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Indiana Launches Statewide Productivity System
TaylorJo writes "Lt. Governor of Indiana Kathy Davis today unveiled a new technology program designed to give all Hoosiers free access to a full suite of computer software tools. The SimIndiana software permits residents to access their personal files and applications from any computer at any time. The software can be downloaded on the SimIndiana site, but requires Windows, and registration on the site, to use it. The program also provides an email address and remote storage on SimIndiana servers."
you store you files on a remote server owned by the government? How much storage space do you get? What kind of privacy can you expect? Does every resident automatically get an account?
This is really cool. This is the first attempt that I've seen by any state government to deliver some really useful technology to their citizens. Heck, I'm happy just being able to pay parking tickets online, this SimIndiana has online productivity apps for gosh sakes!
While I'm sure they'll get the usual criticism, I admire and salute their attempt to deliver something truly useful to the good people of Indiana. The only real problem I see with this is reaching the many people who don't have access to the technology needed to use SimIndiana. In the future it may be very useful to provide similar services that can be accessed via cel phone. Afterall, these days everyone and their grandma has a cel phone.
Again, Kudos to Indiana!
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6. User Conduct You are responsible for any content that You store, post or transmit on or through the Service. You will not use the Service to store, distribute, link to, or solicit content that:
WTF? Is this SimIndiana or SimTexas ?
Can't we forge an address anyway? NY Times thinks I'm from Anchorage, Alaska
NY Times isn't the government. It is a federal crime to lie on a federal form. I'm sure there are similar state laws, but I don't think this would quite count as an official form. However, it may fall under wire fraud statutes, depending on where you live (NY times forgery may also fall under these statutes).
I work for a tax software company. Last year the IRS and many state governments were forced to remove their free online tax services because they competed with private tax software providers.
How is it that the state of Indiana can provide a free product that competes directly with everyone from yahoo mail to wordperfect and get away with it. I'm guessing this site won't be up for long - the courts will shut time down in a hurry.
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OK, so it would appear that this is really a desktop application which accesses a centralized file store.
Other than a centralized place for files (which is also available, BTW, from Yahoo!), I fail to see what this buys you over, say OpenOffice.
With OpenOffice, you don't have to worry about whether or not the state is going to continue to pay for the system after two years, plus it runs on far more platforms than SimIndiana.
Annoyed? I think this would be a nice step in making tax payment easier and faster, as well as registering to vote, It could make it easier to do many things too that are state related, car tags, paying / viewing tickets (speeding for ex).
I can see this having alot of features that could make this a really useful tool to residents if it was done well, and if it was used affectivly.
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I've seen some of the things people are doing with HTML, CSS and JavaScript these days. We aren't that far from having powerful office tools that are used via a web browser. Heck, we may already be there.
I live in Indiana, and I don't want to change because changing all your clocks twice a year is a pain in the butt.
I lived in Michigan from 1990-1998 and failed to understand the big deal about daylight savings time. In the winter it was dark by 5pm and in the summer it didn't get dark until 10pm.