Priorities Podcast: Recent Episodes
StateScoop
Each week, the Priorities Podcast will take you through the latest in state and local government technology news and analysis. The program will explore trending stories throughout the week, as well as feature conversations with top executives across government and industry on things like modernization, emerging technology and digital services.
Last week’s cyberattacks against water and wastewater facilities in Minnesota have actually affected at least 12 states, according to ABC News. The federal government has said it’s looking into whether Iran is responsible for the coordinated attack, but has not formally attributed it to any particular party. On the Priorities Podcast, Patrick Gillespie, OT practice director at the firm GuidePoint Security, said the attacks are not sophisticated, but opportunistic: “The reason this is happening right now is these are inherently insecure devices that are directly connected to the internet.” Mauricio Papa, a computer science professor at the University of Tulsa, said that although cybersecurity practitioners have warned against such vulnerabilities for decades, attacks like this continue to occur because “technology is always evolving … and we want to connect everything to the internet, it’s so convenient.”Top stories this week:The Department of Justice has announced it’s expanding its strategy for combating fraud in Medicaid, SNAP and other taxpayer-funded programs by deepening partnerships with state governments aimed at improving data sharing, investigations and fraud detection. Work with Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina and South Carolina is designed to improve information sharing, identify fraud earlier and coordinate prosecutions across jurisdictions.A recent report from the National Conference of State Legislatures outlined bipartisan policy recommendations for strengthening state childcare systems, including addressing disparities in tech systems between state agencies and local providers, and the need for better data-sharing across agencies. In an interview, Jenna Bannon, associate director of the conference’s children and families program, explains why it’s critical to use technologies that simplify state systems.The National Governors Association has announced a new partnership with RAISE US, a nonprofit workforce initiative launched in June by two former governors, aimed at helping states develop effective AI workforce initiatives. The new, $1 million project will, according to organizers, “identify and amplify new policy models.”New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday. For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud or Spotify.
One year after catastrophic flooding killed more than 100 people along the Guadalupe River, another round of deadly July flooding swept across Central and South Texas, creating flash flood emergencies that forced evacuations and rescues along the Guadalupe River and in Kerr County. To give emergency managers earlier, more precise warnings, a team at the University of Texas at Arlington is leading a new $4 million effort to build a next-generation flood monitoring and warning system that combines advanced sensors, weather data and real-time modeling. Nick Fang, a civil engineering professor who is helping to lead the project, said the university will use National Weather Service data and partner with Texas Tech for additional weather stations and radars. If successful, he said, the system could become a model for flood-prone communities nationwide.Top stories this week: More than 30 Minnesota communities saw their water and wastewater utilities disrupted by a coordinated cyberattack this week. Though none of the local governments reported anything more than a lapse in operation, analysts said they are concerned that the U.S. will continue to face similar threats, particularly as attackers are aided by frontier AI models.California Chief Information Security Officer Vitaliy Panych will step down after seven years leading the state’s cybersecurity strategy, he announced on social media. Panych, whom Gov. Gavin Newsom appointed in 2021, after serving nearly two years in an acting capacity, helped steer California through a period of rapidly evolving cybersecurity threats — including the COVID-19 pandemic, escalating ransomware attacks and the state’s growing adoption of artificial intelligence.Following recent updates to nationwide broadband-availability data, some states may be required to cut one-third of the awards to satellite internet companies through the $42.45 billion Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program, according to an independent review published last week. The Advanced Communications Law and Policy Institute released its findings as the BEAD program moves into its final phases.New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday. For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud or Spotify.
Extreme heat is becoming one of the fastest-growing challenges facing state and local governments across the country, an issue that affects far more than public health. Rising temperatures threaten infrastructure, electric grid reliability, worker productivity, agriculture, emergency management and government budgets. Grace Wickerson, a senior manager of climate and health with the Federation of American Scientists, and the co-author of a recent report outlining best practices for governments seeking to mitigate extreme heat, said the publication sought to fill a void discovered in recent years. “What should be all the tactics and strategies that governments should employ to address extreme heat?” she said. “What are the evidence-based practices? How can we actually prevent all those real negative impacts?”Top stories this week: John Cohen, executive director of the office of strategic programs and initiatives at the Center for Internet Security, said it’s a sign of the times that considerations of digital intrusion were this year put on equal footing with more traditional, physical threats during planning for the FIFA World Cup. In an interview, Cohen said: “The threat environment has changed.”The National Telecommunications and Information Administration has told several state broadband offices that satellite internet projects approved for federal grant funding must be reviewed. Approval of the BEAD funds will be revoked, the agency said, if states can’t refute new FCC data showing the locations are no longer eligible.At least one municipal government was among those to see their internet service disrupted after a cyberattack against a Maine telecommunications firm Sunday caused an outage affecting 23 towns along the state’s midcoastal region.New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday. For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud or Spotify.
The democratization of technology is ordinarily considered a good thing, but as AI models become more powerful, people working in cybersecurity, in particular, have raised concerns about what that is doing to the threat landscape. The availability of models that can find vulnerabilities in software and rapidly exploit them is troubling for even the most powerful governments. But for cities, towns and small public utilities, researchers at the Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity said it’s an especially onerous threat, and one that’s too often going unspoken. Sarah Powazek, program director for the center’s Public Interest Cybersecurity initiative, said “the way AI is impacting those small organizations is very, very different than the conversation going on at the national level, which is mainly focused on export controls and U.S.-China relations.” And Grace Menna, the program’s senior fellow, explained to the Priorities Podcast how the center’s work is attempting to “help bridge this gap.”This week’s top stories: The nonprofit Earth Fire Alliance this month launched three new satellites, which will soon be used by emergency managers to monitor for wildfires. They’ll spend three months undergoing testing before entering service and providing far more frequent updates on fire-prone regions.Arizona has launched two new locations for its regional security operations center initiative. Operated out of community colleges in the Phoenix area, they’re hoped to provide additional cybersecurity services and bolster the state’s workforce pipeline.Pennsylvania’s health department this week launched a new data dashboard to help the public stay apprised of measles cases. The state’s health secretary said the dashboard boosts access to information and increases government transparency.New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday. For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud or Spotify.
Things like identity management and threat intelligence are important for cybersecurity, said Kevin Greene, the public sector chief cybersecurity technologist with the software firm BeyondTrust, but limiting access is the key. The fast pace of change in technology has led organizations to become “very reactive,” he said, when instead they’d be served better by getting “ahead of the attack lifecycle.” This, Greene said, is done by repairing the “structural conditions” in organizations’ IT environments. “We know that privilege is the fuel that drives the success of these campaigns with threat actors,” he said.Top stories this week: One year after deadly floods in Texas Hill Country, many regions are updating their warning systems, but adoption still remains uneven. Twenty-nine counties have signed agreements with the state, but in the state’s more than 200 remaining counties, many communities still lack warning sirens, largely due to cost.Ralph Johnson, who has spent the last three-and-a-half years as Washington state’s chief information security officer, announced in a LinkedIn post on Friday that he’ll step down from his role in September. “Cybersecurity has never been just a job for me,” Johnson wrote. “It has been a mission, a responsibility, and a professional community that I care deeply about.”Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker this week signed a bill into law that adds a new layer of oversight for developers of advanced AI systems operating in the state. The Artificial Intelligence Safety Measures Act requires large AI developers to publicly disclose their safety and security practices, report significant AI safety incidents and maintain internal compliance programs. New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday. For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud or Spotify.
When Estonia escaped Soviet occupation and regained its independence in 1991, it took a propitious turn to the internet. In seeking to establish a new, democratic government, the northern European nation began building digital services, setting a foundation that would lead it eventually to become one of the world’s most thoroughly connected governments. Liisa-Ly Pakosta, Estonia’s minister of justice and digital affairs, told the Priorities Podcast that it was natural for the country to select “the cheapest, most effective” way to deliver digital services. Today, she said, Estonia’s digital services enjoy a high level of confidence from the public, even when the government itself does not enjoy that same level of trust. “The most important lesson learned, though, was that you can’t build a digital state without trust,” she said. “And trust is the most important thing.” Drawing on lessons from private industry, particularly the banking industry, Pakosta said, Estonia developed digital services that gave users the impression that they were in control. Moreover, the aim was always to provide those services to everyone: “People have a right to be full members of digital society, even if they don’t have a single gadget.”Top stories this week:California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday announced that the state has negotiated a contract with Anthropic to provide agencies access to Claude, the company’s AI assistant, at half cost. Newsom said the aim is to aid the work of state workers, not replace them.The Federal Communication Commission voted last week to approve a broad review of the federal E-Rate broadband subsidy program. Advocacy groups said the review, which could lead to limiting or even eliminating the program, is an attack on schools and libraries.In a commentary for StateScoop, two experienced election administrators wrote that last-minute changes to the nation’s election systems that are being imposed by the Trump administration could come at a high cost. Changes, especially those on tight timelines, they wrote, increase the risk of operational errors, technical failures and voter confusion.New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday. For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud or Spotify.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development last month offered state and local governments up to $3 million to deploy AI-powered building code permitting systems. Julia Richman, the former chief transformation officer of Colorado and a vice president of the software company Clariti, said on the Priorities Podcast that her company offers a solution to some of these common challenges with permitting, and is helping governments to apply for the grant funds before the mid-July deadline. “Our AI studio is aimed to help communities really understand how AI could apply in their workflows and also what are the right kinds of AI to be considering,” Richman said.Top stories this week:Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced the launch of a “one stop shop” website for comprehensive information related to the New World screwworm, and the state’s response to the spread of the flesh-eating parasite across parts of Texas and New Mexico. The website provides information on the outbreak of New World screwworm cases and resources for farmers, veterinarians and residents. California officials recently kicked off the pilot phase of the state’s Career Passport, a new digital credentialing tool designed to help workers showcase skills and qualifications gained through education, military service, job training and work experience, regardless of whether they hold a four-year degree. The effort builds on California’s broader push to modernize workforce development and reduce barriers to state employment for workers without bachelor’s degrees.North Carolina’s Department of Information Technology announced that it has selected Tanium as the statewide endpoint management and cybersecurity platform for SecureNC, the state’s collaborative cybersecurity program. Tanium will help consolidate the state’s management and security operations on a single platform, with real‑time data and automated investigations of security threats. The voluntary initiative will roll out in phases across local governments, higher education institutions and other public entities that participate in SecureNC.New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday. For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud or Spotify.
and how modernizing child welfare systems with predictive algorithms and automated tools can better support families in need.New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday. For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud or Spotify.
Greenberg joins the podcast to discuss the AIDE initiative and how it fits into the national effort to use emerging technologies in emergency managementNew episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday. For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts , Soundcloud or Spotify.
Michael Santorelli of the New York Law School said the BEAD program will involvle as many as four million utility poles across the country, and complex regulations and rules around their use could slow dow broadband deployment. Santorelli joins the podcast to discuss the his organization's recent report that evaluates the problem with utility poles when it comes to BEAD deployment.New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday. For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Soundcloud or Spotify.
Chief AI officer role is ‘part strategy, part operator, part change leader’A growing number of states are hiring officials whose primary job is to ensure the considerate deployment of artificial intelligence. In Oklahoma, that’s Tai Phan, who last November was named the state’s first chief artificial intelligence and technology officer. Phan said the role is unique because AI is infused into all aspects of his state’s enterprise technology. “This is one sport, if you will, that requires everybody to be involved: legal, procurement, risk, cybersecurity, policymakers. We’re increasingly seeing a need to get those leaders involved early on because the decision for AI should be done collectively, and it does take a village to drive the transformation well,” he said on the Priorities Podcast. “This role is no longer a technical role, at least in Oklahoma. It’s part strategy, part operator, part change leader.” Phan said building trust around AI is also a key part of the job, a challenging task, but also one that’s “fun to do.”This week’s top stories:Several state technology officials last week brought before a House Homeland Security subcommittee a request that Congress reauthorize funding for the expired State and Local Cybersecurity Grant Program and renew cybersecurity programs inside the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency that have been decommissioned under the Trump administration. Colin Ahern, New York State’s director of security and intelligence, said “our states are on the front lines of multiple cyber conflicts, yet we are being asked to manage nation-state risks while our federal partners step back.”The Trump administration’s Federal Emergency Management Agency Review Council is proposing one of the most significant restructurings of federal disaster response in decades, a shift that could dramatically expand the responsibilities of state and local emergency management agencies. A report published by the council this month calls for expanded communications systems and new systems for tracking assets across the various levels of government.California Gov. Gavin Newsom last week signed an executive order directing agencies to prepare workers, small businesses and the public for the potential economic disruption brought on by artificial intelligence. The order directs agencies to study potential labor market shifts tied to AI adoption, including layoffs, hiring changes and skills gaps.New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday. For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts,Soundcloud or Spotify.
