Arkansas Awarded Digital States Survey Citizen Centric Award

December 7, 2020

State recognized for providing digital services that engage citizens and businesses

The Center for Digital Government (CDG) announced Arkansas as a recipient of the Digital States Survey 2020 Citizen Centric award. As one of only three states to receive the award, Arkansas was recognized for its focus on providing mobile and digital services that engage individuals and businesses in government interactions.

“We’re very honored to be recognized for our continued efforts to use technology to improve delivery of services to Arkansans,” said Amy Fecher, Secretary of Transformation and Shared Services. “With more than 68% of citizens accessing state websites from mobile devices, it is important that we continue to find more ways to connect government to the public using online services.”

As the focus on providing contactless mobile and digital services to Arkansas citizens continues to expand, state and local government entities also benefit from the library of more than 1,000 digital government solutions and cloud-native platforms built in partnership with the State’s official digital government services partner, NIC Arkansas. By working alongside state government entities to help web-enable their information and services, NIC Arkansas can quickly reconfigure what was built for one government entity to work for another, allowing for rapid expansion of digital services to citizens.

“NIC Arkansas is thrilled to see our partner’s work recognized nationally yet again, especially in the Citizen Centric category,” said Bob Sanders, General Manager of NIC Arkansas. “Our mission is to make government interactions more accessible for everyone through technology, and this award directly aligns with our goal.”

The CDG Digital States Survey is a biennial evaluation designed to highlight best and emerging technology practices across all 50 states. Each state is evaluated and assigned a grade based on its use of technology to streamline operations, increase capacity, reach policy goals and improve service delivery. Overall, Arkansas received a B based on results demonstrated across a set of criteria that included actions supporting state priorities and policies to improve operations or services, hard- and soft-dollar savings/benefits, progress since the last survey, innovative and citizen-centric services, and effective collaboration.