If the state's economic development leaders have their way, Maryland's growth wave won't stop in Montgomery County. They intend to make it flow through Baltimore and the rest of the state.
      "More than 60,000 new jobs were created in Maryland this past year, and we expect that to be just the beginning," says Daniel C. Gundersen, assistant secretary for the Division of Business Development at the Maryland Dept. of Business and Economic Development. "And we're not talking dot-com jobs either. We're talking software development, biotech, research jobs and high-tech manufacturing."
      Gundersen says Maryland is using technology to attract the best jobs of the information-based economy.
      "We will be taking the site selection standards used by corporate location decision-makers and Web-enabling the data," says Gundersen. "The project is called the Business Location Data Support & Electronic Marketing System. The Legislature provided $1.2 million for this project, and we will have close to $2 million overall invested into the program this year. Using Computer Sciences Corp. as the lead contractor, we will build an entirely new database of geo-coded sites and digitized images from scratch."
      Gundersen says the project's goal is to increase Maryland's number of direct leads by 50 percent by the end of June 2002. "We will also continue to work to compress the entire site selection process. Our goal is to take the normal 24-month process and reduce it to 120 days," he says. "We have also increased our marketing resources, hired 28 people in the department and increased our travel budget by 400 percent."
      As part of that marketing campaign, the state earlier this year unveiled its new Web site, www.choosemaryland. org, which enhances the state's ability to serve the needs of its business customers and potential corporate clients.
      "Today's businesses need a government as cutting edge and technologically savvy as they are," says Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, who chairs the Maryland Cabinet Council on Business, Economic Development and Transportation. "Choosemaryland. org will help us keep up with business' light-speed pace and create new job opportunities for Marylanders."
      The site provides real-time multimedia access to state officials through a feature called LiveFluence. It also offers a section for international business development with translations into seven foreign languages (Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese and Spanish) provided pro bono by M2 Limited.
      "With choosemaryland.org, we wanted to create the best business Web portal in the country, something that would exceed our customer's demands in terms of both functionality and design," says DBED Secretary David S. Iannucci.