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S.C. Statehouse
Report
Sunday, Oct. 30, 2005
VIEW: http://www.statehousereport.com/columns/05.1030.site.htm
COMMENTARY
New state Web portal will
be easier to use
By Andy
Brack
SC Statehouse Report
 OCT. 30, 2005 - - The state's main Web
site is about to be much easier to use. And it's being done in
a way that highlights how government can work well to improve
customer service without spending money.
Thanks to an innovative partnership between the state and a
private company, a new South Carolina Web portal called SC.gov will debut
Tuesday (Nov. 1). It will replace MySCgov.com, a site run by
the state over the years with a somewhat spotty record.
For people who want to do more business online or find
information about state government through the Internet, the
change will be like switching from driving a stick-shift car
to an automatic.
"There's a whole new way of looking at things from a
resident's perspective that's going to make it a lot easier
for people to follow and find things," said Ken Oliphant,
director of marketing for S.C. Interactive, the company
launching and running the site for the state.
 A few years back when the
world was gaga about how you could link anywhere through a Web
portal like Yahoo!, the state rushed to get its own general
site anybody could visit to find quick links to anything in
state government. The state Budget and Control Board
internally built, ran and started maintaining the portal,
MySCgov.com
It has worked O.K. But it hasn't kept up with lots of
online service innovations other states have. Why? MySCgov.com
was run on a shoestring, was difficult to update, was not very
deep and was hard to search. And because cash-strapped
agencies had to spend money to put more stuff on their agency
sites, those sites changed or offered little to keep up with
the times. (An exception was the state's Department of Motor
Vehicles site, which developed an easy-to-use tool to let
people renew drivers' licenses online.)
But South Carolina information managers knew MySCgov.com
wasn't doing the job. So the Budget and Control Board put out
a general request for bids to the private sector to propose
ways to change things.
Along came NIC, Inc., a leading provider of
e-government services with big projects currently in 18
states. It proposed something different - - to upgrade the
state's Web portal for free in exchange for the right to work
with state agencies to encourage them to use its online
service offerings developed in other states. Over the years,
the company has developed about 1,000 applications for online
services - - everything from tools that let professionals
renew their licenses through the Internet to Web authoring
software that let state employees update their Web sites
without needing to know sophisticated programming. For some of
those services, NIC, Inc., through its SC Interactive
subsidiary, would charge nominal service fees to recoup its
costs and make some money.
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For example, insurance agents considering a driver's car
insurance application may want instant access to driving
records. Currently, they can get the information for about $6
but there's a wait. But through an online tool offered by SC
Interactive, they can get the information instantly for about
$7.25.
For many business people, it's worth a little bit more
money to get information instantly than it is to wait. To
ensure SC Interactive didn't charge too much, the state now
has an oversight board that reviews charges.
Bottom line: The state has developed an enterprise
relationship with a private firm on which the burden will fall
to hawk online services to state agencies. The better job they
do, the more services will be offered online and the easier it
will be for people to do business or find information online.
And the development cost to taxpayers for all of this is cut
from millions of dollars to nothing.
"Obviously what we want to have happen is not to have
people stand in line or come to Columbia to do business with
government," said Michael Sponhour, spokesman for the Budget
and Control Board. "This is a nice blending of the public's
business and the best of the free enterprise system.
"This is going to make life a lot easier for citizens of
the state and state government. You've got a company that has
already found solutions in other states and put them to
practice."
And now they'll use them here. Take a look on Tuesday at
the new site. There's a lot to like about it.
RECENT
COMMENTARY
McLEMORE'S
WORLD
10/30: 2000 and
counting
Another great cartoon from Bill
McLemore:
LEARN MORE
DAILY
 The best way to get South
Carolina news is to augment your morning paper and TV show
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FEEDBACK
10/26: No drilling,
period
To the editor:
All of the Sea Islands off the coast of SC between
Charleston and Savannah are territories of the federal
government period. The state never owned these islands.
Everything that happens on these islands is null and void and
illegal. We should have U.S.Marshal's and not deputies. All of
the charters that come from the state are null and void.
President Truman vetoed a bill when U.S.Congress tried to give
these islands to SC Only the U.S. government can make the
decision to drill for oil or not.
-- Joni Dimond, Hilton Head Island, SC
10/24: Consider wind
energy
To the editor:
Good article on offshore drilling [Commentary, 10/23] but you left out
wind energy as an alternative. South Carolina has a world
class offshore wind resource in relatively shallow water. (Click link to see article).
Many of us in and out of academia are looking at ways to
exploit this resource. With the costs of industrial scale wind
energy dropping and wind energy manufacturing already being
done by major state employers like GE, it would seem to me
that wind energy is the right way to get energy from off our
shores.
-- Dennis Dinge, Conway, SC
10/24: The extortion of extra road
taxes
To the editor:
Enjoy your column [Commentary, 10/23] in the Morning
News.
