internet at either home, work, or school. So that is a big percentage.

The other thing that we are going to do as we move into North Star of the future is to remember to provide alternate means of access. Our job is not about technology, it is about offering people choices in how they interact with government. If someone doesn’t have a local dial up. If they don’t have a computer. If they hate computers. We are looking for ways to provide them some of the information via touch tone phone, or fax- back and/or mail-back service. We do not want to exclude people based on geographies that exclude them from having a local dial up service.

iBiz: Do you supply content and maintenance services or do you have a list of recommended vendors.

Jensen: We are developing a list of vendors. We are also developing some best practices guides. There was a very early draft of a best practices guide. It is being updated and will include information on the agencies. As the sites grow it becomes obvious that they need to transition from manual updating to some sort of management tool driven site.

iBiz: I imagine a great many of these sites are still hard coded HTML.

Jensen: Quite a few especially the smaller ones.

iBiz: Do you see a migration to a more object orientated dynamic server sites?

Jensen: I think we do. One of the things that we are doing is the agencies are required to register under the North Star project for their on-line activities. We are collecting that information. Part of the information we plan to collect is; "Are you using a site management tool? Are you using a site development tool? If so, which ones are they?" We could make some templates available for a couple of the major ones (site development/management tools).

iBiz: What do you think you'll find?

Jensen: I expect we'll find that Front Page is big, that Fusion is big, and there are a couple of others. We could make some templates available to the agencies so for transactions, or surveys, or even just look and feel aspects.

iBiz: What has been your experience with agencies? Are they generating their content in-house? Are they doing their own site design or are they using outside vendors?

Jensen: Everybody started out doing their own work. Everybody started out hard coding the HTML. There has been some movement. If you look at the sites you will see some very professional looking sites. Those are the ones that I think have been done outside. For example, the Historical Society, I believe, has released an RFP. I know because their web site is on the North Star hotel. It's over eighteen hundred pages. It is being maintained by one person. So they have released an RFP for some re-design . They want to make it compatible with some sort of web site management tool. (Since this interview was done the contract has been awarded to Virtual Media Systems.)

iBiz: Well I would expect so. You have the same considerations in a large government agency as you would have in a business.

Jensen: Absolutely, and as we are trying to put transactions on-line, the ability for the North Star program to be able to offer boiler plate will become really important. If we need to collect customer information, we need to comply with the Data Practices Act. If we have a boiler plate method for collecting the information, one that has undergone scrutiny by the public information policy group. One they say is okay. Then agencies would probably like to share the method rather than each agency having to develop their own.

iBiz: Do you see much pro-active communications from the various agencies? Lobbying efforts or notifications to vote?

Jensen: I think the most pro-active, as far as putting out information, would be Minnesota Planning. As they publish new reports, or put new things online, their press releases generally come out on an E-mail list.

iBiz: Which agencies generate the most traffic from Minnesota? Do you have any data on that?

Jensen: Email traffic or hits on their sites?

iBiz: Hits on their sites

Jensen: The only ones I have stats for are the ones on North Star. DNR has their own server, but they have a lot of hits. Ironically the state lottery page is one of the heaviest hits. Revenue gets quit a few hits, the Historical Society the same. It sort of depends on what is going on.

The Department of Commerce just released a document in the newspapers listing unclaimed properties. We also have them (DOC) featured right now on the little headline spot on our main stage page. We did that because the unclaimed properties information is also available on-line. So their traffic will pick up for awhile because it is being featured. When the governor's State of the State address was broadcast with RealVideo and then archived and headlined on the North Star server there was a lot of traffic relating to that. There is a lot of traffic relating to tax forms. It depends on what is going on.

iBiz: One of the things I've been wondering about lately is archiving. That could be a huge, huge project. How are you dealing with that? What kind of plans do you have for archiving the government documents themselves?

Jensen: The Records Retention Statue dictates how long agencies need to keep their information. We back up the North Star server daily. We have monthly tapes stored for quit some time in the past. It is the content of the document in combination with the records retention act that dictates to the agencies what they need to keep. There is not a big distinction between paper and electronic if it is the content that counts. Actually we are seeing some action in the agencies to have data base driven sites because it is easier to keep current.

iBiz: Are the agencies becoming integrated in the way business is, where communications, financial planning, control issues, inventory issues all of those things are gradually migrating to a browser based technology.

