Getting Ready for a Utah.gov Upgrade

In a few days, we will be introducing some new features on the state's digital government portal, Utah.gov.  In advance, I thought that I could provide some information to emphasize that digital government is still an important concept.  Granted, it is one that continues to evolve and is having a significant impact on how we view government in general.

For me, digital government is still first about providing services and information.  Utah.gov provides a lot of that with millions of pages of content and almost 1100 transactional services.  In 2012 alone, in a state of only 2.8 million residents, we processed over 31 million transactions.  That is a dramatic change in just the last 15 years from the time we put our first such service online.

Utah Insurance Transparency

Information services are also still very important.  These kinds of services have changed as well and many of them are becoming more dynamic. For example, take a look at our Utah Insurance Transparency Website.  The graphical interface hides the fact that this site provides all kinds of new data to the insurance consumer by making it simple and easy to compare costs and quality of service.  The latest insurance cost increases are also provided, allowing consumers to comment online prior to any approvals from the insurance department.  More transparency is certainly a good thing.  By the way, our transparency portal now provides access to 84 million records from every state and local government agency in Utah.

Speaking of data, an average of 114 gigabytes of open data is now downloaded every week from gis.utah.gov.  This is the kind of data that has economic value and a multitude of uses. I'm glad to see that there are about 30,000 downloads every week.

Utah's online education initiative is also starting to pay off.  In fact, Utah was rated #1 in the recently published Digital Learning Report Card, receiving an "A" grade.  Florida is doing an outstanding job in this area as well.