Information Technology
Application and E-Government Services
Enterprise Applications
E-Payment Engine
The E-Payment Engine provides the capability for any e-commerce website to accept electronic payment methods. This service allows any web application to enable its customers to make payments online. Features include:
- Design with government in mind
- Accepts major credit cards and e-checks
- Flexible batching/update of information
- Off-line payment processing
- Address verification services
Enterprise Authorization & Authentication
Enterprise A&A is the State of Iowa's shared logon service. It handles user registration, account management (like changing and recovering passwords) and simple privilege management functions.
The service lets users enjoy having just one account to give them access to multiple applications and a consistent way to manage that account. Implementing a common account resource makes it less expensive and easier to offer multiple services and applications to citizens and employees alike.
Features include:
- Use of common identifiers across multiple platforms and services
- Allows creation of accounts for the public and other non-employees
- Permits self-registration by users creating new accounts
- Establishes application-specific capabilities
Single Contact Repository (SING)
The Single Contact Repository (SING) is an internet application developed and sponsored by the State Department of Administrative Services / Information Technology Enterprise that allows registered users to perform background checks on potential employees, volunteers, and students doing clinicals, from a single web screen. The application lets a user check Iowa criminal history, three abuse registries (child, dependent adult, and sex offender), and over 40 Public Health professional license types from one click on the screen.
This data resides on various platforms within Iowa state government, including a mainframe and several departmental LAN servers. SING performs its background checks against the original registries, rather than using point-in-time copies, which become out-of-date between refreshes. In addition to ensuring that employers receive up-to-date information, SING's technique provides an extra measure of security. Each confidential database is stored in its original secure location, and nowhere else. No data resides on the web server itself. This means that SING must communicate with multiple databases (from different vendors) on multiple platforms (also from different vendors). Some of the databases accessed include SQL, Oracle, Sybase, and a mainframe CA/IDMS.
The SING web site is a secured site - only registered users can access the information. Depending on what type of an organization they are determines to which of the databases they have legal access. This is done by putting them in groups, with the group having access only to certain databases, or all of them. The application is used by over 1,000 users each month, doing an average of 17,500 transactions, or searches, a month. This application has expedited the process of checking backgrounds of employees and volunteers as often required by regulations and policies.
eLeave
eLeave Service allows employees and supervisors to input and review leave requests while using the internet. As long as the internet is available, a person can input leave requests and review requests. This provides an easy way for supervisors to quickly see who has requested leave as well as those who have worked overtime. They can also approve or deny a request. This provides a quick feedback to the person requesting the leave. The following items are available:
- View your most recent requests
- Enter a new request
- View requests that are pending or reviewed
- Search previously entered requests
- Export the information
- View a calendar with your leave requests
- View a calendar with the leave requests of your department. This allows each person to view who has requested leave. It does not provide the details of the leave requests.
Address Validation
Address Validation is the verification of address information. The service uses a database supplied by the United States Postal Service (USPS) to determine if an address is a deliverable address. The service will also return the address in the standardized USPS format. The service can be accessed either by providing a file which will be run as a batch process or by submitting addresses one at a time to our web service. In addition to the return of the address itself, we can also provide additional information such as county number, county name, geo code and congressional district. An additional item that is offered is the National Change of Address. If you provide 100 or more unique addresses, we can process the files through the National Change of Address (NCOA) data to determine if the person, family or business has moved. If the move is within the last 18 months, we can return the new address. We can also provide information detailing if the move is for an individual, a family or a business. There are many advantages to address verification:
- Addresses in a database can be searched more effectively as they are in the same format. The spellings of streets and cities are the same throughout the database.
- Postal discounts can be obtained when the addresses are standardized and processed through the NCOA. Agencies can see a decrease of as much as 10 cents per item mailed.
Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)
Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is a Utility that provides the service oriented infrastructure for use by state agencies. SOA has been adopted as a standard for software development, to drive reuse among agencies and foster greater sharing of information. An SOA Advisory Committee was created by the Technology Governance Board to develop standards for IT-related initiatives within the Board's purview. The Committee is led by DAS-ITE with volunteer members from State agencies and oversight by the JCIO (joint council of large-agency CIOs).