Jensen: I think that is a fair assessment. It is an easy way to develop. What we found, especially in the terms of an Intranet, is a lot of the applications, a lot of the older internal applications, are main frame apps. And the cost and difficulty to transport them to some other platform and then do new development is pretty high. We are finding tools that are enabling agencies to access those old systems and their legacy data via a web technology and then do new development that way.

iBiz: That is what I am seeing too. Companies that have a small legacy base this technology is really effective.

Jensen: One of the things that we are working on of course is transactions. You have to do a zillion transactions with government. All those transactions are handled, at one point, electronically. Either on, say for your license plates on a main frame, or for your cosmetology license on a client server application. There are ways to make those transactions available online so we are looking into some security aspects of that. If we were able to renew your vehicle tabs via an Internet site, knowing those transactions are still occurring on the main frame so you have all of the main frame security, we haven’t had to redesign anything. You know of it isn’t broken we don’t have to fix that part. It saves us money, gives us a better application and lets us get transactions online faster.

iBiz: Do your sites get a lot of traffic or do you even keep those statistics?

Jensen: We don’t keep very many statistics due to uncertainties in the interpretation of the data practices act. Obviously, we do not use cookies and we don’t do a lot of detailed identification of the site visitors. We do keep gross statistics on hits. We see a lot of hits, and probable half of the hits come from Virginia. That took us a while to figure out until we realized that Virginia is where America On Line’s dial-ups are. We get a lot of hits nights and weekends. The Department of Commerce recently shared some of their statistical analysis. They have a tremendous amount of access nights and weekends. Which at least justifies the idea that people want to look at this stuff when they are not at their desk at work.

iBiz: Why would the Department of Commerce have high traffic? That seems odd.

Jensen: Well in Minnesota the Department of Commerce regulates the financial industry, banks, credit unions. They regulate real-estate brokers and agencies. So people look that up.

iBiz: What do you see in the future?

Jensen: Well the main thing that we need to do, this came out in our customer surveys, is to make this thing easier to use. Right now the directory structure on North Star is really very simple. It is hierarchical. I have to know who I need to talk to in order to find information. That is hard. I have the state phone book and I know the code and I still can’t always get the right person. That makes it difficult for your average citizen to get what they want. So what we need to put in is an indexing and directory structure. Like the top and bottom of Yahoo. Type in Automobile Insurance and it will come tell me the Department of Commerce handles this part, the Attorney General's office does that. Then I can than just click one and be linked appropriately. But it also needs a directory like the bottom of Yahoo, so we can drill downs hierarchically and find information that way. So that is one of our major efforts right now. We need to find a way not to just put a simple search engine on the sight, but to actually come up with an indexing and directory structure. One that can be used on the hotel server, across agency servers, into the state X500 directory for employee information and anything else can we put in to make it more effective. That is one of our huge efforts right now.

iBiz: I have been giving more thought to relational associative search engines. There has to be a way that you can do like a thesaurus..

Jensen: More of a natural language search kind of thing.

iBiz: Yes, exactly. I saw a really nice graphic thesaurus the other day. It is a 3-D model of a thesaurus that works like that. It is very clever.

Jensen: I love some of the things people have come up with. Many of them we should probably pay attention to. Like a way to guarantee the trustworthiness of the state's sites. To give people a comfort level. We can say all along, we don’t give cookies and we don't collect data, but it would be nice to have a way to certify that. I know there is one organization called "Trustee" and I think there are a few others that would do that. I have begun to look into those options as a way to certify that our sites are in fact clean.

I think it would be an added value. People have some extremely legitimate concerns about who is watching them. If it would be illegitimate to sit and collect all of the stats, and all of the information, and put out cookies, and not tell people. I think we are prevented from it anyway by statutes. It would be nice to have an independent authority say, "Hey these people are clean." I think it is probably important that we do it.

iBiz: I think so too. If for no other reason than just to be done with it before someone comes at you. Because sooner or later somebody will.

Jensen: That is kind of what I am thinking. So that at some point in the future it does not become a huge thing. We can just do this and get it done and say, "Okay we are clean." Then we can just move on.

iBiz: Besides the public web site, is Internet technology permeating the actual working of government?

Jensen: That depends on which workings and where? There are agencies that have pretty good Intranets. The Department of Economic Security is one. Their employees can look at policies and procedures. I think they have a bulletin board that they can have discussions on. It is actually pretty nice. We are looking at other applications of the Intranet.

