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Challenge |
Overview
NIC is the leading U.S. provider of outsourced official state and local government websites and proprietary e-government technology. Since 1991, NIC has built a library of more than 400 unique applications, which make renewing a driver's license, obtaining a building permit and paying taxes as easy as checking e-mail. In 2001, NIC applications processed more than 52 million transactions. The company currently maintains long-term government portal contracts with 17 states and 8 counties and cities; additional NIC solutions support government clients in 30 states, Canada, and the U.K.
Four NIC state clients have already adopted the Google Search Appliance for their networks: Indiana, Kansas, Arkansas and Hawaii.
For example, Indiana's public information portal, accessIndiana, is the official Internet resource for all of that state's government business. The site houses nearly 8 GB of information – more than 175 interactive services and 200,000 pages of all file types (HTML, PDF, standard Microsoft Office™ applications) on numerous servers. The state of Indiana contracts with the NIC subsidiary, Indiana Interactive, Inc. (III). The 25-person staff develops, maintains and markets the accessIndiana portal without using any appropriated state tax dollars.
That's one reason NIC wanted its government partners to try the Google Search Appliance. "We wanted our state government portals to offer the world's best search results with an affordable and easy-to-use product," says Jeff Fraser, CEO of NIC.
The Challenge
accessIndiana's previously installed search application had become a major headache to manage. It required high server CPU and massive memory. Besides the occasional search request failure, the production server experienced overloads and other technical problems. Even though the software – considered a bargain when it was bought seven years ago – came with a support contract, the application was extremely complex to manage. In-house administrators just didn't have the time to spend on continuously tweaking parameters to improve results.
Beyond administration issues, the search engine required ongoing and labor-intensive improvements to site indexes for better search results. This meant that many agencies and hundreds of content owners had to pay close attention to meta-tagging, precise wording formats, exacting use of HTML titles and other details for virtually every document they posted. Typically, the content owners were reluctant to be trained in these arcane details and were concerned that the additional work would still yield poor search results. One notable example that affected many portal users: searching on "state fair" with the old search technology did not return a link to the Indiana State Fair site. "That certainly qualifies as unproductive," notes accessIndiana General Manager Candy Irven. "With such a plethora of information available from the portal, a reliable search engine that produces accurate results is a must for the citizens and businesses who choose to interact with their state government via the Internet. It was really the final straw."
The Solution
Indiana Interactive opted to install a single Google Search Appliance, the GB-1001. In about two hours (the time it took for an admin to install and run some trial queries), the team saw several distinct improvements, including an accurate result set for the search "state fair". Moving the search engine off the main Web server saved considerable memory and CPU, so the public sites are now consistently available instead of tied up processing numerous CGI scripts for search requests. What's more, the old database and collections files typically used from 2GB to 6GB of disk space, all of which has been freed up. "Once we factored in the time and cost of training, developing and maintaining the system, plus the hardware capacity and processing time," says Irven, "we definitely came out ahead with Google."
End Result
It took about one week to install and deploy the Google Search Appliance, including configuring a look and feel specifically for Indiana citizens, tweaking the final search results, and developing an implementation plan. And whether users are posting or searching for documents, no training is necessary.
"Citizens and businesses seek a wide range of information when they visit a state government Web site," notes Jeff Fraser. "Google is helping constituents find what they need with fast and thorough search results."
The number of queries per month, which now runs in the hundreds of thousands, reveals a marked increase in traffic, Irven reports, noting that "A search engine that works increases the likelihood of getting traffic to the right spot while increasing the number of documents served."
The bigger picture is equally important, says Fraser: "Google is helping to improve the efficiency of online government for Indiana and several of our other state partners. We're in business to make governments more efficient, and Google has certainly helped to support this mission."
About the Google Search Appliance
The Google Search Appliance is an integrated corporate search solution that extends Google's award-winning search technology to intranets and websites. The Google Search Appliance is available in three models: the GB-1001 for departments and mid-sized companies, the GB-5005 for dedicated, high-priority search services such as customer-facing websites and company-wide intranet applications, and the GB-8008 for centralized deployments supporting global business units.
Contact sales for more information.
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