North Carolina's
Integrated Information Network

Prepared by the Office of the State Controller

Overview

The State of North Carolina's Integrated Information Network (NCIIN) is a web of interoperable networks capable of transmitting data, text, images, voice, and video to provide services for education, health, medicine, criminal justice, economic development, and government operations.

In addition, the state offers a wide range of other network services that are not strictly part of the state's interoperable network. These include a mainframe SNA computer network, X.25 data networks, and mobile data services.

The NCIIN is continually being enhanced to provide the capabilities for meeting customer needs with seamless migration both today and tomorrow.

The NCIIN is founded upon four principles:

Universal Service - Network access to all parts of North Carolina.
Equalized Rates - Same usage rates regardless of geographic location.
Shared Resources - Elimination of duplication and assurance of interoperability.
Public/Private Partnership - Capital outlay is made by the private sector and the usage base is provided by the state.

NCIIN Services

The North Carolina Office of the State Controller is developing a plan that will ultimately provide NCIIN access to every school system, community college, university, state agency, local agency, county, city, town, medical facility, and library across North Carolina.

The following services are available or planned through the NCIIN:

Low-cost dial-access service

This service will enable any governmental entity, such as a school, municipal government, or state agency with a personal computer and plain old telephone service to access a vast array of locations. These locations can be connected to the INTERNET, or to a North Carolina Information Highway (NCIH) location. With this service, a location can transmit records, electronic mail, or access databases. This service is provided through contracts with commercial providers at a rate of $34 per month (plus long distance charges in certain areas). Local governments, libraries, schools, and remote state agency locations are projected to be the primary users of this service.

ANCHOR NET

This service enables North Carolina state government's large computer systems and groups of personal computers to communicate locally, nationally, and internationally -- including across the INTERNET. This service is available at any location in the state for $700 per month. State agencies are now using this service as the delivery mechanism for major initiatives such as the Integrated Tax Accounting System (ITAS) and the DHR ACTS project. County governments are beginning to use it as the primary vehicle for accessing state databases. It is a lower cost, lower capacity data-only alternative to full Information Highway capability. This network is designed so that any subscriber on this network should be able to migrate to full NCIH capabilities when those capabilities are required. This service is also referred to as the Wide Area Network (WAN).

North Carolina Information Highway

North Carolina is piloting broadband services as part of the NCIIN. In this project, North Carolina will provide state customers with an ATM/SONET broadband pipeline for high-speed data, voice, and video. By using Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) and Synchronous Optical Network (SONET) technology, customers will have the NCIH's broadband capacity simultaneously and efficiently for teleconferencing, high-speed data access, distance learning, and multimedia applications, paying only for the bandwidth they use. This project will give North Carolina State Government entities the opportunity to document the advantages of broadband technology and discover ways to reorganize government operations to reduce overall costs. Currently, the project status is as follows:

The base rate for the NCIH is $4000 per month (1994-1995 rates) for 64 hours of video usage. Average startup costs for equipment and room renovations are approximately $100,000 per site. Each site must also have a designated "site coordinator."
The North Carolina State Legislature allocated $7M in 1994 and $2.5M in 1995 for a total of $9.5M to pilot the NCIH.
Seventy-five sites are in operation and an additional 59 sites will complete installation in 1995.

Access Net

This service is being developed and is not available currently. It will provide data communications for a segment of the state government locations not adequately served by either dial access, ANCHOR NET, or NCIH. Typical clients will be offices with up to 20 users who lack the traffic volume to warrant a full ANCHOR NET connection, but whose needs are more sophisticated than dial access service. This system will provide access to the state's databases, electronic mail service, and the INTERNET.