The Georgia Technology Authority (GTA) has been working on
creating an enterprise portal to enhance the state of Georgia's electronic
communications capabilities. If created, the portal would serve as a way for
anyone to easily access information about the state of Georgia through a
variety of means.
What is a Portal?
A portal is a website that delivers information tailored to
a specific audience and also provides community services, such as forums or
email, to that audience. The concept of a portal is rather nebulous, but the
Gartner Group gives the following four criterions for determining whether or
not a website should be thought of as a portal:
Connection. A portal must be able to link its audience to the vast
amount of information available on the Internet.
Content. For a web site to be considered a portal, it should
present its audience with content specifically targeted at the audience.
Commerce. Portals should give their users access to online
commercial services such as electronic stores and online directories.
Community. The people who use a portal should share a common
interest and ground rules so that they can have more in-depth interactions with
other users.
A portal can basically be thought of as a site that provides
an online community with the ability to interact with each other and the
resources of the Internet. Popular portals today include Yahoo!, Google, and
MSN.
The State of Georgia Portal
The portal that the GTA has envisioned for the state of
Georgia is a specific type of portal called an enterprise portal. This sort of
portal is different from a normal Internet portal because it is meant to
provide information specifically about an enterprise for the people involved with
that enterprise. These users are usually divided into two groups for the
purposes of an enterprise portal: Internal users, such as state officials and
state employees in the case of a Georgia portal, and external users, such as
residents and visitors.
In order to provide the best ease of access to both types of
portal users, the Georgia enterprise portal should be organized so that users can
access information about particular departments in the Georgia government on
the basis of both location and function. In other words, users who visit a
particular department should be presented with links to other departments in
the same region and links to the same department in other regions. The overhaul
of the Georgia website should aim to make information about the state of
Georgia easily accessible to the most people possible.
Contact
the Georgia Technology Authority
Georgia Technology Authority
47 Trinity Avenue S.W.
Atlanta, Georgia 30334
Phone:
Main office: (404) 463-2300
Service issues: (877) 482-3233
Online:
Use this form
to send an electronic message to the GTA.