Lopez and Varn discuss how states are implementing BEAD while dealing with uncertainty, technical debates around the program and the core challenge of access versus adoption.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency could be headed for one of the biggest overhauls in its history. Samantha Penta, associate professor at the University of Albany’s College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security and Cybersecurity, describes for the Priorities Podcast what it might look like for the nation to return to what she called the “golden age of FEMA.” This week’s top stories:Code for America, the civic tech nonprofit, has announced it's partnering with Anthropic, the developer of Claude, to build new AI-powered tools aimed at helping government caseworkers navigate public benefits policies.The Hawaii Department of the Attorney General has warned the public about a man falsely claiming to be the state’s chief technology officer, both at national conferences and on online platforms.California Gov. Gavin Newsom last week launched Engaged California, a public participation platform designed to gather resident feedback on how artificial intelligence is affecting workers, government services and the broader economy across the state.New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday. For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud or Spotify.
The civic tech nonprofit Code for America is hosting its annual summit, in Chicago, this week. Amanda Renteria, the group’s chief executive, said the event is “one moment you get in community on this marathon,” the marathon being the long stretch of challenges facing government technology leaders: changing budgets, changing federal policy and new technologies that are both offer promise and challenge agencies. “Now is the time to build bridges,” Renteria said on the Priorities Podcast, adding that joining the event is a way for people who work on services for the public to see that “you can do technology for people first.”Top stories this week: A guidebook published Tuesday by the Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity at UC Berkeley provides a thorough look at the various state-led and community-led cybersecurity efforts that have grown more common in recent years. The guidebook shows that such groups, like regional security operations centers and state cyber corps, provide vast economic benefit wherever they’re established.Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and the Pennsylvania Department of State on Tuesday announced that the agency filed a lawsuit against Character.AI over its artificial intelligence-powered companion chatbots impersonating medical professionals. One of the chatbots, according to the suit, even provided a fake license number.Gov. Abigail Spanberger last week announced she’s selected David Wilkinson, a former Obama White House official, to serve in her Cabinet as Virginia’s chief transformation officer. In a press release, Wilkinson said he plans to deliver “practical solutions on the issues that matter to Virginians.”New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday. For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts,Soundcloud or Spotify.
The House of Representatives this month approved legislation that would extend the legal mandate of the FirstNet Authority through 2037. Such a long-term authorization would come with both “a positive and a negative impact,” according to Paul Rosenzweig, a lawyer who served in the Department of Homeland Security’s policy directorate about two decades ago, when the idea of a fully interoperable public safety communications network was still being formed. The advantage, he said, would be a “better planning certitude” and the ability to stick to long-term policy plans. The downside: “We don’t know what’s next. We don’t have a real sense, for example, of how deployed artificial intelligence might impact communications technologies.” Rosenzweig thinks FirstNet is “great,” but like others, has noticed that sometimes — like during a widespread outage on Feb. 22, 2024 — it isn’t living up to the industry’s performance expectations.This week’s top stories: The number of state CISOs who described themselves as “extremely” or “very” confident in their ability to secure the government’s data has plummeted, from 48% in 2022, down to 22% this year. This and other findings were published on Monday in a report detailing a recent survey of state chief information security officers, conducted by the National Association of State CIOs.Alabama has promoted Aaron Wright, the state’s director of application development, as its first chief artificial intelligence officer. Wright’s appointment comes two years after Gov. Kay Ivey signed in an executive order creating a generative AI task force.More than 80 groups representing schools and libraries last week called on the Federal Communications Commission to reject the proposed creation of an online bidding portal for its E-Rate broadband subsidy program. The groups argued a new requirement to use the portal would deter schools, libraries and ISPs from participating in E-Rate.New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday. For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Soundcloud or Spotify.
Veritone, the AI company, on Tuesday announced a partnership with the nonprofit Cold Case Foundation, lending the group new technology that’s hoped to help solve old cases.New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday. For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Soundcloud or Spotify.
The Supercomputer Center at the University of California San Diego last month powered on a new data hub called the California Wildfire Commons, playing a central role in helping the state modernize how it shares and uses wildfire data.Late last month, Oklahoma’s governor signed into law a new consumer-focused bill offering residents new data rights, though one data-privacy expert said that there are some industry trends that could supercede some of the changes.New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday. For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Soundcloud or Spotify.
The fire department of San Bernardino County, California, is testing a new firefighting technology that uses low-frequency sound waves, rather than water or chemicals, to suppress flames.The Paiute Tribe of Bishop, California, on Thursday became the first group to connect to the state’s middle-mile broadband network when it linked its education and community centers.Maryland Gov. Wes Moore and the state’s Board of Public Works has announced a new resource-sharing agreement to expand the state’s middle-mile fiber network — an extension valued at $3.5 million, but that will only cost the state a fraction of that amount.The Massachusetts Department of Public Health last month settled a class-action lawsuit by a handful of Android users who claimed that the state had worked with Google to automatically install a COVID-19 contact-tracing app on their phones, and the phones of more than one million others, tracking their locations and transmitting their personal information.New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday. For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts,Soundcloud or Spotify.
The Commonwealth Office of Digital Experience, Pennsylvania’s digital services bureau, also called CODE PA, has a new executive director. Sara Hall recently took over the office, with plans to build on the “strong foundation” built by Bry Pardoe, now the state’s chief information officer, she told the Priorities Podcast. Hall said the office is busy as April’s federal accessibility compliance deadline approaches and the state closes in on several projects she’s excited about, including permitting and identity platforms designed to unify agencies in one digital location: “These are solutions that can scale across agencies instead of building one-offs.”This week’s top stories: A majority of Americans want stronger oversight of the data practices of all levels of government, according to a report published Tuesday by the nonprofit advocacy group Center for Democracy and Technology. The group’s report was based on a survey, which also found that nearly 8 in 10 support holding government agencies accountable for privacy violations.Nevada’s technology agency on Monday announced the hire of Bertrum Carroll, a retired Army lieutenant colonel, as the state’s new chief information security officer. Carroll most recently spent eight-and-a-half years at the workers’ compensation insurance firm Employers, where he was CISO and a vice president.Technologists with the New Jersey Innovation Authority last week announced major upgrades to the state’s in-house generative AI assistant. The assistant, which launched in 2024, now includes more transparent responses, conversation control and built-in trainings.New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday. For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts,Soundcloud or Spotify.
“Smarter people than I always describe it as: cyber is a team sport, and you don't want it to be a pick-up game,” Geoff Hale, visiting fellow for election security at the Center for Democracy and Technology, said in a recent interview for the Priorities Podcast. “You want to know who you're passing to, you want to know who you're engaging with and who your defense is. Nobody's going to be an expert across the board on everything.” Hale said that state and local elections officials have vastly improved their cybersecurity game over the past decade, but that there are still gaps, particularly during the current presidential administration, which has scaled back support for elections. Hale said a new initiative at CDT, which he’s leading, will help fill those gaps.Top stories this week: The State of Representatives in Idaho has approved legislation that would prohibit the state from procuring or even using large language models that promote diversity, equity or inclusion. Borrowing language from an executive order the president issued last year, the bill aims to ensure that all LLMs used by the state are “truth-seeking” and possess “ideological neutrality.”California Chief Information Officer Liana Bailey-Crimmins last week announced she’s retiring from state service, after nearly four decades in government and several years heading IT in the Golden State.North Carolina’s CIO, Teena Piccione, has also announced she’s stepping down, but to return to the private sector. She called her less than two years heading IT in North Carolina a “profound honor.New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday. For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts,Soundcloud or Spotify.
A piece of legislation advancing through the legislature in Idaho would, uniquely, prohibit state agencies from procuring or even using artificial intelligence systems that promote principles of diversity, equity or inclusion. Borrowing much of the same language from a similar proposal advanced last year in an executive order by President Donald Trump, Idaho House Bill 687 would require vendors and agencies to ensure that all large language models have outputs that are ideologically neutral and “truth-seeking.” Quinn Anex-Ries, a senior policy analyst at the Center for Democracy and Technology, told the Priorities Podcast why such a goal is likely impossible and potentially harmful to the operations of Idaho’s state government.This week’s top stories: Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz on Monday named Jon Eichten, the state’s deputy IT commissioner, as the new statewide chief information officer, replacing Tarek Tomes, whose official final day with the state was Sunday.Texas has named Tony Sauerhoff, who’s been Texas’ interim chief information officer since January, as the new statewide CIO. Sauerhoff, who most recently served as the state’s chief artificial intelligence and innovation officer, replaces Amanda Craword, who was appointed in January as the state’s insurance commissioner.Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs last week unveiled a plan designed to save her state as much as $100 million over three years, but without cutting essential services. In previewing the plan during her State of the State address in January, she said: “We will not decimate important services that families and businesses rely on.”New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday. For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Soundcloud or Spotify.
On April 24, states will be held to new accessibility standards for their websites. Some states are further along than others in being able to meet that deadline. Some states — including Colorado, Maryland, Minnesota and Texas — are ahead of the pack, said Marie Cohan, Texas’ statewide digital accessibility coordinator, while others are less prepared. But more states are jumping in, even without strong executive support or funding, said Jay Wyant, chief information accessibility officer of Minnesota: “In a lot of organizations, there have been a lot of people doing the work, the hard work, doing it without the organizational leadership.” And so the approaching deadline, he said, has presented an opportunity to do more.This week’s top stories: In recognition of the many creative — and sometimes offline — modes of influence employed by the nation’s adversaries, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul last week promoted Colin Ahern, formerly the state’s chief cyber officer, to serve as its first director of security and intelligence. Ahern said he’ll help protect the state from a doctrine of attack adopted by the nation’s adversaries that he described as “all of the above, all the time.”Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly last week announced that state officials have reached an agreement with the Department of Agriculture, resolving a months-long dispute over access to sensitive food-assistance data. Kelly said the deal ensures Kansans’ personal information, including Social Security numbers, will not be shared with foreign governments.And after being named Nebraska’s interim chief information security officer last month, Bryce Bailey last week lost his interim status and will serve as the state’s top cybersecurity official for the foreseeable future. Bailey said he wants to “take cybersecurity to the next level,” a goal that includes bolstering the state’s cyber workforce, changing cybersecurity’s image and amassing enough data to demonstrate to government policymakers that cyber programs, like the federal State and Local Cybersecurity Grant Program, are worth keeping.New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday. For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Soundcloud or Spotify.
A Romanian national this month pleaded guilty to selling credentials for a network operated by the Oregon Department of Emergency Management. The initial access broker, who went by the online handle inthematrix1, pleaded guilty to one count of obtaining information from a protected computer and one count of aggravated identity theft. He's expected to be deported.As the United States prepares to host part of the 2026 FIFA World Cup this summer, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul this month announced that the state will receive $17.2 million in federal funding to combat illegal or unsafe drone flights. In June and July, the event’s matches will be played in Canada, Mexico and in 11 U.S. cities.New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday. For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts,Soundcloud or Spotify.
“Technology is the engine of government,” and any administration looking to accomplish its policy objectives should hire a strong technology team. That’s the advice of Minnesota Chief Information Officer Tarek Tomes, who after nearly seven years, will soon step down for a CIO role with the University of Minnesota. For the Priorities Podcast, Tomes recalled Gov. Tim Walz’s request that he provide “no surprises.” In return, Tomes said, he received a vote of confidence that his department could deliver on high expectations. “When we have systems that are old or are not performing well, it’s because we choose to have them,” Tomes said. “It’s not because we have to have them.” He also remembered how technologists responded to the COVID-19 pandemic in his state: “The enduring memory was really two things. One was technologists meeting the moment, and the confidence that the executive branch really had that solutions could be crafted in a timely manner to meet those moments.”This week’s top stories:Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey on Friday announced that the state’s 40,000 executive-branch employees will receive access to a ChatGPT-powered artificial intelligence assistant, a first for state government.Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey on Thursday announced a new statewide board tasked with ensuring that emerging technologies are deployed securely and “responsibly.” Nevada’s technology department last week announced a new policy aimed at uniformly classifying the state’s data, a once arcane practice gaining celebrity in an age of AI and cyberattacks.New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday. For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud or Spotify.
“A lot is going on” with state and local government cybersecurity in 2026, said Carlos Kizzee, senior vice president of MS-ISAC strategy and plans at the Center for Internet Security. He told the Priorities Podcast that he thinks government is going through yet another transition to a “new normal”: “A lot of our jurisdictions in the state, local, tribal and territorial community are adjusting to reduced funding, in some areas, increasingly sophisticated threats, both cyber and all-hazards.” Despite recently switching to a paid-membership model, CIS has seen fewer than 200 of its nearly 3,000 members apply for hardship discounts, an “absolutely phenomenal outcome,” he said. Joining him on the podcast was John D. Cohen, executive director of office of strategic programs and initiatives at the Center for Internet Security, who said the organization is working with law enforcement agencies and chief information security officers around the country, to help them meet cybersecurity threats moving “at internet speed.”This week’s top stories:Former California chief information officer Amy Tong has retired from state government. Tong, whose most recent role was as a senior counselor to Gov. Gavin Newsom, capped a 30-year career in public service.Tarek Tomes, Minnesota’s CIO, has also stepped down, accepting a role as CIO with the University of Minnesota. Tomes spent nearly seven years with the state government.In Pennsylvania, CIO Bryanna Pardoe recently shared how her first months in the role have been going after spending two years leading the state’s digital services efforts. She said she wants to bring that experience to the CIO role.New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday. For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud or Spotify.
