TO: INFORMATION RESOURCE OF MAINE (InforME) BOARD
FROM: KELLY HOKKANEN, INFORME STAFF
DATE: JUNE 13, 2001
RE: MINUTES OF THE JUNE 13, 2001 INFORME BOARD MEETING

MEMBERS IN ATTENDANCE:
Secretary of State Dan Gwadosky
Sam Levy
Linda Monica
Jaynie Higgins
Jeff Harmon
Dick Davies
Deb Carson
Gary Nichols
Marilyn Lutz
Anne Schink
Dick Hinkley
John Eldridge
Tamara Dukes

OTHERS IN ATTENDANCE:
Harry Lanphear, CIO
Kelly Hokkanen, InforME Staff
Shaye Robbins, InforME Staff
Rebecca Wyke, Chief Deputy, Office of Secretary of State

WELCOME
Chairman, Secretary of State Gwadosky, began the meeting by welcoming all board members present.

NOTE: The Department of Public Safety SLA was removed from the agenda at the request of the agency and will instead appear on next month's agenda.

INFORME CONTRACT
The initial contract was for 3 years, renewable for 2 more years, with a provision that either the Board or InforME must notify 1 year in advance if they didn't want to renew. That is why the Board is required to vote now on whether to approve the contract for an additional 2 years.

A form has been passed out for discussion purposes. There are some important issues in addition to the Strategic Plan that we will discuss. The form includes the statutory requirements of InforME. The Board action will be to extend the contract or not, and then there will be some pieces to tie up, either way.

FORM DISCUSSION (Point-by-Point; see attached form for each item rated)

CATEGORY 1: Performance of Network Manager Duties
1. Yes
2. Yes
3. Initial premise was that we would only do subscriber services, that we would do all billing, collection, and distribution back to agencies. But with some SLAs we only do services by credit card. Basically there are 3 different ways we handle revenue services:
a. credit card transaction directly to agency acct
b. credit card transaction to InforME account
c. subscriber collection activity where we do billing, collection, distribution
Question: Have their been problems with any of these?
Answer: Not really, but for electronic checks you have 60 days to reverse the payment. It takes a bit longer to get the fees to the agency account than with credit cards. The State Treasury had some concerns but they are more comfortable with all the InforME methods now. There has been a good exchange of information and we have remained flexible.
Question: Is there an issue with the sophistication of banks in Maine to work with?
Answer: We have worked around it, and that's part of why we have stayed with Key Bank rather than switch to Peoples when the State did.
4. Yes, straight forward.
5. Fees in SLAs have always come to the Board for approval. The SLAs are done in concert with the agency, not solely by InforME.
6. We are doing this right now.
7. Tends to be in the packet almost every Board meeting. The reporting requirements all are being met.
8. Yes, both internally within NIC and outside. That's part of why we have brought guests to some Board meetings, and our staff attends many conferences.
9. A good example is the Driver Privacy Protection Act: There used to be an opt-out system-- if you did not want personal information from your driver record disclosed, you signed a form indicating that your information should be protected. Now all personal information is protected unless the person opts-in. Every subscriber has to sign a statement that they either are or are not permitted to view personal information in driver records. That is the most dramatic example. Whatever protections are currently in place through traditional access methods are the same protections we will implement at InforME. The agency sets the parameters of what is private or not, in the SLA.
Comment: (Harmon) We recently worked with InforME -and their expertise with this was very helpful. Our department had a security audit wherein all our platforms were examined, including our website. InforME came through the audit without any problems cited.

CATEGORY 2: Effort to Fulfill Established Purposes
1. Yes
2. Yes
3. Yes
4. Yes
5. Yes. We have talked a bit about this in the Strategic Plan.
6. Yes. We provide email links and feedback forms specifically for this purpose. Also phone numbers, etc. We make ourselves available to be contacted. We invite feedback, for content corrections, and also to measure satisfaction.
7. There hasn't been any non-public information that needed to be transferred via a conduit but we do secure transactions such as credit card transactions.
Question: This would be a transfer between two state agencies. Was this envisioned as a possibility?
Answer: We do actually do this with the audit report.
8. Yes. We will talk more about this in our Strategic Plan as well.
9. Yes

CATEGORY 3: Other Assessment criteria
1. NEI has filed appropriate paperwork in all cases. A new certificate of insurance will be arriving; we have ordered a new one.
There is an open issue with the closing escrow agreement language. The requirement is that if NEI went bankrupt or closed, the state would have recourse to pick up the software that is required to drive the site.
Question: What do we do for redundancy?
Answer: We have a mirrored system. All key servers are backed up. The escrow is in a vault in Key Bank. There is also a redundancy system offsite. We have been discussing where the offsite location might be. We may use the office in Providence when the RI contract is signed.
Comment: We could put this on the agenda for the next year.

