Citizens who live in a world where holiday shopping can be completed without leaving home; vehicles are registered without standing in line at the DMV; and banking and bill paying can be done without spending a cent on gas or postage also want a self-service government.

The Center for Technology in Government (CTG), based at the University of Albany, State University of New York, is devoted to finding ways to assist government agencies to be more responsive, less expensive to operate, and make their information more accessible, thus putting a self-service government in place.

The CTG brings together public, private and educational sectors in a partnership to explore ways to provide public services through the use of technology. There are several publications, reports and guidelines available to governments looking for answers through its clearinghouse and Web site: http://www.ctg.albany.edu.

“The Center was the first place of its kind where State and local agencies could go to experiment with technology and learn what worked and what didn’t,” says Sharon Dawes, founding Director in 1993. Sharon was Executive Director of the NYS Forum for Information Resource Management, and Executive Fellow at the Rockefeller Institute of Government, before coming to CTG. “Even today, New York is the only state to have created a place like CTG, whose main purpose is to help government make good decisions about increasingly important IT investments.

By accumulating the knowledge generated by each project and taking advantage of the Internet to share it, we have created a growing knowledge base that benefits national and international partners as well as state and local governments.”*

Like many of the governments it tries to help, the CTG’s founders had a vision but had difficulty finding financial support for the projects they wanted to undertake. With a strong commitment and a small amount of State funding, they started the NYS Forum for Information Resource Management, which was comprised of State agency representatives who were responsible for information management. The Forum, together with the University at Albany, then created a Government Technology Solutions Center, which began its operation with volunteers and donated resources. In an effort to show what might be done even without any funding, the CTG launched its initial project in 1993 in conjunction with the NYS Department of Motor Vehicles and found a solution to cut the vehicle title issuance process from 100 days to 30 days at a savings of $3 million—before public funding was authorized to purchase any new technology.

The Center for Technology in Government is now funded through the University at Albany’s State budget as well as through grants and awards from several foundations and federal agencies such as the National Science Foundation. Corporate support has also come from partners such as Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, Oracle and Meta Group. Recently, General Code partnered with the CTG at the annual IIMC meeting in Atlanta to present potential solutions for some of the challenges that local governments face. For more information on products that may help with your self-service government goals, check out the General Code website at www.generalcode.com/sitemap.html.

*quoted in a history of the CTG, written in conjunction with its 10th anniversary.

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