LoGoTECH Award presented to Creating Connections
	Austin, February 11, 1998 The Texas Comptroller's Office today presented three LoGoTECH awards to local governments for showing excellence and creativity in providing customer service to their local residents. The awards were presented at the annual Government Technology Conference (GTC). One of the winners was Creating Connections, a telecommunications system that unites an alliance of 24 school districts, six regional service centers, and two universities from 11 counties in East, Central, and West Texas to provide distance learning, curriculum, and teacher training. High school students and teachers can use the system to gain college credit or to work on graduate degrees.
	Dovie Ellis, Deputy State Comptroller, presents the award to Delia Duffey of TEA, Rita Dobbs, project director, Peggy Meathenia, project initiator, Ed Wood, CEO of Media Cottage, who designed and implemented the system, Helen McClain, Core Team member and Max Newton, General Manager of Peoples Telephone who provided the Fiber Optic network.
	The three winners, selected from among 22 nominees, were evaluated based on their technology application's ability to improve service, generate cost savings, the creativity of the application, and it's ability to be easily replicated by other local governments. The other two winners were Potter County for their use of videoconferencing for criminal arraignment and plea proceedings, and The City of Dallas for their design and implementation of the nations first "311" system for non-emergency city related calls - a system whose primary goal is to relieve stress on the city's 911 emergency phone system. For further information on Creating Connections, or to obtain a free videotape describing the network, call Media Cottage at: 512-847-8956, or email Ed Wood