Washington Earns High Marks For Disseminating Information Digitally

Washington State government leads the nation in dissemination of digital data.

The state has just been tabbed 1997 ‘Digital State’ of the year by the Progress and Freedom Foundation and the IBM Institute for Electronic Government.

Research by the Philadelpia-based institute ranks Washington among the top 10 states in seven of eight categories studied, making this state the best at using digital technologies to improve government operations. Neighboring Oregon is third.

What all this means for consumers and businesses, says Donna Wells of the Washington State Public Information Service, is that a wealth of helpful information is at taxpayers’ fingertips.

New features constantly pop up on the state’s Home Page Washington web site (http://www.wa.gov.) with its hyperlinks to each agency’s web site and to city and county home pages.

There, internet users can:

Tap into the latest job opportunities listed by the State Employment Security Department.

Take a peak at what career fields appear best for future employment, what jobs pay better, and which are the faster-growing occupations.

Check the Department of Revenue’s new business-records database to find out instantly whether a company is registered to do business in Washington.

A survey found that businesses are the biggest users of the state’s new Labor Market Information Center, accounting for more than half of all contacts.

“But digital technology is not just Web sites, faxes, and toll-free phone numbers,” says Wells. “It is also kiosks.

“We have brought these user-friendly alternatives to the computer into malls, stores, libraries, and other public places where people can just touch the screen and it talks to them.”

In Spokane, kiosks are located in NorthTown Mall, STA Plaza, and University City Mall.

One kiosk program prompts users through a search for a job. “Since fall 1994, over 1,700 people have found jobs via the kiosks,” reports Wells.

An interactive search application operated by the Department of Revenue publicizes unclaimed property - old inactive bank accounts, unredeemed refunds, and so on. Users key in a name and the screen does the rest.

“Since August 1995,” says Wells, “the state has paid out $566,494 in unclaimed property.”

Another application enables motorists to comparison shop for insurance rates.

Researchers for the Progress and Freedom Foundation spent six months studying how states put advanced technologies to work to do the people’s business. “Digital infrastructure,” says foundation President Jeffrey Eisenach, “is as much a key to growth in the Digital Age as railroads and roadways were to the Industrial Age.”

Research Council lauds lawmakers

A Washington Research Council special report on the 1997 Legislature lauds lawmakers for making the necessary compromises to produce a fiscally conservative state budget.

The report, which is scheduled for release tomorrow, notes that the general fund budget came in well under the Initiative-601 spending limit. This, even with a rollback of property taxes, an easing of business and occupation taxes, and adoption of several, minor, targeted tax-cuts.

“Overall,” the report concludes, “the legislative session can be considered a success for advocates of responsible fiscal policy.”

So how, in arriving at this conclusion, did researchers reconcile the fact that the politicians enabled a mega-billionaire (Paul Allen) to finance a fancy new home for the Seahawks mostly at public expense?

Easy. Analysts simply didn’t factor the issue into their considerations.

“We aggressively dodged the issue,” candidly admits researcher and report writer Kris Sjoblom.

“We wrote it off,” he confided yesterday, “as simply a difference between the West and the East sides of the Cascades.”

East Siders overwhelmingly voted against the giveaway.

A lot of West Side people, including some of his best friends, strongly opposed fiscal involvement in the project, too, on principle, said Sjoblom - “right up until the time they voted.”

But vanity and fear that Seattle might look cheap or second-rate overcame principle. “In the end Babbittry won out,” said Sjoblom.

“The other thing you could say is, the new stadium is a small enough piece of the overall pie that for the purpose of this analysis we chose just to ignore it.”

Nethercutt to speak at opening of complex

U.S. Rep. George Nethercutt will keynote grand opening ceremonies Aug. 27 at Westfall Village and Heritage Heights, a $10-million public-private apartment project for low-income families and the elderly.

The program begins at 11:30 a.m. The projects, which straddle the 3700 and 3800 blocks of North Cook in Hillyard, provide 110 dwellings for families and 62 units for seniors.

, DataTimes MEMO: Associate Editor Frank Bartel writes a notes column each Wednesday. If you have business items of regional interest for future columns, call 459-5467 or fax 459-5482.

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Frank Bartel The Spokesman-Review