Press Release

March 27, 2000 Olympia Washington.

The public is invited to attend Forum 2000 on May 23-24 at the Saint Martin's College in Lacey. This year's Forum theme is e-Government: Services on Demand.

Forum 2000 will address many of the challenges confronting state technology leaders as they try to implement today's digital government. These challenges include:

• Providing direct government services over the Internet to the citizens of the State of Washington in a way that saves citizens time and money and reduces the costs of service delivery.
• Using technology to deliver state services 24 hours a day, seven days a week; Service delivery that goes beyond 8 to 5, Monday thru Friday.
• Forming service partnerships with Federal, County, and Municipal governments so that service delivery to citizens is straight forward, comprehensive, and not confused by the complexity of governmental organizational structures.
• Performing Internet-based financial transactions that ensure the security of citizen and State resources.
• Providing access to the users of digital government services and technical support to the providers of digital government services.
• Finding, maintaining, and retaining a skilled government workforce.
• Providing citizen access to public records and services while at the same time preserving their rights to privacy and consumer protection.
• Dealing with explosive growth of e-commerce on the Internet and what that means for government-to-government, government-to-business, and government-to-citizen business activity.
• Integrating technologies such as computers, video, fax machines, and telephones.

Forum 2000 is designed to provide the technology information that is needed to meet these challenges. If you've ever wished that you had a single, time-effective way to get access to the latest ideas, trends, and solutions in one location then Forum 2000 is your answer. FORUM 2000 is a chance to see the latest technologies and to share experiences; to talk to the vendors who market and support these new technologies; to attend presentations by noted speakers who can explain trends and describe real world solutions. Forum 2000 is an excellent chance to talk to technology managers and technology implementers who are experiencing, or have solved, similar problems to what you're facing today.

At 8:30 am on May 23, Steve Kolodney, Director of the Department of Information Services, will give "A Digital State Government" the Forum's keynote address. Forum 2000 will provide 20 different keynote and content speaker presentations to address the above challenges.

More than 50 vendors, including the following corporate sponsors, have chosen to be at Forum 2000. Please stop by at their booths.

Forum 2000 is free and open to the public.

In addition to the two day Forum, the IPMA will sponsor an 'invitation only' Forum Executive Breakfast. The Forum Executive Breakfast will feature Washington State Attorney General, Christine Gregoire speaking on "Privacy and Law Enforcement in Cyberspace" and will be held at Saint Martin's Worthington Center on Monday, May 22, at 7:30 a.m. (Note: This date has been changed from that announced in the original press release.)