Alabamas Online Point-of-Sale Hunting and Fishing Licensing System Wins National Award

Last month, the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources was named one of 15 Pioneer Award recipients by the E-Gov Institutes Government Solutions Center. In May 2003, Alabama replaced its paper-based hunting and fishing licensing process by launching the nations first Web-based system to allow approved licensing retailers to sell outdoor licenses electronically. Since then, more than 190,000 hunting and fishing licenses have been processed through the service, which is essentially a hardware-neutral interface that is accessible through a basic Internet connection. The E-Gov Institute serves as an educational resource to those providing electronic government services. More than 160 electronic government projects were reviewed, and Alabama was one of two states to receive a Pioneer Award. The system was developed at no cost to the state and is the result of a unique public-private partnership between the Alabama Department of Conservation, the Information Services Division, Wal-Mart Stores, and Alabama Interactive. The user-friendly system has generated more than $200,000 in direct cost savings for the state and eliminated thousands of labor hours for Wal-Mart and other retail licensing agents in the state.