Payment Portal
The governor wants services available on the web 24/365 (why do people write "24/7/365"? 24/365 means the same thing). Anyway, a lot of services need a payment mechanism, therefore a payment portal enterprise project is being born. Here are some of the features that I envision:
- Shopping cart functionality. Lloyd Johnson used the example of somebody buying a hunting license, reserving a campsite, and registering their RV online and paying for all of it at once with one credit card. The shopping cart needs to be able to accept purchases from different state sites and remember them during the session, and allow a single payment at checkout.
- Portability accross applications. Existing or developing applications should be able to use this service.
- Automated account reconciliation. Here's the rub. There are many different requirements that need to be collected and built into and auditable system. This is going to be a major challenge, but it needs to be done eventually, so we may as well do it correctly now. Plus we have to have it if we are going to meet the governor's objectives.
- Transparency of organizations. If I am Joe Utahn, and I go to Utah.gov and I can renew my driver's license, renew my hunting license, renew my CPA license, buy a Utah.gov sweatshirt, and reserve a campsite, and pay for it all at once and find it all in one place, I am going to think that my state is pretty cool (espcially if there are no "convenience fees." There can't be convenience fees. They kill the broad adoption of a service. We need to reduce such barriers to adoption.). Sorry for that humongous sentence.
Anyway, we are finding that this is a tremendously complex project. We are just in the vision stage right now, although we are having a hard time avoiding talking about design or implementation. But this has to happen for the governor's wish to come true, and for us to make a big step into the inevitable future.
5:33:20 PM 
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