| NIC Inc.: Behind the Scenes |
| IT | |||
| Written by Eric Slack | |||
| Saturday, 31 May 2008 | |||
 Harry Herington, CEO and chairman of the board NIC wasn’t the result of a government initiative. End users in America’s heartland needing access to government information conceived the idea. Attorneys in Kansas were frustrated by the fact that unless they had an office in Topeka, it was impossible to get immediate access to government and legislative information. This put them at a competitive disadvantage to firms with satellite offices. As computers were proliferating in the early 1990s, they thought a bulletin board system could solve the problem. The state thought the idea had merit, but offered no money to support it. Instead, the lawyers went to the banking and insurance industries, and, lo and behold, the rest of the business community around the state had similar problems. Together, they created a proposal requesting help building a system to provide e-access to government information. NIC’s founders saw the solution lay in the fact that individuals needing access to the information were willing to pay for it. NIC’s self-funded model was born. “Even though the government would be our client, the individuals we served were businesses and citizens who would pay for the service over dial-up and pre-Web Internet access,” said Herington. “States can either appropriate annual funds for these services and try to do it themselves, or we can figure out what kinds of government information businesses use and provide them instant, efficient access they will pay for.” The idea was to focus on its partners’ customers. The company would partner with the government and identify services citizens and businesses would pay for. After its initial success in Kansas, the company actually went to presentations and essentially gave away the recipe, offering the business plan to other states for nothing. No one took them up on the offer. Collective effort Today, NIC works in 21 states. The reason it has grown beyond Kansas is that many state governments tried to put these types of service together on their own and learned the private sector elements NIC brings to the table are too difficult to replicate in government. If the service isn’t user-friendly and marketed properly, people won’t use it. Once NIC steps in to create a new portal, the service is generally so well received by state officials and users alike, government partners essentially become a salesforce and recommend the service. The reason is simple—it doesn’t use tax dollars and brings efficiency to government agencies and the businesses and citizens they serve. NIC doesn’t make its partners change their back end systems. Instead, it adjusts to whatever systems the government already has. For every new partner portal NIC opens, the company sends a permanent team to the state that acts as almost a quasi-state agency. Developers, project managers, and marketing teams are completely focused on that one partner. The company also puts a great deal of emphasis on the people who will be running these portals. NIC has a low turnover because it gives employees the opportunity for career advancement and job satisfaction. When new portals and partnerships are created, the company promotes from within. When it hires a new mid-level employee, the idea is to bring in someone who can eventually run one of the business units. As people are promoted, they move from portal to portal, seeing how things are done from state to state and creating a culture of continuity no matter the distance from corporate headquarters. Employees don’t pay an insurance premium, are offered a 401K matching program, and participate in wellness programs, including discounts to gyms and a “Biggest Loser”-style contest where winning employees get round-trip tickets to Hawaii in return for taking better care of themselves. By focusing on the wellbeing of its staff, the company can accomplish its original mission. “We aim to be the best partner our partners ever had, to be the best place our employees ever worked, and to be the best investment our shareholders ever made,” Herington said. “Taking care of the first two makes it easy to take care of the third.” The buck stops here One of NIC’s biggest concerns and core competencies is security. The company processes more than $4 billion in payments annually and closely guards the keys to the kingdom by maintaining several layers of support. Security teams on site report to the central office, and the security director reports directly to Herington. Auditing teams are constantly checking NIC’s systems to make sure no doors are left open, and the company’s security protocols are so tight, it sometimes finds security weaknesses with other state technology providers. “Security keeps me awake at night, but we’ve never lost a contract, which speaks volumes about the relationships we have with our partners and the services we provide,” said Herington. For NIC to continue growing, it has to expand services offered in current states and also get a foot in the door of states it hasn’t captured yet. Considering that 21 of the 22 outsourced enterprise portals belong to NIC, it seems just a matter of time before the company does just that. “We now have more demand than ever through both internal and external growth. I have no complaints with current partners or with states we’re not in,” Herington said. “If you are going to work with government you have to be patient. Government isn’t a business, and we have proven we can deliver year-over-year growth by being patient.” |
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© 2008 American Executive - RedCoat Publishing. All rights reserved.
American Executive is a RedCoat Publishing publication.
American Executive is a RedCoat Publishing publication.
