e-Texas Carole Keeton Rylander
Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts
December, 2000
The New Frontier

Introduction:
The Digital Frontier

The e-Texas Commission:
Our Roots Run Deep

A New Mindset:
Embracing Change

Strategies for Change:
The New Basics

Call to Action:
Texas Can Blaze the Trail

Appendices
e-Texas Commission
Glossary


Message from the Comptroller

We live in exciting times. New technologies are transforming Texans' lives, from the way we get news to the way we shop, from how we communicate to how we work. But change is not new.

In the 1860s, our country embarked on the single greatest technological achievement of the nineteenth century: construction of the transcontinental railroad. It's important to remember the significance of this achievement. Consider what the railroad did: before the Civil War, it took months of hard, dangerous travel and more than $1,000 to go from east to west. After the railroad, it took a week and cost $70. The line literally shrank the old geographical frontier of plains and mountains. It tied our country together as a nation. It was a grand vision built with sweat and hard work.

Now, we are standing at the leading edge of a new frontier—the technological frontier. And here a grand vision is also needed. The stakes are simply too high. What we make of today's opportunity will determine the health of our economy and the future we leave to our children.

That's what e-Texas is all about. Our goal is to provide a roadmap for state government in the Internet Age. The e-Texas Commission, Comptroller's office and citizen volunteers have worked hard over the last year to examine what 21st Century government should look like and what it should do. Our efforts led to hundreds of pages of findings and recommendations—some of which are already being implemented—to transform Texas state government.

We've known for a long time why government must change, and now we know how. To get the state where it must be, government must focus on the new basics:

  1. Think about the customer first, not the agency,
  2. Be entrepreneurial,
  3. Replace bureaucracy with networks,
  4. Improve education and learning for all Texans,
  5. Transform government, not just automate it,
  6. Take action to give Texas a competitive edge, and
  7. Use technology to cut costs and increase savings.

We're not saying it will be easy. But the state can make this transformation, if we use the roadmap summarized in the following pages. And we must.

Sincerely,

Signed, Carole Keeton Rylander

Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts


e-Texas is an initiative of Carole Keeton Rylander, Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts
Post Office Box 13528, Capitol Station
Austin, Texas

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