Best of Digital Government in Utah 2011

It's time to move on to 2012 and it's now been ten years since I started posting the best of digital government in Utah.  I started this blog on Radio Userland in 2002 and moved it to Blogger in 2005. Every year, I've done an annual review of our digital progress in Utah State government. Here's some of the best of 2011.

1. The new Utah.gov. In June, we introduced a completely new look to Utah.gov. Although it was much more focused on search, the new portal also introduced a single page design that included new infographics, integration of social media, and an enhanced news format, along with new geolocation and contextual services. After being ranked #1 among state portals by the Center for Digital Government in 2007 and 2009, this version of the portal came in second among the fifty states. It also received a Gold Award in the W3 web awards and a Best of Class for government in the IMA International awards. 2011 was also brought new levels of involvement to the Utah.gov domain with at least 1.2 million unique visitors to the site every month of the year.
2. Online Redistricting. The Legislature took its redistricting efforts online this year in an effort to make the process more open and get more public participation. Although the process received some criticism for the way the final decision was made, this was a major step forward as citizens were able to draw up their own map proposals online and share them with those involved directly with the process.
3. Connect Plus. The new Connect portal was created specifically with tablet users online as a way to give them access to the growing body of social media content and news updates produced by Utah government. The site was created with HTML5.
4. Accident Reports Online. This great new service gives citizens access to current accident reports from the Highway Patrol and the Utah Department of Public Safety and will be expanded to include reports from local law enforcement agencies.
5. Google Apps for Government. Utah signed a contract with Google in 2011 to move applications and email into Google's collaborative cloud environment, freeing up resources that were supporting some of these services to do other creative things.
6. UtahPublicEducation.org.  Utah's State Office of Education moved into social media in a big way, not just by creating this constantly updated blog, but also adding Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook services to significantly add to education outreach in the state.
7. UDOT's new mobile app.  Overall, growth in mobile services loomed large in 2011 with many services being added to the mobile portfolio as the use of smartphones in the state continued to explode. UDOT's new mobile app was one of the best and is available for both iOS and Android.
8. MyCHIE. Utah continues to be a leader in supporting the delivery of electronic health record exchange and services, while supporting citizens' rights to exercise greater control over those records.
9. New Statewide Warrants Search.  Another popular service from the Utah Department of Public Safety, this service lets user search the database of over 100,000 warrants.
10. uGATE. UDOT creates a new agency data portal with lots of data in reusable formats, including KML for geodata. Nice addition to data.utah.gov services.

Also see: Best of Digital Government / IT for Utah 2010