The second highest revenue generator in other NIC states is Corps and UCC services. Civil data/courts is usually at the county level (in other states), so this is different, and is a benefit we will have in Maine. Close to that level would be criminal histories - they have a high revenue potential.
Question: How is a historical electronic record archived, and should they be?
Answer: InforME and the portal serve as a method of access rather than originator or custodian of the data. We keep our logs forever of all transactions, but it is the agency's responsibility to maintain the actual records.
2. The concept was to make sure there were formal agreements (SLAs). Yes, the SLAs are being used.
3. Yes. Ever evolving - customer service to subscribers, measuring their satisfaction, providing online account management. We are in the process of improving the subscriber website. There may be value added services or perks for subscribers.
Question: What is the most requested subscriber service that we don't have yet?
Answer: Users are (so far) quiet about additional services. As we add more services, the demands might change. We will have an expansion of users and user groups.
Question: Do you do focus groups?
Answer: In the online services section of the Strategic Plan, we want to develop suites of services for specific user groups.
4. Comment (Carson): We've just begun working with InforME but our experience has been wonderful so far. We won't launch until August.
Comment (Harmon): The criminal history records application is being developed. Feedback from contractors and staff has been overwhelmingly positive. But we are in early stages as well. We do have the fingerprinting scheduling that allows them to sign up for a site, time, and day. Have had lots of good feedback on the scheduling system.
Comment (Wyke): Our experience has been excellent. This is the easiest contract we have to administer. InforME is committed to making sure services work and work well.
Comment (Eldridge): From the municipality perspective, this is the most positive experience we've had with state government. The real success is that now the municipalities are wanting to work on other things too.
Comment (Hinkley): The InforME approach has been very helpful. We (BIS) can't react as fast as NEI, who isn't constrained by things like Civil Service Laws. This model is working well. The Portal experiment is doing well in that it's giving equal access to state government services and providing a common look and feel. If agencies procure web services outside InforME, we ask that they recognize the single portal approach and be coordinated through InforME. No resistance from any agency so far. In general this has been a successful endeavor and we are heading in the right direction.
Comment (Wyke): Harry, Dick, Dan and I met with Commissioner Waldron a few days ago. Ann Head from PFR was there also and shared very positive comments about working with InforME in putting up the licensing site.
Comment (Schink): InforME has stepped up to fill other needs, such as web design services. They've done more than just the requirements in the contract.
Comment (Wyke): Ann's comments were similar. She appreciated being able to talk to staff at InforME and get questions answered…
Response (Tamara): One of our biggest challenges is to dispel false ideas from people who have not yet worked with us. There needs to continue to be an outreach program to clarify who InforME is, our role, how to work with us…Now is a good time to begin doing this, since we have nearly completed the initial Strategic Plan items.

Question from the Chair to the Board: Are there other observations you wish to share, or performance issues?
Comment: Adoption rates-- How do we get there? I see that as one of the key focuses right now, to achieve uniformly good adoption rates.
Comment: There is a need to educate the population, especially those who are not computer literate.

Nichols: I move that we approve the renewal.
Davies: I second that.
Chair: Does the Board approve the 2 year renewal of the contract? That is open for discussion now.
Comment: The vote should be conducted with the understanding that we may need to update some of the terms and conditions.
Dukes: The master contract has held up well and does a good job of empowering the Board. I don't think there are any major things we'd be looking to change.
Comment: To clarify, we are not actually approving the extension, but we're voting for Dick Hinkley to enter into negotiation.
Chair: Yes, we are voting for Dick to negotiate an amendment or addendum to original contract. Then it will come back to the Board.
Chair: Is there interest in going into an executive session? (negative response from Board.)
Chair: It has been moved that we renew. All in Favor?
The vote by the Board was unanimous.

STRATEGIC PLAN: ENTERPRISE SECTION
For this discussion, we are starting on page 14, proposed text (see Plan).

Dukes presented the major goals described in this section of the Strategic Plan.

