BearingPoint Transforms the Way Texas Conducts Business

TexasOnline (www.texasonline.com) fulfills the mission of the State of Texas Department of Information Resources: to improve public access to government information, programs and services.

The Client

With 22 million citizens, 254 state agencies and 3,000 local governments, the State of Texas could be a medium sized country elsewhere in the world. The Texas Legislature, recognizing the Internet as a viable information and transaction medium, directed the State of Texas Department of Information Resources (DIR) to determine the feasibility of making state agency and local government services available online.

The Challenge

Among major challenges, the legislature mandated that the Framework be self-supporting—the state would provide no funding for it. Furthermore, there was no requirement for state agencies and local governments to develop applications for use on the Framework. Consequently, the Framework would have to be sold on its own merits to government entities varying widely in size, sophistication and availability of resources.

Among the complex issues BearingPont had to address were the following:

• TexasOnline had to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act, giving vision and hearing-impaired persons access using special equipment.
• Because state and local agencies handle private information, we implement stringent security and privacy policies through TexasOnline.
• TexasOnline had to provide bilingual service in English and Spanish
• With little consistency between agencies?backend computer systems, the TexasOnline includes interfaces for more than 60 different types of legacy systems.

Eleven consortiums responded to the “request for offer.?The State of Texas Department of Information Resources awarded the “public-private partnership?arrangement to BearingPoint, because we proposed a business solution, unlike the technology solutions offered by others.

The Solution

The business model that BearingPoint developed for TexasOnline includes:

• TexasOnline services generate user fees, subscription fees and hosting fees, which enable agencies to participate without allocating funds for the program.
• In many instances we charge no upfront fees for development and maintenance of interfaces and front-end Web applications.
• We built a marketing, advertising and public relations function specifically to promote TexasOnline.
• We provide help desk services for citizens and businesses. An account representative team provides single-point-of-contact services to our state and local clients.
• We built a secure accounting center in which we keep control over the transactions and provide the detailed documents for audit purposes.

In 2003, we are launching a statewide interactive voice response (IVR) system, as well as content management and electronic forms tools. The system will help disabled persons and others to access services more conveniently. The content management and electronic forms tools will enable agencies to create their own Web pages and electronic and paper forms without the help of technical personnel.

The Result

We were awarded the engagement in May 2000. We processed the first TexasOnline transaction in August 2000 and, by December 31, 2000, we launched six pilot test sites. We “went live?to the public on January 1, 2001.

TexasOnline now hosts 10 separate portals and serves many state agencies and local governments. Up to one million Texas citizens use TexasOnline sites each month, and BearingPoint processes an average of 900,000 financial transactions through the sites each month. We have collected nearly $500 million in revenue on behalf of the state and local governments.

Today, TexasOnline is the only infrastructure in the country that enables both state agencies and local governments to use the same platform to provide their services.

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