Maryland.gov and Maryland Business Express Receive International Emerging Media Awards

Both the Maryland Department of Information Technology and the Maryland State Department of Assessments and Taxation are award winners in the 2018 Summit Emerging Media Award (Summit EMA) competition. Companies and individuals from more than 50 countries and across five continents participate in its award programs.

The Maryland Department of Information Technology received a Leader award for their work on Maryland.gov and the Maryland State Department of Assessments and Taxation was awarded an Innovator award for their work on the Maryland Business Express Portal.

Maryland's award-winning website, www.Maryland.gov, embraces personalization, taking a user-centric approach and creating direct engagement with citizens via live chat, chatbots and Amazon Alexa Skillsets. The Maryland.gov platform delivers a citizen focused, best-in-class platform for more than 91.5 million visitors, providing access to hundreds of time-saving online services, agency sites, social media mashups and real-time government news and events.

The Maryland Business Express Portal is an award-winning, multi-agency business-centric portal. The portal is the result of the collaborative efforts of thirteen Maryland agencies and combines information previously spread across multiple agencies into one, easy-to-navigate site while also providing a clear outline of the steps involved in starting and managing a business. The portal features an innovative business-specific Chatbot designed to communicate with and deliver business guidance to Marylanders 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Using Artificial Intelligence, this digital assistant is the first of its kind to be trained by any state government specific to multi-agency business rules and regulations.

The Summit Emerging Media Award (Summit EMA), began in 2007 and evolved through a need to recognize and celebrate creativity, innovation and those pushing the bounds of creative excellence in all forms of emerging media.

"Those involved in today's emerging media technologies are the leaders who are establishing tomorrow's avenues of advertising communications and emphasizing the importance of the consumer's experience," said Jocelyn Luciano, Executive Director for the Summit International Awards (SIA). "Most communication professionals recognize that established avenues of communication can be reliable and safe however audiences are becoming increasingly fragmented and difficult to engage, inform and affect. Developing, applying and combining emerging media with creative messaging and market awareness is challenging. Achieving this synthesis is what makes earning a Summit EMA a significant achievement."

Both Maryland.gov and the Maryland Business Express Portal were developed by NIC Maryland, in partnership with the Maryland agencies through a collaborative public/private partnership managed by the Department of Information Technology. NIC Maryland has developed more than 140 digital government products and services for the state of Maryland since the contract was awarded in August 2011.

ABOUT NIC

NIC Inc. EGOV is the nation's premier provider of innovative digital government solutions and secure payment processing, which help make government interactions more accessible for everyone through technology. The family of NIC companies has developed a library of more than 13,000 digital government services for more than 6,000 federal, state, and local government agencies. Among these solutions is the ground-breaking personal assistant for government, Gov2Go, delivering citizens personalized reminders and a single platform for all government interactions. More information is available at www.egov.com.

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