Today, the life cycle of technology is probably no more than a year or two and shrinking every day. That, says Kimball, puts more pressure on government CIOs already working under tight budgets, putting them in the politically untenable position of going back for funding every year. Although the system's Web page received nearly a million hits during its first month of operation, only 100 of the 220,000 tax bills due last Nov. 15 were paid online.
Most users log on to research property deeds or check payoff amounts.
DeKalb County Tax Commissioner Tom Scott expected the payment system, called ezProperty, to be slow to take off. Traffic has not been an issue for the Michigan Bureau of Motor Vehicles, which brought online auto registration to motorists last year under a partnership with SDR Technologies. The company, founded in 1991, originally made a name for itself developing electronic campaign-contribution filing systems for local governments. In fall 1998, it brought up the Michigan BMV registration system, which has processed more than 60,000 credit-card transactions. We're responding to a citizenry that knows more about technology than ever and has strong ideas of what the government should provide when it comes to Internet services.