Outstanding Digital Government Service
Best of Indiana awards announced
What is on.IN.gov?
How to find free time in Outlook
WorkSmart 365: Adoption, Community and a Fall Conference!
Outstanding Digital Government Service
The Center for Digital Government recognized Indiana's efforts as having one of the best technology practices in digital government. In the past two months, the Center awarded the state an 'A-' in its biennial Digital States Survey, matching its 2016 grade, and named IN.gov as having the 3rd best digital government experience in its annual Government Experience Awards.
The Digital States Survey evaluates states based on a set of criteria that includes actions supporting state priorities and policies to improve operations or services, hard- and soft-dollar savings/benefits, progress since the last survey, innovative and citizen-centric services, and effective collaboration.
Indiana was also recognized for a Digital States Survey Category Award in Health & Human Services.
The Government Experience Awards recognize the achievements and best practices of government incorporating digital services beyond a website and push the boundaries of how citizen services are delivered. In addition to being applauded for an excellent website, Indiana’s citizen experience this year was improved with the introduction of the Google Home voice skill. Using the phrase, “Ask Indiana," one can access travel advisories, get state employee contact information or general state agency information. Citizens can also text the State Information Center (1-855-463-5292) to ask a question.
In the last year, IN.gov, which provides more than 500 online services for citizens and businesses, has received more than 70 million visits and 210 million page views.
Best of Indiana awards announced
The Indiana Office of Technology recently announced the winners of the 3rd annual Best of Indiana Awards, highlighting outstanding state agency and local government websites and applications. Awards were presented to the winners at the annual Indiana Digital Government Summit last month.
Best Application Serving an Agency's Business Needs — State: Indiana Public Retirement System — Retirement Application Center
The Indiana Public Retirement System recently went through the process of switching record-keepers, outsourcing annuities and implementing a completely online retirement application. Switching to the online retirement application allows INPRS’ members to self-serve, which means quicker results for them and fewer calls to support. Before the initiative, INPRS had a paper application that members had to mail. The process has switched from 90% paper to 100% digital and improved the quality of data, reducing corrections by more than 50%.
Best Application Serving an Organization’s Business Needs — Local: Hamilton County — Online Submission of Deduction Forms
The Hamilton County Online Submission for Deduction Forms custom 
applications lets the public submit four property deduction forms. In the first five months, the mobile-friendly interface received more than 3,800 submissions. The process is simple, with the user selecting their property resulting in many of the fields being pre-filled with data, saving time. Processing time has been cut in half and calls have been significantly reduced.
Best Application Serving the Public – State: Indiana Archives and Records Administration - Virtual Volunteer Program
The Indiana Archives and Records Administration (IARA) are utilizing FromThePage.com to crowdsource the indexing of information. Volunteers are asked to index the World War I service record cards of Hoosiers. This is the first project with From the Page and it was chosen because of the upcoming WWI Centennial. Anyone can create a free account and index the cards from home. To date, there have been more than 100 volunteers that have gone through approximately 50,000 pages of documents.
Best Application Serving the Public – Local: City of Bloomington — Website
The City of Bloomington’s website redesign simplifies navigation to key City services, information and news. The site utilizes responsive design and blends features and design patterns found in national and international municipal sites. Developed in Drupal, the content management system allows direct integrations with other systems. Included in the redesign were a financial transparency portal, business quick-start guide and an interactive map gallery.
What is on.IN.gov?
Worried that your URL is too long to remember or want a trusted URL to post on social media sites? IOT has developed GovLinks, which creates a short link, think bit.ly, for your marketing needs. Links begin with https://on.in.gov/[insert text], with the [insert text] section being either customized, if you are trying to market a specific address, or randomized if you are just posting to social media.
GovLinks creates short links which can be tracked within the tool or in Siteimprove Analytics.
List of features: 
* Auto-generation of short links or create custom short URLs.
* Easily create new links for each digital platform.
* Track the number of hits each source receives.
GovLinks is very useful for social media campaigns, as users can easily generate individual links for each social platform. This is helpful for those that post a.m. and then p.m. messages to track the effectiveness of each message.
GovLinks can also be used for web content. IOT uses the platform to track the three links for Self-Service Password Management (SSPM) on the IOT homepage. Regular analytics would not provide the granularity of which link was clicked to get to SSPM, only showing the user came from the IOT homepage.
To request access, contact either Devan Strebing or Graig Lubsen.
How to find free time in Outlook
Did you know when you are scheduling a meeting with other state employees you can identify the best time to meet through Outlook? This can save time versus going back and forth asking when people are available. When you look up other people's schedules, the information you see reflects how they have set their free/busy status for each calendar event.
1. Either click on new item or select Calendar in the Navigation Bar, and then click New Meeting on the Home tab.
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2. On the To line of the new meeting, add the person(s) by typing or using the Address Book.
3. On the Meeting tab, click Scheduling Assistant.
A calendar appears that shows the free/busy times for the organizer and the person(s) on the To line.
The top line, All Attendees, shows if there are available time slots for all attendees. Outlook also displays in the bottom right Suggested times where there are the fewest conflicts.
WorkSmart 365: Adoption, Community and a Fall Conference!
WorkSmart 365 is an exciting program rolling out from the Indiana Office of Technology. Led by Vanessa Williams, Cloud Architect for the State of Indiana, and Stephanie Williams, Senior Office 365 Administrator and Community Manager, this program is providing open and engaging communication about Office 365 for State of Indiana employees.
The core mission of WorkSmart 365 is to drive adoption and raise awareness of the Office 365 platform. In a partnership with Microsoft, IOT is building a community of informed users that can use the available tools to improve their daily productivity, as well as increase overall business value.
This initiative has many components, but most notably:
- WorkSmart 365 Champions Program that helps provide resources, learning opportunities, and early access to new features;
- A flourishing Yammer Community that provides end users a place to voice questions and thoughts with their peers, and a way to communicate directly with experts on the topics; and
- The WorkSmart 365 Fall Conference.
The five day WorkSmart 365 Fall Conference is nearly complete, but there is still one day of the conference if you are interested in attending! The first four days of the conference covered a wide spectrum of topics related to Office 365: Team Productivity and Collaboration, Modern Business Applications, and Intranets and Portals. These first few days were filled with engaging presentations from Microsoft Executives as well as our very own Vanessa Williams. Each day has reached hundreds of State employees, both in person in the Indiana Government Conference Center and through a live-stream provided by IDEM. Using the tools within Office 365, we were able to provide all attendees with real-time answers to their questions through Yammer, and quick access to the presentation slides through the WorkSmart 365 Portal.
The final day of the conference, Monday, Nov. 5, is still open for participants. Microsoft and IOT will discuss security and compliance in the Office 365 platform and demonstrate features for information protection and classification, permissions and sharing and retention.
When: Nov. 5, 2018 – from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Where: Indiana Conference Center, Room B
Seating is limited, so seats will be first-come, first-served. If you are interested but can’t attend in person, check out the live-stream!