The New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission now offers online options to schedule a road test on-line or to allow customers to request a copy of their own driving history on-line. Launched October 15, the new services give customers the ability to make an appointment for their road test by choosing from three Driver Testing Centers most convenient to them or to request a copy of their Driver History Abstract. The $10 fee for requesting a driver abstract on-line is the same as requesting it through the mail or at a Regional Service Center. The service eliminates the need to call MVC to order an abstract or to visit one of the four Regional Service Centers to obtain one.

Some 97,000 records of current and past New Jersey offenders in state correctional facilities are now available online through the New Jersey Department of Corrections. Launched on December 16, the NJDOC Web site inmate locator received 167,000 hits during its first three days of operation, according to a NJDOC press release. The online datavase includes such information as name, current facility location, parole eligibility date, sentencing information, admission and release dates, and known aliases. If available, the most recent photograph is included, -- although all offenders released prior to December 2000 do not have an image on the inmate locator. The inmate locator includes inmates who are currently housed in Department of Corrections facilities, as well as those who have been paroled or released from an NJDOC prison. The Web also includes a list of the offenders currently on escape status from a major facility as well as walkways from a halfway house, which the NJDOC estimates on average will include about 220 entries, representing less than .01 percent of the inmate population.

The new i-Map NJ interactive mapping service launched September 25, 2002 by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection integrates and consolidates information on almost 50,000 sites and facilities in DEP's New Jersey Environmental Management System (NJEMS) database.The new applicationallows the public to access real-time data from DEP databases and overlay the information on Geographic Information Systems (GIS) maps of New Jersey. DEP's GIS maps include land use areas, locations of contaminated sites, and locations of natural resources. In the spring of 2003, DEP plans to enhance the serivice by incorporating an easy-to-use report writing tool allowing more sophisticated user inquiries and manipulation of the data. The second phase also will provide access to real-time digital contaminant data for soil, air and water from contaminated sites undergoing remediation.

'Governor McGreevey's Book Club', a new Web site launched in September, features Governor McGreevey encouraging reading by kindergarten through third grade students. The initiative has been developed by the New Jersey Department of Education in partnership with Scholastic, Inc, the largest publisher and distributor of children's books in the world that sells children's books through its catalogs to classrooms. The Department of Education's Office of Early Literacy and editors at Scholastic Book Clubs recommend age-appropriate titles to the Governor for his Book Club, with the selections changed monthly. In addition to suggested titles, the Web posts games and puzzles intended to promote the development of early reading skills, comprehension and vocabulary. With parental permission, children may sign up online to receive a membership card. Parents may also subscribe for monthly e-mail advisories of the new book recommendations.

New Jersey's State Web site was ranked as the second best Web (behind only Tennessee) of the 50 states in the third annual review, State and Federal E-Government in the United States 2002, and released in September 2002. The survey is conducted by the Taubman Center for Public Policy and American Institutions at Brown University, with rankings based on various criteria, including accessibility and availability of specific features and content. New Jersey's second-place ranking also was a significant improvement on its 18th place ranking in the prior year's survey. In 2001, the State Web portal or home page also was ranked as one of the top three state portals with North Carolina and California, receiving an Eagle E-government Award from the Council of State Governments.

New Jerseyans with parking tickets are now able to pay their fines online with credit cards, according to the New Jersey Judiciary. The NJMCdirect (New Jersey Municipal Courts Direct) system went online for the public in July 2002 after being tested since the beginning of the year. All 536 municipal courts have the option of participating in the program. Tickets for illegal parking and certain moving violations will now include a Web address where motorists can check the amount of their fine and pay online by major credit card.

New Jersey is the leading legislative Web, according to The Politics of State Legislature Websites: An Evaluation of Content and Design published for the August 2002 meeting of the American Political Science Association. The 50-state survey was conducted by three researchers at the Rochester Institute of Technology, and used such criteria as the quality of content and how easily users could access its content. Ranking behind New Jersey were Minnesota, Alaska, Hawaii and Connecticut. The lowest rated Web was that of Mississippi, followed by Pennsylvania, Illinois, California and Rhode Island. The New Jersey Web was revamped in January 2002 with the opening of the new 2002-2003 legislative session. It features a redesigned home page with bill text and member search engines, links to all state newspapers, a clickable legislative calendar with session and committee schedules, and a new "Kid's Page" with games and coloring books of NJ state symbols. New Jersey also is now providing both video and audio Webcasts of sessions and committee meetings. In a talk at the Eagleton Institute on January 24, Peter Mazzei, Supervisor of Library and Information Technology for the Legislature, reviewed the new design and added services of the NJ Web, and discussed the evolution of legislative applications in New Jersey and other states.

The New Jersey State League of Municipalities,  along with the National League of Cities and other state municipal leagues around the country, is collaborating with IBM Corporation to offer e-government services to municipalities across the country. The "Total-e-Government" program provides cities and towns with a "one-stop" offering starting with the capability to create a basic informational Internet home page. In the future this service will evolve to a set of full service interactive capabilities ranging from event scheduling to permit filing to bill payment. The basic program is available for a $295 one-time setup fee and $54.95 monthly maintenance charge that includes hosting and an individual URL address, along with an online Web site building tool to create pages and manage content.