Faced with budget constraints and diminished support from the federal government, many states are turning to modernize their processes and technologies, according to a recent report from the Pew Charitable Trusts. Melissa Maynard, a project director at Pew who authored that report, says states are feeling pressure, including from changes to Medicaid and SNAP programs, that will in many cases require them to foot the bill not only for increased state administration, but also to cover benefits costs. The solution to an out-of-control situation, she said, has been to manage what can be controlled. “If you’re in charge of a state, you want to roll up your sleeves and look comprehensively and look at everything that is within your power. And states are doing that,” she said on the Priorities Podcast. “Efficiency is becoming a very central focus for states as tightening budgets collide also with new advances in technology and especially AI.”Top stories this week: New Jersey Gov. Mikie (pronounced Mikey) Sherrill (pronounced Cheryl) on Monday named Kevin Dehmer, the state’s education commissioner, as her administration’s chief technology officer. Dehmer replaced Christopher Rein (pronounced Ryan), who stepped down last week. Sherrill has also announced the state will stand up a new web form to collect information from residents about potential infractions by federal immigration authorities.New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani last week announced he’ll get rid of an AI-powered chatbot as part of his plan to close the city’s $12 billion budget gap. The chatbot, which received strong backing under former Mayor Eric Adams, had been found at times to provide incorrect or even illegal advice.A former product manager at the Colorado Digital Service recently announced a new website called the Colorado Digital Services Navigator. He said no assets were taken from his old job to create the website. State officials said they are planning, though, to launch a similar portal later this year. The employee, Brian Curtis, said he just wanted to give a birthday present to the state, which turns 150 on Aug. 1.New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday. For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts,Soundcloud or Spotify.
Society, said this begins with getting plans approved by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, a step 42 states and three territories have completed. Then states must gain approval from National Institute of Standards and Technology and begin selecting vendors, a step that so far only Louisiana has reached. It’s not yet clear when deployments will be complete or, when they are, how successful they’ll prove. One way to measure success, Garner said, is to look at the technologies being used. “Typically if you see a fiber connection, you can rest safe in that that is probably is going to be a very high quality connectivity that the household is receiving,” he said. “It’s a spectrum when it comes to the other technologies. Wireless may be great, it may not work. Satellite may be great, but in many cases if you have trees or hills or mountains or other buildings sort of obstructing your view of the sky, satellite may not work for those households.”Top stories this week:Attorney General Pam Bondi over the weekend demanded that Minnesota officials better cooperate with federal immigration authorities and that the state hand over its voter registration lists and safety-net benefits data. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz seemed unimpressed by the requests and, in an op-ed on Monday, excoriated the Trump administration for directing ICE to act so aggressively and “illegally” in his state.Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Monday announced the state is adding new restrictions on certain hardware, software and artificial intelligence tools tied to the People’s Republic of China and the Chinese Communist Party. The expanded list includes a range of companies involved in AI, surveillance technology, networking equipment, consumer electronics and e-commerce platforms.From locating avalanche victims to assessing unstable snow and supporting disaster recovery across vast, remote areas, drones and remote control systems are becoming critical tools for keeping residents and first responders safe in Alaska. Shannon McCarthy, communications director at the state’s transportation department, said that drones proved particularly useful during a recent typhoon that brought 107 mph winds and destroyed hundreds of homes.New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday. For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Soundcloud or Spotify.
In Alaska, state officials responsible for keeping the public safe from avalanches are increasingly looking to use commercial products, such as drones, roadside sensors and digital maps to reduce their reliance on military technologies. Timothy Glassett, Alaska’s statewide avalanche and artillery program manager, says on the Priorities Podcast that the system currently used to spur “preventative” avalanches — “We try not to use the word controlled because we can’t really control nature,” he says — is an M101A1 howitzer that fires 105mm rounds. He says it was designed and built in 1928. Drones and other commercial products, along with alternative “exploder systems,” he says, are a welcome addition to a state trying to transition away from technology nearly one century old.This week’s top stories:The Minnesota Department of Human Services last week distributed data breach notification letters disclosing that the demographic records of nearly 304,000 people had been compromised last fall. An unauthorized user also accessed more detailed information — including Medicaid ID numbers and partial Social Security numbers — of more than 1,200 people.California is not required to turn over its full voter registration list to the federal government, after a federal judge last week granted a motion to dismiss a Department of Justice lawsuit filed last September. District judge David O. Carter said he was unpersuaded by the DOJ’s attempts to use provisions of the Help America Vote Act and the Civil Rights Act to force the state to share entire unredacted voter rolls containing the sensitive personal information of millions of residents.The Illinois Accountability Commission last week made it easier for residents to share information about possible misconduct by federal agents with the launch of a web form that allows people to submit videos, written accounts or other information. The effort comes after a recent Department of Homeland Security operation in Chicago known as Operation Midway Blitz, aimed at arresting illegal immigrants and cracking down on sanctuary cities.New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday. For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts,Soundcloud or Spotify.
Changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program brought about by H.R. 1 could mean millions or even billions of dollars of additional costs for states. The civic tech nonprofit Code for America is helping some states reduce their error rates, through technology and process changes, to help them reduce the benefit amount they’d be required to cover, as opposed to by federal dollars, after the Donald Trump administration’s sweeping changes. Rebecca Piazza, executive director of safety net strategy at Code for America, says the expanded work reporting requirements and financial restructuring of the program is putting “a lot more strain on programs and program staff” in the states. “We’re really encouraging states to use data to prioritize where they should be focusing,” she says. “What are the areas of highest impact of bringing down that error rate?” AI and other automation technologies can help, she says, by spotting blurry documents, extracting data from uploaded images of pay stubs or combining multiple applications mistakenly submitted by the same person. This is critical work, she says, because states that aren’t able to reduce their SNAP error rates and lower the benefit amounts they’re required to cover, could put their program “at risk” — for states, SNAP participation is not mandatory.This week’s top stories: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott last week appointed Amanda Crawford, the state’s chief information officer and executive director of the Texas Department of Information Resources as the state’s commissioner of insurance. Officials said they’ll soon announce a replacement to lead the state’s technology department.New York State’s technology office this week announced Eleonore Fournier-Tombs, a United Nations University researcher, has been appointed as chief artificial intelligence officer, replacing Shreya Amin, who spent less than a year in the role. The state also named a new chief digital officer.Florida is strengthening animal welfare protections with the passage of Dexter’s Law, a new statute designed to prevent repeat animal abuse and improve accountability across the state. Named after a shelter dog whose inhumane death in 2023 sparked public outrage, the law responds to growing concerns that individuals convicted of animal cruelty were still able to adopt or obtain pets with little oversight.New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday. For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Soundcloud or Spotify.
Last year was “the year when [privacy] bills came online,” says David Botero, a state data privacy fellow at the nonprofit IAPP. He joins the Priorities Podcast to reflect on a year that he also called “the year of amendments,” in which a handful of states changed their privacy laws in influential ways. He says the year also brought new trends in how sensitive data is classified. The coming year, Botero says, will bring “an expanded right of access for automated decision making” linked to the right of consumers to appeal decisions made by such systems. Cobun Zwiefel-Keegan, IAPP's managing director, says on the episode that it’s “an exciting time” for data-privacy policy. Last year, he says, was the “year that privacy enforcement really woke up in the states for these comprehensive consumer privacy laws.” And this year is continuing to bring change. On Jan. 1, comprehensive data privacy laws in three states — Indiana, Kentucky and Rhode Island — became enforceable, making for a total of 19 such active laws nationwide.Top stories this week: New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy on Monday signed a bill that established an innovation authority in the state Treasury Department and codifies the state’s Office of Innovation. New Jersey Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill on Monday also announced that Dave Cole, the state’s chief innovation officer, will continue on in his role under her administration.Matt Fraser, who’d served as New York’s chief technology officer since January 2022, under former Mayor Eric Adams, stepped down on Dec. 31. But the city’s technology priorities under newly inaugurated Mayor Zohran Mamdani remain unclear. He named Ruby Choi, OTI’s deputy commissioner for strategic initiatives, as acting CTO, but has revealed little else about his plans for technology policy.There were many big stories in state and local government IT last year, but five stood out from the rest. StateScoop’s Keely Quinlan chronicled them in a piece called “Five state tech stories that made 2025.”New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday. For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts,Soundcloud or Spotify.
The past year has brought shifting priorities for states’ top technology officials. Artificial intelligence tops the list of annual priorities published by the National Association of State Chief Information Officers. Accessibility is also in the spotlight as states rush to remediate their websites ahead of an April deadline set by the Department of Justice. And budget concerns are mounting. “It’s the reality of what the states are seeing and the CIOs realize that,” NASCIO Executive Director Robinson says on the latest Priorities Podcast. “The warning flags are up in terms of revenue shortfalls. … CIOs are hearing from agency customers that their budgets are going to be tapped.”Following months of protest from state lawmakers, attorneys general and civil rights organizations, President Donald Trump signed an executive order last week banning states from enforcing their laws regulating artificial intelligence, potentially setting the stage for widespread legal challenges.The Dallas City Council voted last week to install cameras backed by artificial intelligence on yard waste and trash collection trucks, in an effort to combat illegal dumping and improve neighborhood cleanliness. The new system is hoped by officials to provide a more accurate picture of what’s happening across the city.New York City officials last week announced the launch of a free digital learning hub for residents of the city’s public housing developments. The resources, which are available thanks to a broadband subsidy program called Big Apple Connect, are designed to help residents complete basic tasks like connect to the internet or use digital devices.New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday. For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts,Soundcloud or Spotify.
After two years of research into how states are using and thinking about AI, New America has published an expansive report that its creators say contains encouraging signs. Lilian Coral, vice president of New America's technology and democracy programs, and Neil Kleiman, urban policy professor at Northeastern University’s public policy school, tell the Priorities Podcast that the implications of generative AI are far-reaching. Kleiman called the findings “remarkable.” “The other thing we were struck by was the politics around this,” he says. “Everybody is either excited or so freaked out about this technology that everybody is ready to do something.” Coral says she also hears fear and excitement emanating from government, but “what I was really encouraged by was the level of conversation that I could hear.”This week’s top stories:A repurposed IT system being used by the Department of Homeland Security presents “unacceptable risks” to the nation’s eligible voters, according to a group of secretaries of state who on Monday signed off on a letter opposing a recent proposal by the federal agency. The Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements Program is subject to numerous legal changes under DHS’s proposal, including that it would be used not for its original narrow purpose, but allow bulk searches and searches of “individuals that are U.S. citizens by birth” to find ineligible voters and instances of voter fraud.After numerous stalled attempts from the White House and Congress to preempt states from enforcing their artificial intelligence laws, yet another attempt is brewing in Congress, this time potentially bundling AI preemption with child online safety legislation. Doug Robinson, the executive director of the National Association of State Chief Information Officers, sent a letter to congressional leaders last week urging them to reject any such continued attempts at state AI law preemption, even one coupled with laws designed to protect kids. Two former committee chairs at the Association for Computing Machinery argue in a commentary piece for StateScoop that Congress must preserve state authority in AI governance. In the piece they argue that “AI’s impact is happening now, not in some distant future” and that states must be permitted to create and enforce their own laws as the need arises.New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday. For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud or Spotify.
Quite a few states have innovation programs, mechanisms for jumpstarting new and interesting ways to improve government, but Nicholas Stowe, Washington state's outgoing chief technology officer, shares on this week’s Priorities Podcast why he thinks his state’s innovation and modernization program has enjoyed an especially favorable success rate. “We really tried to maximize reusing existing governance processes,” he says. Also on this episode is Wendy Wickstrom, web and user experience manager at Washington Technology Solutions, who shares how flipping a procurement process upside-down helped the state create what officials say is a new model for reducing risk and fostering a more connected government. “We knew we wanted agency participation, but we didn’t want to dictate every deliverable that they gave us,” she says.This week’s top stories:After receiving letters from the Department of Justice requesting access to state voter data, 10 Democratic secretaries of state on Tuesday drafted their own letter, citing “immense concern” with how that data might have been shared across the federal government. The secretaries write that in recent meetings with DOJ and Department of Homeland Security officials they received “misleading and at times contradictory information” on the topic of their unredacted statewide voter rolls.The House of Representatives passed a bill by voice vote Monday evening that would reauthorize the State and Local Cybersecurity Grant Program. Enjoying bipartisan support, the Protecting Information by Local Leaders for Agency Resilience, or PILLAR, Act is now open to be considered by the Senate.The National Telecommunications and Information Administration on Tuesday announced it’s issued approvals to 18 states on their final proposals for the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program.New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday. For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud or Spotify.
T subsidiary could be forced to repay millions it received in federal broadband subsidies. Central to the case is a debate over whether money dispersed through the FCC’s E-Rate program counts as federal funds under the False Claims Act.New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday. For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Soundcloud or Spotify.
