Kentucky to size up e-gov

Kentucky is hiring outside help to evaluate its e-government status.

The Governor's Office for Technology has hired consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers to assess the state's preparedness, resource availability, e-government strategy, partnerships, technology infrastructure and long-term direction.

"Basically, we want to be sure that we're moving on the right enterprise level for our e-government strategy," said Randy Kitchen, director of Kentucky's Division of Centers of Expertise in the Governor's Office for Technology (got.state.ky.us). "We don't want to be moving in vertical directions. We want to be sure that we're taking all Cabinets into consideration for anything we're going to do."

Kitchen said the concept of increased statewide collaboration has been a recurring theme in discussions during the past year within the state's e-government steering committee.

"And like most states at this time, we're dealing with budget deficits, and so whatever monies we have to use, we're going to try to use them as best we can," Kitchen said. "We'd like to better identify anything where technology can be used toward some protective cost savings, while hopefully increasing services to citizens."

The assessment lasts four months, during which consultants from PricewaterhouseCoopers will conduct interviews with all state Cabinet secretaries and chief information officers. They'll use that information to draft a plan to improve the state's e-government strategy.

"They're basically going to come in and ask them what their priorities are, how they see e-government playing a role in those priorities, what they see as barriers and problems to implementation of those roles and how you can solve some of those problems," Kitchen said. "What we want to come out of this with is the notion that, OK, here are the top five or top 10 areas to concentrate our resources on." Kentucky officials declined to comment on the price of the contract.