There is a data warehouse over at the Department of Finance. Right now the way people get information from the data warehouse is with Crystal Reports (Crystal Reports is a leading client-server, query software package from Seagate) and Request. It is hard to do. It requires special technical expertise to create the report. If we can access some of that information with a Web browser, it would be much more accessible. If we can get at the information, we can use it. If we are using up to date information, we should be making better decisions.

iBiz: What is the biggest complaint that you are hearing? Are there any issues you may have overlooked but people are finding for you.

Jensen: The primary thing we face is an impatience amongst the people who use North Star, especially in terms of why transactions are not online yet. Why do I have to go there (the agency office) to do that? Why can’t I get the forms? That sort of thing.

iBiz: Is eCommerce something that is coming soon? Do you see it within this calendar year or next year?

Jensen: We have got a couple of applications of simple transactions we would like to have on line before the end of the calendar year, but there are some policy issues to nail down first. We have got a working group, the State (of Minnesota) CIOs has, the Information Policy Council. There is a sub-group of that looking specifically at electronic government services, which is basically online government eBusiness. That group is trying to wrestle with some of the issues of doing business online. We have a list of things that we need to address before we can effectively do it. One is the credit card issue.

How can we accept credit cards for payment? Under the current restrictions, the ones agencies operate under for instance, for my fishing license. If I pay 16 bucks for my fishing license. They can not charge more that 16 bucks, nor can they accept less than 16 bucks which is what they would have to do if a credit card company was taking a percentage off the top. So there are some issues with that. We don’t think that we are permitted legally to charge a transaction fee or a convenience fee, which some other states have been able to do. They cover their credit card costs that way.

iBiz: When I call North Dakota and order my application for a deer license they tell me this is going to cost you five dollars.

Jensen: We are not entirely sure if that is permissible and that may be something that we will try to fix.

iBiz: Would that be a legislative issue?

Jensen: Have to be a legislative issue. What we have to do is come up with a list of all of the things we see as barriers. Then figure out ways we can make it work. Another barrier for transactions is the "blue signature on white paper" rule. We do have digital signature legislation, but it hasn’t been implemented yet. We need to wait until the Secretary of State's office has that locked down before we can accept digital signatures. I have not seen an application with the state that doesn’t require me to sign it. So we need to get that too.

iBiz: Sydney, tell me about your background how did you get involved in this technology? Are you an engineer? Are you a legislator?

Jensen: Actually my undergraduate work is in political science. I came to work for the state in 1988 in the Department of Transportation as a construction inspector. I worked out in the field, testing concrete, counting trucks. It was not very glamorous.

I decided to transfer in and went to the DOT office. I used some old training in drafting and was able to move into the CAD drafting. I found the computers were way more fun than the actual work. So I went back to school, finished up a few things and transferred into the Information Technology Field. My background is as a network monkey. I was working my way up to being the Information Systems Director at the Department of Commerce. That is where I was when I was recruited for OT.

iBiz: So this is another case of the person who cared the most about the technology getting the job done? I find that a lot.

Jensen: It has been an interesting trail. I think it is a good background for what I am doing now because I have a pretty solid technical background. To me the Liberal Arts work and the Masters work at St. Tomas in software design and development has been extremely helpful for larger scale projects and for policy issues. For me it's a comfortable fit.

iBiz: What part of this, the government to becoming more accessible, or web development, what do you like best. What is most exciting about watching this happen or being apart of it for you, personally, professionally?

Jensen: The really exciting part is that we are achieving a vision of better service. When I first came to work for the state, I was a little embarrassed to tell people I worked for the state because the state is an inconvenience. The state is grumpy. The state doesn’t serve me. This is a way to change that. This is a way to say; Hey we are not inconvenient anymore. We are not a hassle most of the time anymore. You don’t even have to come look at us. You can find the information you need, get the permits you need, get anything else you need at your convenience. I think that is the fun part.

iBiz: I think this is a cultural change. I don’t know about all over, but certainly in Minnesota and certainly in business, the culture is becoming more customer oriented.

Jensen: For me it is actually a chance to make a difference. The fact that I am here and I believe in this, and I want to push it, makes a difference. To average people what we are doing here makes a difference. They may not know it yet, but they will.  iBiz