A learning program for notaries in Indiana was not getting good reviews. Robert Fulk, the chief information officer for the Indiana Secretary of State’s office said people thought it was outdated, long, repetitive and clunky. And it was, until his office redesigned it from top to bottom using AI. Artificial intelligence is now infused into every aspect of the program, from its instructional content to its audio and video assets. “It’s really engaging for the learners,” Fulk says on the latest Priorities Podcast.Also joining this episode is Patrick Carter, vice president of state practice at Results for America, who says that more states than ever are using evidence-based decisionmaking in their budgets. It’s catching on in other areas, too, he says, but it’s still a relatively unused practice. Budget downturns and declining state revenues could turn that around, though. That, and the practice’s increased body of knowledge and winning examples. “We’ve learned lots of lessons from governments over the last 10-20 years about what works,” Carter says.Top stories this week: The Rockefeller Foundation and the nonprofit Center for Civic Futures on Tuesday unveiled a new effort, called the AI Readiness Project, aimed at preparing state governments to use artificial intelligence tools to improve how they administer services to the public.The Beeck Center for Social Impact and Innovation at Georgetown University is also ramping up its efforts to support AI work in state and local governments. Andrew Merluzzi, who’s serving as its new AI innovation and incubation fellow, said he thinks the recent years of groundwork are finally beginning to bear fruit.The Federal Communications Commission last week voted to approve an order that will roll back caps on phone and video calls to and from prisons and jails. Some rates are expected to double.New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday. For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts,Soundcloud or Spotify.
Star Wars and disco were hip when Kansas built its previous unemployment insurance system and it was “sufficient,” Kansas Labor Secretary Amber Shultz says. But on the latest episode of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast, Shultz describes how, over the course of two years, the state transformed that system into a modern one, with a modern user interface. A system that had to be taken offline constantly — “a house of cards” — has been replaced by one that has nearly perfect uptime, she says. “Our contact center representatives, they couldn’t use a mouse, and they had to memorize all these hundreds of weird shortcodes for abbreviation back in those days, and then the code was not documented,” she says. Today, the state heralds a different story, one in which call centers see 60% fewer calls and processing time has been reduced by 80%.Top stories this week:New York City this week announced a new pilot program that integrates a new emergency alert system with the city’s public schools. The system, which leaders claim is the first of its kind in the United States, provides an automated method of contacting 911 in the event of active shooter scenarios or other threats.As the federal government shutdown stretches on, state agencies are grappling with technical, financial and policy adjustments following a federal directive to pause processing of SNAP benefits next month. Nearly all states and territories have submitted their final proposals to the federal government detailing how they plan to spend their allotments of the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program. Given recent adjustments to how the program is administered, though, the current proposals could leave roughly half of the program’s $42 billion unspent.New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday. For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Soundcloud or Spotify.
Ratna Dougherty, an assistant professor at the University of South Florida’s Public Affairs school, joins the Priorities Podcast to explain how the government shutdown is affecting disaster relief efforts. One change, Dougherty says, is that state and local governments face a more complex process in applying to receive support from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. There could be other challenges, too. “Because of a lack of appropriations, as funds are being spent down, there’s no replenishing of those funds if those are necessary,” she says.This week’s top stories:New Jersey’s Office of Innovation has published a guide designed to help governments build and use generative artificial intelligence tools. The guide contains nine tips, informed by the experiences of developers and IT leaders at the New Jersey state government.San Jose, Calif., has developed a reputation as a career “launchpad,” according to Stephen Caines, the city’s chief innovation officer, but he and others in City Hall want to change that. The city is seeking a vendor to create a new platform that would provide city staff with the ability to create their own digital helpers, and hopefully avoid feelings of burn out.The office of Idaho Gov. Brad Little on Friday announced a new webpage as part of the state’s “Operation No Return” initiative, in which immigrants with illegal statuses who were convicted of serious crimes are transferred from county jails into federal custody for deportation after they’ve completed their sentences. The new webpage displays the names, mugshots, offenses and countries of origin of those transferred to federal authorities. New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday. For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Soundcloud or Spotify.
Doug Robinson, executive director of the National Association of State Chief Information Officers, joins the Priorities Podcast this week to explain why “uncertainty” is the word of the year for state technology leaders. “That has a lot to do with obviously the states’ fiscal conditions and uncertainty there, federal funding uncertainty, and just the turbulence in terms of just overall relationship with the federal government,” Robinson says. As in previous years, the report covers a wide gamut of issues, including generative artificial intelligence, digital accessibility, IT budgets, could adoption and the provision of services to local governments.New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday. For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Soundcloud or Spotify.
Diversity, equity and inclusion are dirty words in Trump’s America, and though many private companies and government agencies have rebranded such efforts in 2025, equity lives on in New York City. Digital Inclusion Week is underway in New York, where Paolo Balboa, the city’s first chief digital equity officer says “call it what you will,” but equity work is progressing. On StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast, Balboa shares numerous efforts by the city government, including Big Apple Connect, just one piece of the city’s Digital Equity Roadmap, which provides free internet and cable service — “a basic commodity for existing today” — to public housing residents. “Digital equity is all about getting residents and communities to a place where they can use and navigate the internet confidently, so that they can fully participate in society, democracy and the economy,” Balboa says. When asked to describe his role, which the city created last March, Balboa says it boils down to finding the organizations already doing equity work and trying to partner with them.This week’s top stories:Oklahoma has named a new chief information security officer. Daniel Langley, who most recently served in Washington state’s information technology bureau, has taken the role. He also served as CISO of the Washington state lottery and spent almost a decade with the U.S. Army, where he finished as a captain in the Signal Corps.Following an expansion of efforts to bolster digital equity across the five boroughs, New York City’s Office of Technology and Innovation on Monday kicked off its Digital Inclusion Week. The event is part of a national collection of events co-hosted by the National Digital Inclusion Alliance designed to raise awareness.While more states are embracing data-driven governance, many chief data officers still struggle with limited resources and weak institutional power, according to a recent survey of state CDOs. Most state CDO offices operate with budgets of less than $1 million and manage small teams, yet are expected to coordinate data strategies across agencies, according to a report from NASCIO and the Beeck Center for Social Impact and Innovation.New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday. For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Soundcloud or Spotify.
On this episode of the Priorities podcast, James Barros, administrator of the Emergency Management Agency in Hawaii, joins us to discuss the results of the September tests. He said the tests showed the need for clearer evacuation messaging in emergency alerts, tailored to each person’s physical location. Details, such as whether residents are in buildings, on the beach or at high elevation, that each require a different response. Top stories this week: The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has confirmed it will end its long-standing cooperative agreement with the Center for Internet Security, which runs the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center. The shift could change how state and local governments access the monitoring services they rely on for cyber defense.Governor Gavin Newsom has signed California’s SB 53, which imposes new transparency rules on major AI developers, requiring them to disclose how they assess safety risks, publish safety protocols, and report major incidents. The new law, which takes effect in January, positions California as a leader in AI oversight as federal regulation remains in flux.New York City has extended its Big Apple Connect program for another three years, continuing to offer free internet and cable service to residents in public housing. Since its launch in 2022, the program has already connected more than 150,000 households.New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday.For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts,Soundcloud or Spotify.
Tarek Tomes, the chief information officer of Minnesota, and Katie Savage, Maryland’s CIO, may be separated by 1,000 miles, but they have at least one thing in common when it comes to their work: They both have directives from their governors to support child and family services. Gov. Tim Walz has said he wants to make Minnesota the best state in the nation to raise a family. And Gov. Wes Moore has named eliminating child poverty as one of his top priorities in Maryland. Both CIOs tell StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast that they are working with agencies across the state to ensure they have the IT support they need to meet their goals. “I think approaching technology through the lens of empathy — really understanding that when people are knocking on these doors, you know, they’re knocking on these doors with a lot of other things going on in their lives,” Tomes says.This week’s top stories:New York State has named a new deputy chief information officer. Jenson Jacob, a longtime state government employee, was named to the role recently after serving in roles as lead enterprise architect, chief digital transformation officer and deputy chief technology officer.Texas’ secretary of state has announced it has data-sharing agreements with nine other states. The agreements are designed to allow Texas to reduce voter fraud and identify inconsistencies like duplicate registrations. Some of the details of the data-sharing arrangements are unclear, however, because the state has not published the agreements.A federal judge has issued an injunction blocking the Department of Agriculture from collecting the personal data of individuals applying for SNAP benefits in 21 states and Washington, D.C. The ruling arrived after privacy advocates raised concerns that such data sharing could expose applicants’ sensitive information.New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday. For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Soundcloud or Spotify.
On this episode of the Priorities podcast, Colorado Representative Brianna Titone reflects on the state legislature’s decision to delay implementing the Colorado AI Act, the state’s high-risk artificial intelligence legislation, until the end of June 2026. She expresses disappointment with the watered-down bill and the pressure from big tech companies, like Microsoft, Oracle and Salesforce, to oppose it. Titone encouraged lawmakers to take a proactive approach to AI regulation and aim for uniform policy across states due to federal inaction.Top stories this week: California’s artificial intelligence bill, which would address the use of automated decision systems failed to advance in the state assembly during the final hours of the 2025 legislative session. AB 1018 would have required companies and government agencies to notify individuals when automated decision systems were used for “consequential decisions,” such as employment, housing, health care, and financial services. Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo said the state has faced a 300% increase in cyberattack attempts on its websites since a ransomware attack in August knocked several state websites offline and downed digital services. Lombardo said the state’s firewall systems experienced roughly 150 million attempts in the 72 hours following the press conference discussing the attack.Last week Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin signed an executive order to boost the state’s election security. The order directs the Department of Elections and several other agencies to update safeguards that protect voter data, voting machines, and election systems from cyber threats. New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday.For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts,Soundcloud or Spotify.
The Digital Benefits Network, part of the Beeck Center for Social Impact and Innovation at Georgetown University, released a report this week focused on understanding the experience applicants have when applying for public benefits online, specifically account creation and identity verification. Elizabeth Bynum Sorrell, Senior Manager at the Digital Benefits Network, joins StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast to share that the report found that beneficiaries prioritize access over privacy, but have a hard time navigating the different steps to verify their identity. She also highlights the importance of single sign-on systems to simplify the process and build trust, noting their use in 20 states.Top stories this week: The State and Local Cybersecurity Grant Program is on track to be reauthorized. The Protecting Information by Local Leaders for Agency Resilience, or PILLAR, Act, was introduced last week and began winding its way through committees, enjoying favorable bipartisan comments. One thing it's missing, though, is a dollar amount.Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach on Monday made public he’s suing Gov. Laura Kelly. The suit is his attempt to force the governor to send the personal data of 730,000 applicants who applied to the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program over the past five years to the federal government.A report published last week by the National Association of State Chief Information Officers cautions that accessibility lawsuits filed under the Americans with Disabilities Act are already on the rise, jumping from 2,250 lawsuits in 2019 to 4,000 last year, with costs to offenders as high as $350,000, not counting remediation costs. The warning comes as states look ahead to an April 2026 deadline to meet new accessibility requirements.New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday.For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts,Soundcloud or Spotify.
Elizabeth Dunn, a faculty member at the University of South Florida's College of Public Health, joins the Priorities Podcast to share her expertise on the technology and psychology behind hurricane evacuation orders. She says that storms are becoming stronger and developing more quickly, elevating the importance of governments issuing clear messages. And many people who receive evacuation orders inland or who think only high-category storms are worth avoiding, she says, frequently find themselves in dangerous situations. Top stories this week: Texas has created a “hostile foreign adversaries unit” designed to stop the growing influence of the Chinese Communist Party on U.S. soil. The unit was created by SB 2514, a new law that joins more than a dozen other new laws and executive orders created over the past year targeting Chinese influence in Texas.Less than one month before the State and Local Cybersecurity Grant Program is set to expire, several industry groups on Tuesday signed a letter addressed to congressional leaders requesting that the program be revived, but this time with more money. Led by the Alliance for Digital Innovation, the groups are asking homeland security and appropriations committee leaders to expand the program to the tune of $4.5 billion over two years.Delaware’s technology department on Tuesday announced that it’s named Aashish Patel, who’s been serving as the state’s interim chief security officer, to serve in the position long term.New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday.For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud or Spotify.
Jennifer Hickerson, a senior manager who specializes in telecommunications at the professional services firm Baker Tilly, joins the Priorities Podcast this week to explain how changes to the BEAD program are affecting the outcomes in states. Final proposal submissions from states are due next week. Each state has been a different approach to how it seeks vendors and the types of technologies it pursues. Hickerson says states that have been advertising to vendors an emphasis on lowest cost have seen more responses from satellite and fixed wireless vendors. “That message really seems to have an impact on applicants,” she says. “Those who really needed to drive down those costs in a way that was no longer sustainable started to question whether it was worth it to apply for this program. It also gave the message that some technologies might fare better in applying for the BEAD program.”Top stories this week:In a letter addressed to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Arielle Roth, administrator of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, 10 Democrats from the House of Representatives are asking for clarification on how states can use “nondeployment” funds they are set to soon receive through the federal Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program. The letter asks for clarification on how states can use their BEAD funding for projects not directly related to building out new fiber networks or installing wireless towers.Two cybersecurity incidents disabled state services over the weekend. A service in Maryland that provides transportation to people with disabilities is unable to take new reservations. And a number of Nevada’s websites, services and phone lines, including those for the Nevada Highway Patrol and Nevada State Police, faced outages.The Texas legislature has passed several pieces of legislation aimed at strengthening protections for young campers after devastating floods last month left more than two dozen campers and counselors dead at Camp Mystic. The legislation would create new rules pertaining to alerts, emergency plans and where camps are allowed to operate.New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday.For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud or Spotify.
