Utah.Gov Receives Top Award for Social Media Excellence

The Public Technology Institute (PTI) recently announced Utah.Gov as a winner of its 2014 Web 2.0 State & Local Government Award. The Web 2.0 award recognizes best practices and excellence in the field of Web 2.0 and civic/social networking, and citizen engagement in local and state government. Only two states were chosen as winners this year by PTI. Utah was awarded for integration with Google Apps, Google Plus and Google Hangouts.

“We use social media to reach a broad audience including potential visitors to the state, Utah businesses, and the public,” said Mark VanOrden, Utah State Chief Information Officer. “In addition we use many of the same social media tools available online to support group collaboration and live video interaction.”

PTI’s panel of judges selected these award-winning applications based on their exceptional accomplishments in citizen engagement, innovative technology utilization, accountability, mobile application development and usage, economic development and training, and education. The judges highlighted Utah.Gov’s use of social media and especially Google+ to drive more use and engagement with its services by adding over 10,000 new followers each month.

“All of Utah’s social media tools are integrated into Utah.Gov,” said VanOrden. “Content from 1500 social media accounts is leveraged to improve results and search capabilities on millions of pages and services at Utah.gov.”

The PTI established the award in order to recognize government agencies that create dynamic tools for informing and interacting with the public about issues affecting the community, encouraging collaboration for improved communications and service delivery, and engaging the public in government decision-making.

To find out more information about Utah.Gov visit:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/UtahGov

Facebook: http://www.utah.gov/facebook/

RSS feeds: http://www.utah.gov/connect/feeds.html

Utah blogs: http://www.utah.gov/blogs/

About Utah.Gov

Utah.gov is the entry point to over 1,000 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, buy a hunting and fishing license, register a business, find a transparent state budget, and much more. In 2012 alone, Utah.gov received an unprecedented 24 awards making it the nation’s most honored state website. Utah.gov is managed and operated 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

Founded in 1992, NIC (NASDAQ: EGOV) is the nation's leading provider of official government websites, online services, and secure payment processing solutions. The company's innovative eGovernment services help make government more accessible to everyone through technology. The family of NIC companies provides eGovernment solutions for more than 3,500 federal, state, and local agencies in the United States. Forbes has named NIC as one of the “100 Best Small Companies in America” five times, most recently ranked at No. 11 (2013), and the company has been included three times on the Barron’s 400 Index. Additional information is available at http://www.egov.com.

Contacts:

Utah Interactive
Sara Watts, 801-983-0275
General Manager
swatts@utahinteractive.org
or
Stephanie Weiss, 801-538-3284
DTS Public Information Officer
stweiss@utah.gov

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