E-mail to state agencies may change

Historic City News has learned that how St. Johns County residents communicate with state government agencies around Florida may change if legislators sign off on a sweeping plan to overhaul the state’s e-mail system.

Soon state workers across different agencies could all have new e-mail addresses that end in the common domain name of “myflorida.com”.

Tens of thousands of state workers currently use a mix of different platforms and programs to operate e-mail services — including everyone from the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind to the Department of Military Affairs.

The current systems not only lack standardization of the e-mail address but also lack centralization of stored copies of the electronic communications. There has been a push for a centralized e-mail for several years, and, again this week, the Florida legislature may say “use a common system and just as importantly a common set of e-mail addresses across all of state government”.

The Agency for Enterprise Information Technology says standardization could save as much as $15.3 million over a seven-year period — Friday, the Legislative Budget Commission said that staff has been unable to replicate the savings suggested.

David Taylor, the state chief information officer and director of the Agency for Enterprise Information Technology, said the project will not only save taxpayers money, but it will also make government more accessible.

Taylor also said another advantage of the new e-mail system is that e-mails will be archived in a way that makes it easier to retrieve them — including when looking for public records.

If lawmakers sign off on a new statewide e-mail system, there will be a phased-in changeover to the new system between October and the end of 2012.

The one executive agency that is not going to switch over is the Department of Legal Affairs, which currently uses IBM Lotus Notes to handle its e-mail as well as other agency functions. A top official in the office of Attorney General Pam Bondi called the crossover both “functionally and economically prohibitive.”