AWARDS & RECOGNITION

2003 Awards: Accessibility & Participation

RECIPIENT:
Tennessee
Tennessee Information Infrastructure (TNII)

Left to right: Thomas L. Hickerson, Vickie Stanfill, Elijah Hall, Mark Cross, Robert Baldwin

Tennessee is the first to award a contract to private industry to manage the state's Wide Area Network. The Tennessee Information Infrastructure (TNII) project is a provider-managed, multi-service wide area network, for the purpose of establishing universal access to enhanced and emerging communications services for state and local government and higher education.

Over the past year, the TNII project has helped Tennessee transition from a state-owned network to a private communications infrastructure that is more capacious, provides more services, and realizes concomitant savings to taxpayers. As a result, the State of Tennessee has implemented an idea that began in 1998; a cooperative vision through which to:

• Provide universal electronic access to government and service from government
• Deliver improved communications infrastructure to state agencies, schools, local governments, and non-profit organizations—particularly in rural areas
• Provide emerging technology that facilitates telemedicine, telejustice, distance learning, imaging, geographical information systems, and Internet 2
• Create an interoperable network consolidating resources, eliminating redundancies, and yielding quantifiable savings through centralized management
• Ensure that the necessary physical and technological infrastructure is available to encourage private sector investment

  "The TNII initiative positioned Tennessee's State agencies, schools and local governments to take advantage of the power of networks to quickly adapt to emerging requirements in health, education, homeland defense and the conduct of normal business between the citizens and their state government. Uniform pricing extends the e-business sphere to even the most rural areas of the State of Tennessee.” Richard Rognehaugh, Chief of Information Systems, Tennessee Office of Information Resources

• Position our internetworking infrastructure to quickly adapt to emerging requirements from health, education, and homeland defense initiatives S

State agencies, post-secondary schools, city and county libraries, and city and county government now select communication options from a "TNII catalog of services" which provides uniform pricing and universal access for all Tennessee counties. Pricing is therefore based on statewide volumes, allowing for low cost, bundled communications services. This allows previous capital expenditures to become more manageable and operating expenses more predictable, simplifying the budgeting process. The increased benefits have been realized with a reduction in annual operating expenses and more importantly, avoidance of up to $25 million in capital investment. This new infrastructure has positioned Tennessee to rapidly execute a health initiative, facilitating interaction between the Department of Health and the Centers for Disease Control under the Bioterrorism Cooperative program.

OTHER NOMINATIONS:
Click on the link to download program submission.

Arkansas
Arkansas Walmart Vehicle Registration Renewal Process

Delaware
Access Delaware Project

Florida
360-Degree Evaluation System

Indiana
Indiana Accessibility Project

Missouri
Missouri Assistive Technology - Web Accessibility

North Carolina
Web Developers Accessibility Tools

North Dakota
North Dakota Web Accessibility

Texas
Using Biometrics to improve the Texas Welfare System

Virginia
Web Site Policy, Standards and Guidelines.doc

Washington
Labor Market Information Delivery System

West Virginia
State Unit on Aging Website

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