Have you every reported on the latest fad: Adding
Sales Tax to match funds for road improvements from the
Infrastructure Bank? Has this process ever been reviewed by
the courts?
I hope that people find out how our
politicians are using extortion to get extra taxes for
supposedly road improvements. I consider this first rate
bribery to get funds for improvements that are being denied us
as residents of the Pee Dee and some other areas in the State
of SC. They tried it a couple of years ago to pass a
referendum in Florence County and it was defeated.
I
was in the upstate last week to carrying my daughter back to
Clemson and I was and am astounded by the road construction in
the areas of Greenville and Spartanburg. I saw signs in
Pickens County requesting voters to defeat some sales tax and
I assume it is the same thing. I know Greenville County built
a new Interstate bypass and is paying from a road tax called
tolls. Seems like there should be a better method of
modernizing our roads.
-- Tom Ford, Florence,
SC
10/24: Out-of-date reactionary
ideas
To the editor:
Andy, your automatic reaction [Commentary, 10/23] to thoughtful and
careful oil/gasoline refinery ideas for SC are about 20 years
our of date - - new technologies and on-going research has
made huge differences in safety and environmental soundness of
such projects -
Here's a novel idea for you to chew on:
why not HELP Big Oil to build a new refinery (instead of
fighting them) and then in exchange collect a royalty on
production (never done before, as far as I know) to be used
for SC infrastructure, health care, etc.... - AND get our
research Universities involved to build the safest and
soundest refinery in the modern era...-
-- Steve
Imbeau, Florence, SC
10/23: Balance
needed
To the editor:
There is no question that we need to reduce our dependence
on foreign oil and find alternative fuels. Your no drilling
idea and no new refineries (no new ones in 20 years) has
greatly increased the gasoline prices. We have proved that we
can get the oil we need and still preserve the environment.
The Exxon Valdez was one of those freak situations...and given
all the oil that we have produced over the years, one bad
accident is a pretty good record. It took a few years, but
Prince William Sound is as good as new and they catch lots of
salmon there now.
We need to strike a balance of protecting the environment
and being realistic about our energy needs. It is extremely
dangerous for our military for us to be so dependent on
foreign oil. Common sense needs to prevail.
-- Woody Jones, Florence, SC
Recent
feedback:
KEEPING
TRACK
Ahead again on property
taxes
This section tracks past forecasts by Statehouse
Report with other media reports:
|
In Statehouse Report:
10/2: Getting rid of property taxes would be
dumb: "Instead of listening to the hype, South
Carolinians really need to think about what they're
asking for if they want reduced property taxes because
they might get something worse than they bargained for.
Not only should they watch out for the spin, but they
should look out for misinformation, which seems to have
surfaced much more than the truth so far." |
In the Rock Hill
Herald:
10/28: The sales tax trade-off: "Substituting
sales taxes for property taxes is simply swapping one
tax for a potentially worse one. Lawmakers should not
get away with labeling this as tax relief....The fact
is, there is no free lunch. Lowering property taxes and
raising sales taxes presents a whole new set of problems
and increased burdens on certain segments of the
population. Lawmakers need to be frank about whom this
so-called tax relief will help and whom it will
hurt." |
|
In Statehouse Report:
8/21: Irony of success driving property tax
debate: Gov. Mark Sanford has warned that the
legislature should be careful about fiddling with
property taxes without considering long-term
implications on the majority of what they fund:
education. He's right. Instead of getting caught up in a
public frenzy, lawmakers should take a measured approach
on property taxes. |
In the Spartanburg Herald
Journal
10/27: Tax relief plan has several holes: "To
start with, the panel did not consider the state's
entire tax structure and how to reform the method by
which the state funds all of state and local government
and schools. Instead, it seeks to respond to homeowners
angry about rising property taxes....Reducing the
property tax while increasing the sales tax may work
well in the context of a complete restructuring of the
state's tax code. But this plan appears to be another
hasty piece of relief offered to taxpayers without fully
evaluating how it will affect the rest of the state's
tax structure and
economy. |
SOUTH CAROLINA SCORECARD
Here's a "thumbs up" and "thumbs down" related to various
political events from the past week:
Thumbs up
Bernanke. Thumbs up to Dillon-raised Ben Bernanke,
who the president last week nominated to chair the Federal
Reserve. It's called the most powerful economic job in the
world.
Williams. Hats off again to Orangeburg federal Judge
Karen Williams, who again is on the short-list for the US
Supreme Court.
Thumbs down
State senators. A huge thumbs down to the state
Senate panel that is now pushing a $906 million tax shift from
property to sales taxes. Yes, we'd have the lowest property
taxes in the nation, but among the highest sales taxes. More
work needs to be done before this bad idea becomes
permanent.
Campaign disclosure. South Carolina ranks second
lowest in the nation in campaign disclosure, a rating that is
expected to wither when the state begins online disclosure for
constitutional officers in January. More.
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