ANNAPOLIS, Md. – Maryland’s award-winning website, www.Maryland.gov, was awarded Best in Class by the Interactive Media Awards™. This honor recognizes that Maryland.gov has met and surpassed the basic standards of excellence that comprise the web’s most professional work.
The Best in Class award is the highest honor bestowed by the Interactive Media Awards (IMA). It represents the very best in planning, execution and overall professionalism. In order to win this award, a site has to successfully pass through a comprehensive judging process, achieving very high marks in each of the judging criteria - an achievement earned by only a fraction of sites in the IMA competition each year.
"This award is further validation that the State of Maryland is a leader in the industry, able to effectively and efficiently develop powerful and service driven websites for our citizens," said David Garcia, Maryland Secretary of Information Technology.
Maryland.gov provides a gateway for more than 84 million visitors to agency websites and hundreds of time-saving digital government services, including vehicle registration renewals, vehicle safety inspections, professional licensing, permits and business registrations. Agencies and visitors have access to payment processing gateways, a real-time social media mashup for more than 300 agencies, help desk, and interactive events and public meetings calendar.
The citizen-centric design provides easy access to a Google site search with custom filters based on content type — pages, services, social media, publications, and even maps. The responsive design allows for a lean mobile experience, with seamless expandable content for the more than 42 million mobile visitors.
The site also utilizes the new, state-of-the-art Enterprise Widget Platform. This platform provides state agencies with centralized and standardized code, and allows for rapid development and deployment of a variety of widgets. These widgets include NearYou, Online Services, Google Site Search and Header, which are available across state agencies expanding the state’s open data platform.
In addition, Maryland.gov includes:
- Digital Services Platform
Hosting platform for digital services that include: payment processing, security, event registration, agency website templates, search, and help desk.
- Service-first Approach
Developed 25 new digital government services in 2015, using 100 percent mobile friendly templates.
- MyMARYLAND Clipboard Personalization
First state to introduce citizen-centric user personalization allowing visitors to save links for future use.
The Maryland.gov website was developed for the State of Maryland at no cost by NIC Maryland, through the self-funded eGovernment services contract with the State Department of Information Technology (DoIT).
About NIC Maryland
NIC Maryland builds, operates, maintains, and markets the official website of the state of Maryland, www.maryland.gov and its digital government services. NIC Maryland is a collaborative public/private partnership managed by the Department of Information Technology (DoIT) and NIC Maryland. NIC Maryland helps Maryland state and local government entities web-enable their services and operates without tax funds through a self-funded digital government services contract. NIC Maryland has developed dozens of eGov products and services for the state of Maryland since the contract was awarded in August 2011.
About NIC
Founded in 1992, NIC (NASDAQ: EGOV) is the nation's leading provider of innovative digital government solutions and secure payment processing, which help make government more accessible to everyone through technology. The family of NIC companies provides digital government solutions for more than 4,500 federal, state, and local agencies in the United States. Forbes has named NIC as one of the “100 Best Small Companies in America” six times and the company has been included four times on the Barron’s 400 Index. Additional information is available at http://www.egov.com.