GOAL 1
Suggestion: Strategy 1 - Seek to work with other groups as well as ISMG and webmasters. We need to move beyond just the technology people.
Question: What might strategy 2 be?
Answer: Business Answers is likely. Val Wood from BIS is still doing some requirements gathering regarding the back-end migration issue.

GOAL 2
The ASP model is the Application Service Provider model. We create the application at InforME and then agencies "join" the service. With the Portland Parking Ticket application, we are creating it so that other cities could use that system as well.
Suggestion: Objective 2 - "add 40 munis to a base of 11"
Question: What's the total potential?
Answer: 496. Adoption rates for Rapid Renewal are very good, now about 6.7%.
Robbins: Part of this is due to the SOS Office's commitment to sending out a notice to everyone who is eligible to renew. If other agency partners would do this, our other adoption rates might increase.
Robbins: The municipalities have expressed a lot of interest in working on other joint applications in addition to Rapid Renewal.
Comment: Vital statistics is a big one.
Comment: We can't always rely on the municipalities volunteering - some do not want to get involved. But their citizens may. Perhaps we need to market to citizens as well as to municipalities.
Dukes: They will get pressure but it won't be received well if we try to tell the municipalities what to do. Having a voluntary strategy may be slower but more successful.
Comment (Eldridge): The big problem for most municipalities is not the concept but the credit card fees. At a low level of participation, the application doesn't improve efficiency enough to make personnel changes that would offset the extra costs.
Dukes: And we have mitigated that for some municipalities by offering e-checks only, in which case the processing fees are absorbed entirely by InforME.
Comment (Lanphear): Soon we will be doing a comprehensive citizen/business survey with InforME. This is one of the reasons. We can let the officials know if a high percentage of citizens want Rapid Renewal or other services.

GOAL 3:
Perhaps this is a matter of us creating the curriculum or website that other groups can then use. Providing tools to other groups.
Comment: DECD could play a role under strategy 2. We need to have Internet savvy citizens to lure businesses to Maine. Should we include a goal about state employees as well?
Comment: There are many state employees who have ideas so we need to communicate with groups beyond IS and IT folks.
Dukes: Maybe Harry's suggestion about state agencies is best placed under Goal 4.
Comment (Lanphear):Yes, I think it fits well there.
Question: How can InforME and the state Intranet work together? The Intranet needs to be overhauled.
Dukes: So far we have focused on the public and we have not gotten involved in the Intranet. But if the Board wishes us to do more in that direction, we can broaden our goals.
Comment: I think a discussion is worth having, and getting suggestions from employees.
Dukes: Any other suggestions related to goal 3?
Comment: We need to make it clear that InforME is available as a resource for Internet education.

GOAL 4
Dukes: We will change the wording to "assist with …"
There is a workgroup to discuss digital signatures and how we can use that technology.
Comment: Let's add something about the Intranet here as an additional strategy.
ISMG = IS Managers Group
ISPG = IS Policy Board
Comment: - Let's spell out all of the acronyms used in the Strategic Plan.
Dukes: I will mention the Strategic Plan Initiative also.

Chair: Is possible to get all of these comments into a new proposed Strategic Plan for the next meeting and vote on adopting it?
Dukes: Yes.
Chair: Other items for the next meeting:
SLA for Public Safety
Strategic Plan
GM Report

Comment (Eldridge): I am interested in documentation showing how InforME's income will fund each of these Strategic Plan priorities.
Dukes: The funding base is the BMV records and this is fairly reliable and predictable. That buys certain resources. There is not a lot of fluctuation from year to year. So we have 10 people, and we ask the Board, What should they be committed to doing? (1.) portal, (2.) build and manage online services, (3.) enterprise strategies. The job is bigger than 10 people, and we do our best to get to everything, and to keep the scope within a do-able range.

PRIORITIZATION MATRIX
Everyone received a copy of the Prioritization Matrix.
This will be especially relevant to discuss after we have our Strategic Plan.
Question: Are the projects listed in back of the Strategic Plan ranked in any order?
Answer: No.

Dukes: We were going to discuss the Mission and Vision at the end. Should we discuss it at the next meeting?
The Board wishes to do this.

FUTURE MEETINGS

Wednesday, July 25, 1:00 pm.

There will be no meeting in August.

Note that the subscriber satisfaction survey will be added to the next meeting agenda.