Company Website: http://www.wv.gov
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- (Business Wire)

A panel of policy experts selected the West Virginia Department of Education’s Electronic Application Processing System as one of two winners of the 2017 State Transformation in Action Recognition (STAR) Award. The STAR Award of the Southern Legislative Conference (SLC) identifies and promotes state government solutions to regional problems, focusing on policy innovations that are creative, impactful, transferable, and effective.

The Department of Education (DOE) created the Electronic Application Processing System to provide a better way for teachers to obtain or renew a West Virginia teaching certification. The traditional process required teachers to know which of the 43 forms they needed to complete for their certification and required DOE staff to collect multiple approval signatures from institutions of higher education. To standardize and streamline the process, DOE developed a secure online system that allowed applicants to complete certification and renewal forms online, submit them for approval, and process credit card payments through the West Virginia Treasurer’s Office. The system has reduced the time needed to process an application from weeks to days. Applicants now receive real-time status updates as their application traverses through the approval process. During the first year of the new system, over 8,000 applications were submitted.

The program was selected as a winner of the 2017 STAR Award by the STAR Judges Panel—comprising state legislators, legislative staff, and policy experts—at the 71^st Annual Meeting of the Southern Legislative Conference, held in Biloxi, Mississippi, July 29 to August 2.

About the Southern Legislative Conference

Established in 1947, the Southern Legislative Conference (SLC) is a member-driven organization comprising presiding officers and key legislators from 15 Southern states, and is the largest of the four regional conferences of The Council of State Governments. The Annual Meeting of the SLC, convened as the focal point and apex of its activities, is the premier public policy forum for Southern state legislatures and the largest regional gathering of legislative members and staff. The SLC is a non-partisan organization located in Atlanta.

About WV.gov

WV.gov is the official website of the state of West Virginia (http://www.wv.gov) and is the result of an innovative public-private partnership between the state and West Virginia Interactive. West Virginia Interactive works with state and local government agencies to build and manage interactive online services and is a subsidiary of digital government firm NIC (NASDAQ: EGOV).

About NIC

Founded in 1992, NIC Inc. (NASDAQ: EGOV) is celebrating 25 years as the nation’s premier provider of innovative digital government solutions and secure payment processing, which help make government interactions more accessible for everyone through technology. The family of NIC companies has developed a library of more than 12,000 digital government services for more than 5,500 federal, state, and local government agencies. Among these solutions is the ground-breaking digital government personal assistant, Gov2Go, delivering citizens personalized reminders and a single access point for government interactions. More information is available at www.egov.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170807005147/en/

Contacts:

WV.gov
Ian McQuinn, 304-414-0265 x 106
ian@wvinteractive.com

Source: WV.gov