The city two weeks ago became the second in the country to use kiosks to deliver information about city services to residents who can't get to City Hall or don't have the time.

"Instead of people, especially the elderly, coming to City Hall, we're trying to bring information they need closer to them," said Alexander Mamak, director of public affairs at San Francisco's Department of Public Works. "We had to do something that would be no extra cost to the city with existing personnel. Kiosks were the answer."

Residents who use the kiosks can check on a permit, apply for a license, report a snow removal or cleanup problem, or get information on community activities, programs and events.

San Francisco is following in New York's footsteps. The Big Apple started to use the kiosks two years ago and now has them in all five boroughs, placing them in train stations, large office buildings and the World Trade Center.

San Francisco put up its first kiosk in a subway station, and Mamak said he hopes that about 10 more will go up in the next year.

The kiosks are produced by ObjectSoft Corp. in Hackensack, N.J. The software and application development tool company rents out the tools to what may be a growing number of municipalities.

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Dave Sarna, chairman of ObjectSoft, said that to build the kiosks, his company needed a system that would work on a stand-alone basis in each location but that would be able to access information on mainframes, Unix machines and other computers within city government.

Sarna said one of the tools he used to make that compatibility happen was Microsoft Corp.'s BackOffice, which had the technology components he needed.

Efficient maintenance

When a citizen requests information at a World Wide Web site, the Active Server Page feature of the Internet Information Server dynamically creates a Web page to present the information, Sarna said. That means ObjectSoft has to maintain only the database and templates, instead of thousands, if not tens of thousands, of Web pages.

The SNA Server component of BackOffice connects with the city's mainframes, and the Commerce Server component handles transactions such as license payments. Sarna used the Microsoft Transaction Server to monitor transactions and make sure they go through correctly.

Mamak said the city isn't ready to do electronic commerce over the kiosks yet, but he added that he hopes that will happen within a year. New York already handles commerce over its kiosks.