This week, the Colorado state legislature will meet for a special session, called by Gov. Jared Polis, to discuss, revise, and potentially delay the Colorado AI Act. Tyler Thompson, a partner at Reed Smith, joins StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast to say he’s worried about the law's effectiveness, especially with the federal government, after the release of its AI Action Plan, threatening to withhold funding for states with burdensome AI regulations. He said the upcoming special session, starting Thursday, is expected to address these issues, potentially altering the law's applicability and compliance requirements.Top stories this week:In a letter last week to the Virginia agency managing bids and proposals for the federal Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program, SpaceX claimed the state’s final proposal purposefully excluded Starlink, the company’s low Earth orbit satellite internet service, from most locations. The company claims that excluding its services would be a “massive waste of federal taxpayer money.”The Sacramento suburb of Folsom, California, last month released a promotional video that showcased Bigfoot giving a guided tour of the city — going to the zoo, swimming in Lake Natoma, getting ice cream and ziplining. The video is the latest instance of local governments turning to AI to boost their tourism or streamline processes.After a years long legal debate, the California Supreme Court has held to a decision that police departments in the state are required to release some of the footage recorded by their drones. The court denied hearing the City of Chula Vista’s argument against a court requirement that it release its police department’s drone footage to a journalist who asked to see some of the footage.New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday.For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Soundcloud or Spotify.
A new directory and mapping tool is helping nonprofits, governments and members of the public better understand which benefits programs are being offered around the country. Jennifer Phillips, with the Digital Benefits Network at the Beeck Center for Social Impact and Innovation, joins StateScoop's Priorities Podcast to explain why the new tools are such a helpful component of the group's work. "Our theory of change at the Beeck Center and Digital Benefits Network is to take collective, collaborative action, it's really critical to know where are the organizations, what are they doing, which sectors are doing what," Phillips says. "And having that line of sight across the ecosystem is really critical to improving public benefits access delivery."This week’s top stories:The network that hosts services for the office of Pennsylvania Attorney General Dave Sunday went offline after a recent “cyber incident,” according to a notice Sunday posted to his official X account on Monday. Sunday called the situation “frustrating” and said officials were working to understand what happened.Numerous state and local officials shared with StateScoop a belief that they will need to be more self-reliant in the years ahead, as keystone cyber programs are abandoned or scaled back, and as they receive fewer communications from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Of particular concern for many state and local technology officials are recent federal cuts to the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center, a group that for more than 20 years has shared critical cybersecurity intelligence across state lines and provided threat monitoring services and other resources at free or heavily discounted rates.A recent investigation by the National Association of State Chief Information Officers reveals a landscape of complicated procurement laws that are challenging vendors. The report concludes by making several recommendations, including that private companies educate themselves on the procurement processes of the states where they bid and to deploy legal teams that are specialized in public sector dealings.New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday.For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts,Soundcloud or Spotify.
The Homelessness Prevention Unit in the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, is seeing signs of success in reducing the homelessness in the county. Launched in 2021, the program uses a predictive model, developed by the California Policy Lab, to proactively reach people at the highest risk of becoming homeless and connect them to stabilizing services before they lose their housing. Dana Vanderford, Associate Director of the HPU, tells the Priorities Podcast that the program uses 580 data points from various agencies to identify individuals at risk of losing housing within the next 12 months.This week’s top stories:The Department of Homeland Security last week published the notice of funding opportunity for the fourth and final year of the State and Local Cybersecurity Grant Program. Among the details explaining the latest round of funding for the $1 billion program is a stipulation that grantees may not spend their funds on services provided by the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center, a group that for more than 20 years has shared critical cybersecurity intelligence across state lines and provided software and other resources at free or heavily discounted rates.As states conduct an additional round of bidding mandated by last month’s changes to the federal Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program, initial data shows that SpaceX’s Starlink and other low Earth orbit satellite internet service providers are bidding big for the funds on projects — and they could win millions over fiber providers.Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker has signed a bill into law banning the use of artificial intelligence from providing mental health services, aiming to protect residents from potentially harmful advice. Known as the Wellness and Oversight for Psychological Resources Act, the law prohibits AI systems from delivering therapeutic treatment or making clinical decisions.New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday.For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts,Soundcloud or Spotify.
This week’s Priorities Podcast is joined by Matthew Guariglia, a senior policy analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who explains why he’s concerned about an AI-powered tool being adopted by police departments. The tool is Axon's Draft One, which pulls audio from body cam footage to help officers draft police reports. Following a recent investigation into how the technology works, Guariglia claims it was designed without transparency and auditing safeguards that he says ought to be present. He said he’s especially concerned by the window of plausible deniability the technology opens, providing no way for the public to discern between text written by human officers and that generated by software.This week’s top stories:Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz on Tuesday activated the state National Guard to help respond to a cyberattack on the state’s capital city. According to an announcement by Walz’s office, the National Guard’s help was needed because an ongoing cyberattack against St. Paul was larger and more complex than city staff were able to handle. St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter called the attack a "deliberate, coordinated digital attack carried out by a sophisticated external actor."Two local governments in Kansas and Nebraska are using GIS, artificial intelligence and lidar to fix accessibility issues with their curb ramps and sidewalks. The technology, which is helping the cities find and fix infrastructure that might not be compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act, helped save over 1,000 hours of manual labor. Delaware’s Department of Technology and Information adopted a policy this month that outlines how and when state employees can use generative artificial intelligence tools, and permits them to use many public and enterprise AI models, but not ones considered to be potentially malicious, like DeepSeek.New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday.For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts,Soundcloud or Spotify.
On this week's Priorities Podcast, we're joined by Center for Humane Technology's Pete Furlong and Transparency Coalition.ai's Rob Eleveld to discuss the impacts of AI companion chat bots. As AI companion chatbots become more sophisticated and accessible, so do the risks—especially for children. Hear this conversation covering what policymakers, parents, and the tech industry need to know now to protect vulnerable users. :studio_microphone:Full episode at the link in our bio #AIethics #OnlineSafety #ChildProtection #TechPolicy #DigitalWellness #ResponsibleAI #AIforGood #CenterForHumaneTechnology #TransparencyCoalition #ArtificialIntelligence #TechRegulation
This week we’re joined by North Carolina Chief Information Officer Teena Piccione, and Bernice Russell-Bond, the state’s chief information security officer. They share details of an upcoming cybersecurity internship program hoped to create a pipeline of talent for the state government. Starting next August, 10 college students will get a chance to work for the state as part-time interns, learning on the job as they perform a broad range of cybersecurity tasks. Russell-Bond says the program will give students exposure to “all aspects of cyber,” while providing the state a reliable source of fresh talent.This week’s top stories: A pilot project in Virginia is using agentic AI to slim down the commonwealth’s regulations. State agencies are being directed to use artificial intelligence to achieve a statewide goal of reducing regulations by 25%.A new study from The Pew Charitable Trusts shows that federal broadband data used by states has several key shortcomings that should be remediated. Researchers found that broadband data is unreliable and inconsistent, making it difficult for states to plan their infrastructure buildouts.A new report from the nonprofit Brennan Center for Justice found that 61% of local election officials are concerned about the cuts to election security services made this year by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Eighty-seven percent said they think state and local governments need to step up to fill the gap.New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday.For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts,Soundcloud or Spotify.
Over the July 4th weekend, extreme rainfall in Central Texas caused catastrophic flooding along the Guadalupe River, leaving over 100 people dead and 160 people missing. Amidst the devastation, one question remains: in an area known as “flash flood alley,” why wasn’t there a flood warning system in place? This week, the Priorities Podcast reruns an episode from last year that centered on the alerts issued in another disaster, in North Carolina. A system there uses data from stream gauges, small devices that measure the water level and discharge of rivers and streams, for flood forecasting and disaster preparedness, which helped in the response to Hurricane Helene.Top stories this week:On Monday, ranking members of Congress sent a letter to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, demanding to know why the agency hasn’t responded to their recent inquiries about how its supporting state and local election offices. Democratic leaders Rep. Joseph D. Morelle and Sen. Alex Padilla wrote that they’re seeking “urgent updates” to the status of numerous election security policies and programs available under previous administrations.A new California bill aims to address the harmful impacts of “companion” chatbots, artificial intelligence-powered systems designed to simulate human-like relationships and provide emotional support. The bill would require companies running companion chatbots to remind users that they’re talking to a machine, not a person and clearly state that chatbots may not be suitable for minors. If passed, it would be among the first laws in the country to regulate AI companions with clear safety standards and user protections.In signing the state’s two-year budget last week, Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont authorized funding for the Voting Rights Act. The act offers voter protections, including legal tools to fight discriminatory voting rules in court, expanded language assistance for voters who struggle with English and a data portal to host all of the state’s election results and demographic information.New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday.For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts,Soundcloud or Spotify.
Just in time for another hot California summer, the state’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment this year launched CalHeatScore, a data-powered tool that’s designed to help local governments and their constituencies better prepare for levels of heat that can become health hazards. On this week’s Priorities Podcast, Walker Wieland, manager of the office’s Extreme Heat Ranking System Development Section, says that heat affects everyone, but it especially affects groups like low-income populations, the elderly and people who live in cities, who must suffer the urban heat island effect. “Extreme heat really disproportionately impacts vulnerable populations throughout California,” Wieland says. “Some examples are the very young, older adults, those that work outside for a living, those with preexisting chronic health conditions. These are the people that are most commonly more sensitive to extreme heat and ultimately end up in the emergency room.” He explains how the tool can be used by members of the public to plan their summer schedules, but also by communities to guide policies, such as the opening of additional cooling or respite centers.This week’s top stories:The Senate voted Tuesday to remove from the federal budget bill a proposed moratorium on states enforcing their own artificial intelligence laws. The ban that was championed by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Tex., lost virtually all support before the vote. The defeat is being celebrated by states and advocacy groups as a win for state sovereignty.The Supreme Court last week ruled to protect the Federal Communications Commission’s Universal Service Fund, which subsidizes phone and internet services in rural areas and schools through a number of programs, including the E-Rate program. The fund collects billions in fees from telecommunications services and users each year to support rural broadband networks, internet for health care centers and low-income households.Taking a page from President Donald Trump, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott last week signed a bill establishing a $10 million store of cryptocurrencies that lawmakers said will position the state for economic prosperity. Two other states — Arizona and New Hampshire — have passed legislation to create their own crypto reserves, but Texas is the first to fund one with state dollars. One expert, though, told StateScoop the fund’s small size makes the move largely symbolic.New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday.For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts,Soundcloud or Spotify.
On this week’s Priorities Podcast, the StateScoop team breaks down what the recent cancellation of the Digital Equity Act will mean for states and communities that were expecting the funding to improve connectivity, access to devices and digital skills training. Keely Quinlan explains that a recent letter — signed by 156 people representing the 140 organizations that serve communities across 39 states — asks for it to be reinstated. And StateScoop reporter Sophia Fox-Sowell offers a preview of her reporting on food banks and their use of state data. Data is important for their efforts, she explains, but access is uneven.Top stories this week: State and local governments overseeing populations of at least 50,000 people have 10 months remaining to comply with new accessibility rules, to ensure that people with disabilities of all sorts can find information and use services. Code for America has developed an AI-powered tool that helps them get organized. So far it’s being used by Salt Lake City, Utah, and the State of Georgia.A new report from the emergency tech firm Carbyne paints a troubling picture of the nation’s 911 system, highlighting a growing wave of outages and cyberattacks, along with an outdated infrastructure that threatens public safety. It shows that nearly 90% of emergency communication centers across the U.S. experienced at least one system outage in the past year caused by aging equipment or cyberattacks.In a letter last week to Commerce Sec. Howard Lutnick and Adam Cassady, acting administrator of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, more than 140 state and local organizations asked for the Digital Equity Act to be reinstated. The letter claims the act’s cancellation could leave residents and some businesses behind on issues of economic opportunity, education, health care and online safety.New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday.For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts,Soundcloud or Spotify.
Since he was named Oklahoma’s chief information officer at the beginning of the year, Dan Cronin said, he’s been evaluating how the state’s government can use its data to better take care of its citizens.Cronin, whose background is in leading digital transformation and process improvement efforts across large companies, told StateScoop that one of the challenges he faced coming into the CIO role was how to pick up where other CIOs for Oklahoma have left off.He said this process has included evaluating the state’s digital government offerings, but also taking stock of state data and how it can maximize its usefulness for residents. This process, which Cronin calls “data enablement,” involves determining how to make data more accessible and usable for making decisions and setting policy. “We've got a large amount of data in the state of Oklahoma, and so we're looking at data enablement,” Cronin said. “As we think about digital government, we understand what our citizens' needs are, how do we couple those pieces together to provide a service to them that's fast and effective and efficient, that meets their needs 24/7, and so we're trying to get that in place.”Cronin said Oklahoma is also migrating some of its old systems to the cloud. All of this work, he said, is helping Oklahoma turn its eye to the future.“Most governments have a lot of legacy applications, and so we're evaluating that,” Cronin said. “We're doing a rationalization effort to understand what's required and what's needed going forward, and really it's about the future strategy. Where do we want to be in the next couple of years?”
