“Managing state government business is changing, and we hope this new website will provide chief administrators from across the country with the tools they need to tackle all of the issues they are facing,” said Tim Abraham, West Virginia’s Department of Administration’s chief operating officer and member of the NASCA Executive Committee in a press release.
Sherrie Southern, NASCA’s board president, said the website provides a forum for state chief administrators to easily share information and build an enhanced online community. Since the 2010 election resulted in high turnover, NASCA felt it was good timing to launch their new website as new administrators took office.
“We knew there’d be a lot of new administrators and the timing was perfect to launch a new website and to give them new tools,” Southern said.
The site is still in the development phases, but NASCA plans to add additional features in the future, Southern said. The association plans to launch a free “members-only” feature to provide networking capabilities for state chief administrators, but a launch date for the feature has not been set.
NASCA would also like to eventually add a social media component to the website, but no official plans have been determined.
“We do want to make this an interactive type thing where we’d reach out like a social networking arena,” Southern said.
NASCA partnered with e-government service provider NIC to develop the site, which only took a few months to complete, said Candy Irven Hauser, NIC’s director of program alliances.
