Projo Politics Blog

By STEVE PEOPLES
Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE, RI - The governor's office announced last week the "re-launch" of Rhode Island state government's Web site, RI.gov.

We spoke to the private company that manages the site to get the new lay of the land, learning about a more user-friendly layout, bundling of on-line services (such as car registrations, fishing licenses and business tax filings), and government spending information.

When told that RI.gov doesn't cost taxpayers anything, we were curious about how the Kansas-based NIC USA, a publicly-traded company, made money off the site. Altogether, the company earned revenues of $96.8 million last year by managing 21 state Web sites, according to company spokeswoman Nancy Sherrer Beaton. The company makes most of its money by taking a percentage of online financial transactions.

After initially declining to release financial figures specific to RI.gov, Sherrer Beaton said that her company handled Rhode Island revenues totaling $18.7 million in 2008. Most of the money - $17.7 million - was returned to the state's general fund, leaving the company with a little more than $1 million to run its Rhode Island office, which employs six people, she said, adding that her company paid $130,000 worth of related credit card fees.

The Web site offers 76 separate online services, according to Sherrer Beaton. The most used is the online car registration option (there were 75,000 such transactions in 2008), on which the company doesn't take a percentage.

NIC USA has held a state contract to manage RI.gov since 2001.

 Tags  R.I. government Web site ri.gov

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