Years into an effort to consolidate and modernize the New Jersey state government’s call centers, humans remain an important part of the process. On this week’s Priorities Podcast, Dave Cole, New Jersey chief’s innovation officer, and Joe DeLaTorre, product manager at the New Jersey Office of Innovation, say that even after improvements to the state’s digital presence, residents said they still want to talk to a live human when it comes to sensitive questions about taxes or unemployment benefits. The state’s “warm callback” algorithm predicts how many calls must be added to agents’ queues, reducing wait times and maximizing agent productivity. “A lot of these call centers are billed per minute, so whether you're talking to somebody or they're sitting on hold, your costs are the same,” Cole says. “The problem was people needed to have confidence in the system whether they were going to wait on the line or get a call back. They needed to know that somebody was actually going to follow through.”This week’s top stories:States are picking sides as competing election integrity efforts move ahead. New York and Virginia each recently joined competing election integrity efforts, highlighting the growing weight of politics in the nation’s elections process.“I run at the speed of business, not at the speed of government,” Teena Piccione, North Carolina’s newly confirmed chief information officer, told StateScoop in a recent interview. Piccione became CIO last January and was confirmed last May.As the Atlantic hurricane season begins, at least one emergency response expert is raising concerns that federal staffing cuts at the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration could hinder state and local government coordination and impede public warning systems during natural disasters.New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday.For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts,Soundcloud or Spotify.
For Stephen Dawe, the chief information officer for Opelika, Alabama, work life took an unexpected turn during the COVID-19 pandemic. He was tasked with building an IT system that could detect when detergent had been dumped into a city fountain, a recurring and costly prank kids had been pulling. Dawe says it took a lot of work, including recruiting the fire department to help his team set up an environment to create bubbles that could be photographed and used to train an artificial intelligence model. Today, the system works, he says, but even coming up with a possible solution wasn’t easy. “It was like, OK, what are we going to do to stop this? And it took probably about six months to come up with a reasonable answer to that question.”Top stories this week:Dozens of privacy advocates, along with groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, have attached their names to a new campaign to change the technological standard backing mobile driver’s licenses. The campaign, titled No Phone Home, is backed by a statement that calls for identity systems like mobile driver’s licenses to adopt a technological standard that is incapable of tracking or surveilling users.A group of more than 80 national and state school and library organizations have sent a letter to House members, urging them to vote against a measure that would repeal a Federal Communications rule allowing schools and libraries to spend E-Rate funds on wireless hotspot lending by schools and libraries.As California braces for what could be another blistering summer, Gov. Gavin Newsom has announced a new digital tool to help residents stay safe in extreme heat, along with a $32.4 million investment to support local efforts to combat the state’s rising temperatures.New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday.For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts,Soundcloud or Spotify.
Two Pennsylvania state employees explain on this week’s Priorities Podcast how they’re accelerating the time it takes to hire new employees. Miranda Martin, director of talent management, and Harrison MacRae, director of emerging technologies, said that through a combination of process changes and technology, they’ve reduced time-to-hire from 90 days to 58 days. “Three months is just too long to compete for talent, so we got to work right away and looked at our processes and procedures and worked really hard to reduce that time,” Martin said. The state also used its ChatGPT Enterprise licenses to ensure that agencies were properly aligning their hiring needs with job classifications.Top stories this week: Washington state’s technology bureau has partnered with the University of California, Berkeley to better understand how nonprofits in the state may be exposed to cybersecurity risks. Bill Kehoe, Washington’s chief information officer, said protecting nonprofits ensures that the public will get the best from their state and local governments.Kentucky’s acting chief information officer, Jim Barnhart, has been promoted to lead the commonwealth’s Office of Technology as its statewide CIO. The promotion comes after Barnhart spent nearly two decades serving as the state’s deputy CIO.And Maine lawmakers last week urged the Trump administration to unfreeze Digital Equity Act funds that they say are essential for the state’s future. Led by Republican Sen. Susan Collins, the group said that the rural state was depending on the $35 million it was set to receive to improve access to technology and skills training.New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday.For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Soundcloud or Spotify.
Code For America CEO Amanda Renteria joins StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast this week to offer a preview of the organization’s 2025 Summit, scheduled for May 29-30 in Washington, D.C. Renteria says the event will include talks on human-centered design, the latest uses of artificial intelligence in state and local government and how agencies are driving efficiency under a new U.S. president. “When did technology really change in government? It’s happening right now. The conversations that are going to happen at Summit are really putting those seeds in place for what technology in government is going to look like a generation from now.”Top stories this week: Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is asking governors to build sensitive compartmented information facilities and carry satellite phones when they travel. The recommendation baffled cybersecurity and national security experts contacted by StateScop.Business is booming for Civic Match, a service that launched last November, to connect outgoing federal employees with jobs in state and local government. The program announced it’s expanding by creating new partnerships and adding features after its early success.And a letter signed by a group of 40 state attorneys general on Friday asked Congress to reject a federal measure that would bar states from enforcing their own AI laws for the next 10 years.New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday.For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Soundcloud or Spotify.
This week’s Priorities Podcast is joined by Talita Elizeu, director of partnerships at Govern for America, and Cara Eckholm, the nonprofit’s research director. Elizeu and Eckholm say that a recent report published by the group provides valuable tips for states still early in their adoption of artificial intelligence policies. The report, which includes insights gathered from technology workers in at least 11 states, was itself guided in part by ChatGPT, which the authors used as part of their research into which states have created AI task forces or chief AI officers. “States have a common set of services they offer regardless of where they sit in our very diverse country, and I think there’s a lot states that are just starting on their AI strategy development today can learn from those states that are now two years into it,” Eckholm says.Top stories this week:Indiana state agencies on Tuesday warned residents to delete phony emails sent using official state government email addresses. Phishing emails emanating from numerous departments fraudulently informed recipients of unpaid toll fees and warned of financial penalties or vehicle registration holds if they refused to pay.In a message shared on Truth Social, President Donald Trump last week vowed to end the “unconstitutional” Digital Equity Act, which provides states with funding through a set of programs intended to close the digital divide. The act was enabled by the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021, under the watch of former President Joe Biden.Nevada lawmakers are considering legislation that would create a statewide security operations center, offering school districts, local governments and other public offices in the Silver State greater access to cybersecurity services and products.New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday.For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts,Soundcloud or Spotify.
The Long Island Sound sector of the U.S. Coast Guard last month announced Aqua Alert, a new pilot program to notify the public about maritime emergencies and provide real-time information to aid search and rescue efforts on the water. Joshua Smarzo, a Coast Guard lieutenant and command center sector chief, tells the Priorities Podcast the new program will help meet the challenges of managing search and rescue operations, especially during the summer boating season. Smarzo says it will be critical to test the system to avoid unnecessary alerts and ensure effective communication with 911 centers.Top stories this week:Gov. Greg Abbott on Saturday issued a disaster declaration for Marlin, Texas, in response to a failure of the city’s water treatment system.Maryland’s technology department on Monday announced it’s hired James Saunders, a former federal technology official, to serve as its new chief information security officer.Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs on Friday vetoed legislation that would have placed as much as 10% of the state’s funds in cryptocurrency. In a letter Friday to Warren Petersen, the Republican president of the Arizona Senate, Hobbs dismissed the idea.New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday.For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts,Soundcloud or Spotify.
On this week’s Priorities Podcast, Kern County, California, Deputy Fire Chief Zachary Wells and Ryan Lanclos, director of national government and public safety solutions at Esri, say ALERTCalifornia's new map layer strengthens emergency management and improves community safety. The wildfire-monitoring program from University of California San Diego provides instant access to live camera feeds across California, aiding in early fire detection and speeding up emergency response. Wells said the new map layer, which displays each camera’s location and image feed, is helping to shift firefighting from reactive to proactive. "The state of California is extremely large. Each county is big, and we only have so many firefighters, engines, hand crews, helicopters and air tankers. So adopting tools like ALERTCalifornia gives you that confidence that you have the resources strategically placed," Wells says.Top stories this week:Texas Gov. Greg Abbott last week signed legislation making his state the latest to launch an agency modeled after the federal Department of Government Efficiency. The new law created the Texas Regulatory Efficiency Office, which will receive $22.8 million in funding over the next five years.A new study from the University of Michigan found that law enforcement agencies are wary of using AI tools in policing. Of 1,800 local governments surveyed, 55% said they were unsure if automated assessments were as accurate as ones made by humans.The startup company behind Jobright.ai last week launched a new jobs website designed to help experienced public servants quickly find new positions. The website, GovJobs.fyi, includes more than 11,000 job listings across all levels of government, nonprofits and private companies.New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday.For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts,Soundcloud or Spotify.
Connecticut Attorney General William Tong recently recommended that the state’s lawmakers strengthen a statewide privacy law enacted two years ago, including by sending “warning letters” to violators and investigating consumer complaints. Kara Williams, law fellow at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, joins the Priorities Podcast to share why she thinks Connecticut’s law is weak in some respects, but that changes could create a “cascading effect” that leads other states to strengthen their data privacy laws or create new ones. "It’s encouraging to see that the AG advocates for this strong data minimization framework,” she says, “but it’s also great to see that some of these principles are included in [a proposed] update bill. … It's not really an option to sit and wait for the federal government to act on privacy.”Top stories this week:The National Telecommunications and Information Administration on Tuesday notified states that they’ve been granted a 90-day extension to submit their final spending proposals for the $42.45 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program.Like most large government organizations, Oklahoma has for years been using various AI tools and machine learning models to trawl endless network logs for abnormal activity. After several years of using network monitoring software from the British firm Darktrace in “human confirmation mode,” Oklahoma last year allowed the company’s “Cyber AI Analyst” product to make decisions on its own.Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro on Monday launched a WhatsApp channel, with an English and Spanish language option, aimed at providing residents with updates on state news, services and initiatives.New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday.For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Soundcloud or Spotify.
On this week’s Priorities Podcast, we’re joined by Mark Lindeman, the policy and strategy director of election nonprofit group Verified Voting, to discuss the final passage of a piece of legislation in Maryland that would require the state to conduct a post-election, risk-limiting audit process after each statewide election. The legislation also allows for the audits, which Lindeman’s organization says are highly effective methods to ensure correct election results and increase public trust in elections, to be done via an automated software after a statewide election. But Lindeman tells StateScoop that with software audits, “it's important to go beyond the software. It's important to get human eyes on the ballots and to have a check that doesn't depend on the software working correctly.”
Carlos Kizzee, the senior vice president of MS-ISAC strategy and plans at Center for Internet Security, joins the Priorities Podcast to share how the group’s recent funding cuts are affecting operations and how it might affect the group’s future. Kizzee says the claims that the MS-ISAC’s services are duplicated by those offered by federal agencies are “not necessarily true.” He also points to a recent poll of its membership, showing that 95% believed elimination of the group’s services would have a negative effect on their cybersecurity.This week’s top stories:California on Wednesday announced it had opened applications for $50 million in digital equity grants. This is one day after the Trump administration confirmed it had frozen funding for $2.7 billion in digital equity funding approved under the Biden administration. One broadband analyst told StateScoop the move is political and will slow down deployment. Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker on Tuesday unveiled a new data dashboard that displays progress on the city’s housing restoration and modification initiatives. The tool is designed to show the public how the mayor is doing on meeting her goal of restoring 30,000 city housing units.And New Jersey last week joined the many other states to have passed laws criminalizing the production or dissemination of deepfakes. Upon signing the new legislation, Gov. Phil Murphy said AI is a “powerful tool” that must be used responsibly.New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday.For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Soundcloud or Spotify.
On this week’s Priorities Podcast, we’re joined by Robert Fulk, chief information officer of the Indiana Secretary of State’s Office, to talk about the work behind “Captain Record,” the state’s newest generative artificial intelligence tool. It allows users to search more than 100 years’ worth of state documents, and by intelligently indexing over 20 million unstructured records, including some that were handwritten, Captain Record has transformed the latent documents into a treasure trove of data. This week’s top stories:A new report from Alabama's AI task force found that generative artificial intelligence is being used by nearly a quarter of state agencies and for a variety of use cases, including text generation, language translation, software code development and complex problem-solving.The Florida Senate is considering a bill that would — for at least the fifth time in recent years — yet again reorganize the state’s technology bureau. And despite the enormity of the state’s IT problems and the hurdles that must be overcome to fix the “absolute unmitigated tire fire,” some current and former state officials, including Former Florida Chief Information Officer Jamie Grant, think this one might stick.Indiana Gov. Mike Braun on Friday announced that Warren Lenard, a private sector tech executive, will take over as the state’s new chief information officer and director of Indiana’s Office of Technology. He fills the vacancy left by Tracy Barnes, who stepped down in January. Scoop News Group has announced the winners of the 2025 StateScoop 50 Awards! This year’s awards recognize leaders and projects from 21 states, along with executives from 13 companies. See who won.New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday.For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts,Soundcloud or Spotify.
