Utah.gov Wins National Award for Social Media Efforts

SALT LAKE CITY--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Utah.gov, the official Web site for the State of Utah, was honored with a Best Fit Integrator award by the Center for Digital Government for implementing an innovative solution to suit the government’s need to aggregate their social media efforts. The award recognizes Utah.gov and connect.utah.gov for effectively interacting with citizens through social media sites like Twitter and Facebook.

“Having Utah.gov recognized by a panel of national experts is truly an honor”

“Having Utah.gov recognized by a panel of national experts is truly an honor,” said J. Stephen Fletcher, Chief Information Officer for the State of Utah. “We are excited about connect.utah.gov and believe it is a valuable service to the public. Citizens who want to be more engaged with government can utilize online social media tools to connect with the government agencies of their choice.”

Utah State Government recognized it needed to reach a growing number of citizens who use various social media platforms. Currently, there are more than 200 state departments using Twitter that collectively tweet an average of 20 times per hour. There are more than 140 state and local Facebook accounts. Utah state agencies are utilizing these tools to engage the public, particularly with people they may not otherwise reach. Utah.gov took the opportunity to aggregate all the social media accounts in one location, so citizens can easily find and follow topics of interest.

Along with Twitter and Facebook, connect.utah.gov also embraces YouTube, Flickr, blogs, mobile applications, widgets, and RSS feeds as a method of meeting citizens already connecting online. Effective use of social media has helped Utah.gov achieve an average monthly unique visitor rate of more than 1 million in 2010.

The Center for Digital Government, a national research and advisory institute on information technology policies and best practices in state and local government, recently announced the winners at the fourth annual Best Fit Integrator Awards ceremony held in Rockport, Maine.

For more information on the Social Connections Portal visit http://connect.utah.gov. Other State of Utah award-winning services can be found at http://www.Utah.gov.

For more information about the Best Fit Integrator Awards visit http://www.centerdigitalgov.com/survey/84

About Utah.gov

Utah.gov is the entry point to over 1000 online services and benefits over 2.7 million residents in the State of Utah. Utah.gov provides citizens and businesses with more convenient options for interacting with government. Through Utah.gov, citizens can find public meetings, renew their vehicle registration, renew a driver license, buy a hunting and fishing license, register a business, find a transparent state budget, and much more. In 2009 alone, Utah.gov received an unprecedented 20 awards making it the nation’s most honored state website.

Utah.gov is the official Web portal for the State of Utah (http://www.Utah.gov). It was ranked first in the nation in the Center for Digital Government’s 2009 Best of the Web competition and also ranked first in the 2008 Digital States Survey by the Center for Digital Government. It is managed and operated without tax funds through a public-private partnership between the state and Utah Interactive, the Salt Lake City-based official eGovernment partner for the state of Utah. Utah Interactive is part of eGovernment firm NIC’s family of companies.

About NIC

NIC is the nation's leading provider of government Web sites, online services, and secure payment processing solutions. The company's innovative eGovernment services help reduce costs and increase efficiencies for government agencies, citizens, and businesses across the country. The NIC family of companies provides eGovernment solutions for more than 3,000 federal, state, and local agencies that serve 98 million people in the United States. Additional information is available at http://www.nicusa.com.