On this week’s Priorities Podcast, Ohio State Police Captain Justin Cromer shares how airborne microwave downlink technology is helping law enforcement gain better intelligence during incidents.This week’s top stories:Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro has shared preliminary results from the state’s ChatGPT pilot program, noting that the generative artificial intelligence tool was a “job enhancer” for most employees, saving each worker an average of eight hours per week.After months of technical issues at Louisiana’s Office of Motor Vehicles caused by “outdated software,” Gov. Jeff Landry has signed an executive order declaring a state of emergency, and ordering modernization of the state’s vehicle licensing, titling and registration system.Scoop News Group has announced the winners of the 2025 StateScoop 50 Awards! This year’s awards recognize leaders and projects from 21 states, along with executives from 13 companies. See who won.New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday.For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts,Soundcloud or Spotify.
Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, is convening experts to develop interventions that could decrease the number of motor vehicle deaths and address disparities in where collisions occur. Dr. Ben Weston, chief health policy adviser for Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, joins the Priorities Podcast to explain how a recent public safety project is pitting data against a fatal challenge. After publishing a data dashboard last year, a county task force is now looking at trends and recruiting the help of expert statisticians, biomechanical engineers and academics who can develop ways to make streets safer. “[We’re] saying, why is this the most fatal intersection in Milwaukee County, and what can we do about it?” Weston says.This week’s top stories:Current and former government officials told StateScoop they’re concerned by cuts at two information sharing organizations widely used by state and local governments to protect IT and election systems from cyberattacks.Two cybersecurity experts are questioning whether officials in Mission, Texas, were too hasty when they declared a state of emergency this month in response to a recent cyberattack.Jim Bryson, commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Finance and Administration, has announced that Kristin Darby, a former health care and finance executive, will be the state’s new chief information officer.New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday.For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts,Soundcloud or Spotify.
It’s been two years since New York City Chief Privacy Officer Michael Fitzpatrick joined the Priorities Podcast to discuss how an updated citywide privacy policy could foster better collaboration between cybersecurity and data privacy teams. This week, Fitzpatrick returns to share what has happened in the two years since. He explains how artificial intelligence fits into the relationship between cybersecurity and privacy and how the city’s Office of Technology and Innovation, in the three years since its inception, has fought workforce shortages common across the public sector.This week’s top stories:A spokesperson from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency confirmed on Tuesday that it removed support from the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center. In a statement shared with StateScoop, the spokesperson said the action will save taxpayers $10 million annually. State and local technology officials said the MS-ISAC, which was created in 2004, has been a valuable resource as they’ve sought to protect their networks from a growing barrage of cyberattacks.Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick last week announced that his department is removing the “pointless requirements” inserted by former President Joe Biden into a major broadband program that is set to deliver high-speed internet to millions of Americans. Lutnick said the $42.45 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program had been hampered by “woke mandates.”At the GitHub headquarters in San Francisco last week, software developers gathered for a hackathon, where they used their coding skills to help bring information and services to survivors of the recent Los Angeles wildfires.New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday.For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts,Soundcloud or Spotify.
Recent research by the nonprofit U.S. Digital Response and the National Association of State Chief Information Officers examined what vendors don’t like about states’ request for proposal documents. The work was dead simple, as was the solution they proposed: Just put a cover sheet on your RFPs. Waldo Jaquith, a government delivery manager with USDR, joins StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast to explain the findings and why he thinks this one simple change could not only save vendors time, but improve the quality of responses that states get when they’re making purchases.This week’s top stories:In a letter addressed to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Norm last week, 21 Republican secretaries of state asked for improvements to her department’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, program, so they can more easily detect noncitizens who are voting in elections.According to a recent report published by the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center, state and local governments need to adopt a more “whole-of-state” approach to cybersecurity, involving all levels of government in policy and strategic planning in order to better protect critical infrastructure.In recognition of the growing threats posed by artificial intelligence, a new security advisory committee in Arizona has published its first recommendations, including one to create an AI elections lab that can fine tune election-specific AI models for use by election offices. New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday.For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, ,Soundcloud or Spotify.
On this week’s Priorities Podcast, a director at the Advanced Communications Law & Policy Institute at New York Law School shares ways the administration of President Donald Trump can accelerate funding to states through the $42.45 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program. Michael Santorelli says BEAD can be made more effective by rolling back unnecessary requirements, addressing rate regulation and providing clearer guidance on satellite services like Starlink. But he says his group’s main recommendation is to get shovels in the ground faster. “Had Biden been re-elected, and the NTIA regime had stayed the same, they were on a timeline for not getting shovels in the ground in some states until like later next year,” he says. “And so anything that can close that or shorten that period of time and start getting projects going soon in the spring, certainly, hopefully, I think would be easy to claim a success then.”This week’s top stories:Amid delays by the federal government to release public health data like counts on avian influenza cases, state governments are continuing to build up their own public health reporting tools, including a new global report developed by the New York State Department of Health.The National Association of Secretaries of State has sent a letter to U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, noting a preference that she retain certain services used by state and local election officials to protect the nation’s critical elections infrastructure. The request arrives as the former South Dakota governor evaluates further cuts to her department and its Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.Voting is open for the 2025 StateScoop50 Awards. Cast your votes for nominees being recognized for their achievements and contributions to the state government technology community.New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday.For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts,Soundcloud or Spotify.
John Cohen, executive director of the countering hybrid threats program at the Center for Internet Security, says state and local law enforcement agencies can better work together to address evolving, multi-dimensional threats. Cohen tells StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast that the cybersecurity, physical and information operations by foreign and domestic threat actors present in the 2024 election did not derail the elections process, thanks to thorough preparation by elections officials. At CIS, he says, that preparation included the launch of ThreatWA, an intelligence subscription service that bridges the gap between state and local law enforcement agencies. Cohen also says state and local governments should be vigilant about DeepSeek, the Chinese-owned artificial intelligence app that many states are working to ban. New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday.For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts,Soundcloud or Spotify.
This week, the Priorities Podcast is joined by Amanda Renteria, CEO of the civic tech nonprofit Code for America, and Robert Gordon, a former Joe Biden White House adviser who spent the past three decades working across state, local and federal government. Both Renteria and Gordon, who’ve centered their careers on making government function more efficiently and effectively, share why they think the first three weeks of the Trump administration have been disruptive and potentially damaging for state and local governments, but that the administration’s posture may also present an opportunity. “I have a feeling government is going to look very different in a year from now,” Renteria says.This week’s top stories:Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds this week signed an executive order creating a Department of Government Efficiency task force. It will include 15-20 private-industry business leaders tasked with finding ways to maximize the use of taxpayer funds.California Gov. Gavin Newsom has ordered updates to the state’s fire maps, which were most recently updated last April. The changes mandate a more conservative approach to managing natural vegetation in some of the state’s most fire-prone regions.The Beeck Center for Social Innovation and Impact at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., has published a new tracker for state chief data officers. Ali Benson, director of the Beeck Center’s Data Labs initiative, told me the tool lends increased visibility to an increasingly important role.New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday.For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Soundcloud or Spotify.
After more than one year on the job, New York State Chief Information Officer Dru Rai says he’s concerned about several emerging IT trends, including shared services, procurement and the potential high cost of artificial intelligence. On StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast, Rai also says it’s important for state government technology officials to consider their processes in tandem with their IT consolidation efforts. “Consolidation does not result in cost saving if you don't do what needs to be done. For example, did you find common applications?” he says. “On procurement side, for example, when you buy things, did we ever create enterprise agreement?"New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday.For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts,Soundcloud or Spotify.
On this week’s Priorities Podcast, Maryland Chief Technology Officer Eric Bathras explains his role in Maryland’s Digital Infrastructure Group, which Gov. Wes Moore created this month with an executive order. Bathras says he and Maryland Chief Information Officer Katie Savage presented the idea of the group to the state’s leadership last year. He says it was born from a need to get more state agencies involved in planning broadband expansion. Ahead of incoming federal broadband grant dollars, Bathras says DIG provides the best opportunity for collaboration across the state’s agencies to maximize resources. “We have this unique opportunity to be able to blend our fiber and our wireless assets together and really move the state forward in terms of broadband expansion across the state in the coming years,” he says.New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday.For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Soundcloud or Spotify.
On this week’s Priorities Podcast, Madeliene Dwyer, a policy analyst for the nonprofit Center for Democracy and Technology, breaks down the executive orders on artificial intelligence released by 13 states and Washington D.C. Dwyer says that although governors are generally being thoughtful about how they approach AI, some states are taking greater care to avoid “unintended consequences.” She points to potential pitfalls and best practices, such as Washington state’s explicit mention of civil rights in its order.New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday.For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts,Soundcloud or Spotify.
On the latest episode of StateScoop's Priorities Podcast, Duncan McKay, a corporal with the Kirkland, Washington, Police Department says his department is prioritizing patrol car safety and maintenance through the use of electronic inspection reporting. By using digital tags on each vehicle, Duncan says, the system enables real-time access to inspection data, allowing the department to address potential vehicle safety issues and ensure that critical emergency equipment is always available. By transitioning from paper logs to digital inspections, he says the department can perform pre-shift inspections in just minutes. By ensuring vehicles and equipment are accounted for, Duncan says, officers stay longer in communities where they're needed. "Not only do we want to make sure that our vehicles are in proper working order, obviously we need to get to wherever we're going, but we need to get there safely," he says.New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday.For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud or Spotify.
Massachusetts Chief Information Officer Jason Snyder joins the latest episode of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast to break down a new program designed to spur innovative AI solutions in the state. Snyder says the project, which started last January, connects university students with difficult challenges facing state agencies. But he says not only has the program yielded an unexpected number of productive solutions to government problems, but it’s also impressed officials into hiring eight of the first participants. “The students developed an AI that just in using human language: ‘I want to build a bridge.’ And it would come back and list all the policy associated with it and provide the actual links to that policy and references so they could click on it and access it,” Snyder says on the podcast. “The commissioner was blown away and actually hired the two students that worked on that project.”New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday.For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts,Soundcloud or Spotify.
After the devastating Hurricane Helene struck North Carolina last September, Gary Thompson, the state’s deputy hazard mitigation officer, says on StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast that the state hopes to make its stream gauges and flood warning system more resilient before next year’s storm season. Thompson says North Carolina plans to upgrade those critical communication systems with ultrasonic radar sensors and satellites so they can continue to predict flood zones, issue evacuation warnings and deliver critical information to residents about incoming storms. “One of the advantages is all the equipment is out of the water, so if there's a lot of rain, a lot of velocity, if we have the equipment high enough and stable enough for it to survive during that event,” Thompson says. Joining him is Taylor Kerby, founder of Triangle UAS, an equipment vendor that helped design North Carolina’s modern stream gauges, and Pattiy Torno, a longtime resident of Asheville, North Carolina, which was hit particularly hard by Hurricane Helene.New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday.For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts,Soundcloud or Spotify.
This year’s presidential election was the most secure on record, according to John Cohen, executive director of a program for countering hybrid threats at the nonprofit Center for Internet Security. On StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast, Cohen explains that despite receiving more than 100 bomb threats, years of preparation for Election Day 2024 enabled local election officials and law enforcement to continue voting operations with minimal disruption. “We looked at potential for physical threats, cyber threats, we looked at efforts to undermine confidence in the election process or confuse voters by foreign intelligence services and non-state threat actors. And then we began looking at potential for disruptive events, the use of swatting, bomb threats, white powder envelope, suspicious devices that would be used to disrupt voting and vote tabulation,” he says. Joining him is Marci Andino, senior director of CIS’s Election Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center, who says that the threats election officials saw on Nov. 5 were precisely what they had been preparing for.New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday.For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts,Soundcloud or Spotify.
As Code for America and Georgetown University’s Beeck Center for Social Impact and Innovation kick off their second annual FormFest on Wednesday, StateScoop checks in with Amanda Renteria, Code for America’s chief executive, to hear about this year’s event will be different. Renteria says the goal this year is to drive government agencies to action, making their forms digital and accessible. “How do we make this more actionable, so it’s not just a discussion but we’re really taking through different solutions from different governments, how they are solving some of these problems, how they are making it better for people,” she tells StateScoop’s Sophia Fox-Sowell. She points to a federal study that, several years ago, found that only 2% of federal forms had been digitized. She says the work states are doing now to improve their online services, though, are cutting down on the billions of hours Americans spend filling their information into forms.New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday.For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts,Soundcloud or Spotify.
On this week's Priorities Podcast, a researcher from the International Association of Privacy Professionals says that the past year has brought "novel innovations" in state privacy laws as each state attempts to solve the growing challenges of protecting personal information collected by businesses and other organizations. Muge Fazlioglu, a principal researcher for privacy law and policy at the association, tells StateScoop that many states are exhibiting new "digressions" from the state privacy law templates of years past. As instances of innovations in law, she points to Minnesota's provisions designed to protect people from profiling, Rhode Island's requirement that businesses disclose lists of specific third-parties companies share data with and Maryland's data minimization framework. Fazlioglu says many experts are now looking ahead to 2025, when several new state data privacy laws will come into effect, including in Delaware, Iowa, Maryland, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey and Tennessee. This fact alone will make 2025 “a landmark year” for data privacy, she says.New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday.For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts,Soundcloud or Spotify.
On the latest episode of StateScoop’s Priorities podcast, Maryland’s Senior Director of State Cybersecurity Lance Cleghorn talks about the state’s first bug bounty program, which saw white-hat hackers discovering over 40 vulnerabilities on the state’s websites. Cleghorn says the program was inspired by a similar program called “Hack the Pentagon,” that he and Maryland’s chief information officer, Katie Savage, ran when they worked together at the Department of Defense’s Defense Digital Service — which is part of the reason Cleghorn says he followed Savage to Maryland’s Department of Information Technology. Cleghorn also shares his perspective about why bug bounty programs are so successful as opposed to other methods of finding cybersecurity vulnerabilities, and offers insight into the future of bug bounty programs in the state.
On the latest episode of StateScoop’s Priorities podcast, Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union, talks about a new report he authored for the organization that contains legislative recommendations for states rolling out digital ID programs. Since the release of the ACLU’s last report on the programs in 2021, several states have added digital ID capabilities, but Stanley says the current landscape for digital IDs is immature. However, he talks about ways for state legislators to create a digital ID system that protects privacy and equity, which includes technical recommendations as well as policies about how law enforcement can access the IDs.
One year after publishing an artificial intelligence “action plan” last October, an official from New York City’s Office of Technology & Innovation says work is progressing ahead of schedule. Alex Foard, the office’s executive director of research and collaboration, says 30 of 37 actions were completed, one more than than the office had planned for in the initiative’s first year. Foard said the city’s AI work has been focused on translating policy actions into “pragmatic things” that agencies can use to support their work. The next year, Foard says, will include a heavier emphasis on public engagement and external partnerships. “The partnership emphasis really is one of the most important pieces out of the action plan because it's an acknowledgement that we as a city have a lot of internal expertise related to AI but we're also in New York City where we have access to any number of high-end academic institutions, a very health tech industry and all of these groups are rich with their own expertise and their own guidance that we can use to help inform our own policy.”New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday.For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Soundcloud or Spotify.
On the latest episode of StateScoop’s Priorities podcast, Samuel Alva, a technical adviser with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, explains the “huge” threat facing the nation’s tens of thousands of water utilities, and what they can do to protect themselves. “Water is a single point of failure. So that's why it has been under attack,” he says. CISA is among the organizations assisting the water sector, including by providing cybersecurity assessments of their operational technologies. Alva says it’s a “daunting” task helping thousands of utility operators become trained on a technical topic that hasn’t traditionally been in their wheelhouse. But a promising cybersecurity training program in Kansas is gaining attention from other states, including California, Maryland and Texas.New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday.For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Soundcloud or Spotify.
During his four-and-a-half years as South Dakota’s chief information officer, Jeff Clines says he watched as the neighboring Wyoming churned through several of its own CIOs. Now roughly one month into the CIO role in Wyoming, Clines says one of his top priorities is to bring stability to the state’s IT. “[I’ve been] trying to understand why there was so much turnover in the leadership in Wyoming. What was the impact there? … One of [the staff’s] big desires for the new CIO is stability in the consistency of vision and implementation of that vision.”New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday.For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Soundcloud or Spotify.
Data ‘a strategic asset’ for state government, says CIOSouth Dakota Chief Information Officer Madhu Gottumukkala says on StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast that his state’s data governance efforts aren’t only about protecting against threatsto cybersecurity and data privacy, but that he’s also striving to transform the state’s data into a “strategic asset.” Gottumukkala says building the “foundation” of data governance may take about a year, but that that effort, along with updating old IT systems, will prepare the state to use artificial intelligence in ways that make government more “responsive and efficient.” He says early AI projects will involve boosting employee productivity, and that the state will eventually seek to integrate AI into more of its applications.New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday.For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Soundcloud or Spotify.
Utah Chief Information Officer Alan Fuller says on StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast that meeting with agencies to develop IT strategic plans specific to their needs has been an illuminating project that’s helping him better understand their challenges. “Just having the conversations has been really useful. And in some cases, you know, we weren't fully in alignment, or we didn't realize exactly where their pain points were,” Fuller says. Among Utah’s top projects in 2024 are a new design system, making improvements to customer experience, a new identity and access management platform and a new citizen services portal.StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Wednesday.If you want to hear more of the latest across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Soundcloud and Spotify.
Researchers from the Washington nonprofit Center for Democracy & Technology join this week’s Priorities Podcast to break down a recent report showing the many ways that large language models struggle to parse complex rules about voting with disabilities. Tim Harper, senior policy analyst who leads the center’s elections and democracy work, and Ariana Aboulafia, an attorney who leads its disability rights in technology policy work, review the many shortcomings of chatbots attempting to present information about voting. According to the report, “[S]ome factual errors were so severe that the entire answer was incorrect and could interfere with a voter’s ability to cast their ballot.”StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Wednesday.If you want to hear more of the latest across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Soundcloud and Spotify.
Connecticut Chief Information Security Officer Gene Meltser became the state’s top information security official last month. He says on StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast that although he’s joining a mature cybersecurity organization, he’s starting with the fundamentals. “I’m planning on starting with fundamentals, essentially ensuring that we’re taking care of the core components of security, things like system hygiene, for example, things like patching, hardening and asset management,” he says. Election security and training for employees are also on his agenda, though he’s mindful of cybersecurity’s potential to impede work. “We’re not here to impose a regime of traffic lights where they cannot proceed to do their jobs,” he says.StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Wednesday.If you want to hear more of the latest across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Soundcloud and Spotify.
After an announcement last month that Maryland is expanding its digital services efforts with five new hires, the state’s digital experience officer joins StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast to share what that expansion looks like. Marcy Jacobs, who oversees the state’s Office of Digital Experience, says her team is taking a targeted approach. “I think that is kind of a big shift from traditional kind of project management,” she says. “Is it on time and on budget to product management? Are we achieving the outcomes for the people that we are trying to serve? And can we do that in small, agile ways?”StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Wednesday.If you want to hear more of the latest across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Soundcloud and Spotify.
On this week's Priorities Podcast, New Jersey Chief Innovation Officer Dave Cole shares the progress of his Office of Innovation. He says his office is expanding, with plans to add 20 additional staff members, to bolster projects like a recent streamlining of the state's unemployment insurance application. He says generative artificial intelligence sometimes aids the office's work, which is ramping up ahead of a deadline to spend federal funding for IT projects after the COVID-19 pandemic.StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Wednesday.If you want to hear more of the latest across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Soundcloud and Spotify.
A new law in Missouri went into effect Wednesday, granting the state auditor more authority to audit local governments. The state’s current auditor, Scott Fitzpatrick, joins this week’s Priorities Podcast to explain how the changes will allow his office to conduct audits without overly burdening whistleblowers. Among the provisions in the new law are controversial protections for whistleblowers, sealing certain records from being released to protect their identities.StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Wednesday.If you want to hear more of the latest across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Soundcloud and Spotify.
After receiving a cease-and-desist order this month, the office of Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger now has just days to decommission a web page that allows users to cancel voter registrations. Julie Houk, managing counsel for election protection with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights under Law, says on StateScoop’s Priorities podcast the form possibly violates legal and ethical boundaries. The form gained media attention immediately after launch when cybersecurity analysts noticed several flaws, including an early flaw that allowed users to view the personal information of strangers, allowing them to cancel their voter registrations.StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Wednesday.If you want to hear more of the latest across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Soundcloud and Spotify.
Automation bias, a tendency to favor the output of computer algorithms over other factors, is among the top concerns of Washington state’s chief privacy officer as the state establishes its policies for generative artificial intelligence. On this week’s Priorities Podcast, Washington state Chief Privacy Officer Katy Ruckle says she’s worried people could become too comfortable with generative AI. “I have a concern or fear that once we as a workforce get used to using these types of tools and they become more and more reliable in terms of their outputs that we might defer to them and question less about the results,” she says. Washington state officials are currently on deadline to develop numerous policies pertaining to generative AI after Gov. Jay Inslee’s executive order last January.StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Wednesday.If you want to hear more of the latest across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Soundcloud and Spotify.
As California firefighters continue to douse the Park Fire, one of the largest in the state's history, a deputy chief with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection joins the Priorities podcast to share how new technologies are aiding those efforts. Marcus Hernandez, who leads the Office of Wildfire Technology Research and Development, says a lot has changed over the past year, including testing technology that gives chiefs a better view of where personnel are located during incidents.StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Wednesday.If you want to hear more of the latest across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Soundcloud and Spotify.
On this week’s Priorities Podcast, Los Angeles Chief Information Officer Ted Ross shares the results of his recent trip to Armenia. As part of a democracy forum hosted by the U.S. State Department, Ross traveled to the capital city of Yerevan, where he met with government leaders to discuss how digital services can boost the public’s trust in government and help bolster the principles of democracy. “I think in a lot of governments, they think of digital and government as a completely separate conversation. So we found ourselves talking a lot about that: This isn’t just transacting, this is about a customer experience,” Ross says.Also this week, Christine Halvorsen, Okta's public sector chief technology officer and a former FBI official, joins Okta principal solutions engineer Pam Vanmeter and Scoop News Group's Wyatt Kash in a discussion on how modern customer identity and access management, or CIAM, platforms help state and local agencies lower costs and improve customer experience and security.This episode is sponsored by Okta.StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Wednesday.If you want to hear more of the latest across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Soundcloud, and Spotify.
On this week's Priorities Podcast, North Dakota Chief Information Officer Gregory Hoffman says that in his first weeks in the role, he's centering his attention on a whole-of-state approach to cybersecurity and exploring how generative artificial intelligence can further the state's mission. Later in the episode, Zach Boyd, director of the Utah Office of Artificial Intelligence Policy, shares his plans for the office, which include making proposals to the state legislature as Utah prepares itself, he says, for the "AI revolution."Top stories:Many state, city government services disrupted by CrowdStrike outage Ransomware forces closure of Los Angeles County courthousesNew FCC rules bring deadlines for providers’ next-generation 911 upgradesStateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Wednesday. Listen more here.If you want to hear more of the latest across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Soundcloud, and Spotify.
As state and local governments race to incorporate generative AI into their operations, so too are political campaigns using the technology in their election materials. Election administrators are readying themselves for the technology's misuse in spreading misinformation and disrupting the democratic process. On this week's Priorities Podcast, Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs and Mekela Panditharatne, a lawyer with the Brennan Center for Justice's Democracy Program, address the mounting AI challenge. As the first American presidential election year in the generative AI era, 2024 will serve as a test case for the spread of AI-generated election disinformation and the ability of states to regulate it.StateScoop’s Priorities podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here.If you want to hear more of the latest across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Soundcloud, and Spotify.
On this week’s Priorities Podcast, Mississippi Chief Information Officer Craig Orgeron says it was the challenge of government service that brought him back into the fold after retiring from the role four years ago. Changes brought by the COVID-19 pandemic and the popularization of generative artificial intelligence have transformed government over the past four years, creating a new set of challenges for Orgeron, who’d already spent a decade in the CIO role in Mississippi before his return. “The first thought that kept recurring was the enormity of the challenge, was the first real thought, of how different the world is,” Orgeron says when asked why he returned to the role. “I think there’s sort of a post-COVID reality, I think there’s certainly a generative AI reality and there’s beyond certain a cloud reality. And I think how public sector organizations think about and through that is transformational.”StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here.If you want to hear more of the latest across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Soundcloud, and Spotify.
Data breaches and fraud are on the rise, with synthetic identity fraud representing the biggest fraud trend in 2024. On this week’s Priorities podcast, Jeffrey Huth, a senior vice president at TransUnion, breaks down a recent report from the credit bureau outlining several rising threats facing the public sector. Huth says artificial intelligence is further complicating matters, and that it “will become much easier and faster to create completely realistic-looking, fabricated identities, whether it’s building a financial profile, [or] a digital footprint.”StateScoop’s Priorities podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here.If you want to hear more of the latest across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Soundcloud, and Spotify.
On this week's Priorities podcast, the soon-to-be chief technology officer of Seattle, Rob Lloyd, reflects on his time as the deputy city manager of San Jose, California. As Lloyd looks ahead to his new role in Seattle starting June 24, he shares with StateScoop what attracted him to the job in the Pacific Northwest, including Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell's Seattle One Plan, a comprehensive plan that lays out the next 20 years of community growth, sustainability and equity. Lloyd says assisting in the execution of this plan‚ which features an emphasis on digital services, was a major attraction. Lloyd also discusses challenges he faced in San Jose, including during the COVID-19 pandemic. "The fact that we were able to save lives and save livelihoods — just that was two-and-a-half years of such intensity," Lloyd says.StateScoop’s Priorities podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here.If you want to hear more of the latest across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Soundcloud, and Spotify.
On this week's Priorities podcast, Code for America Chief Executive Officer Amanda Renteria explains how a recent chatbot project informed the creation of the organization's new AI Studio, which involves in-person and virtual workshops to explore the importance of testing and scaling AI tools. Code for America last year released an AI-powered chatbot for GetCalFresh, a digital enrollment assistant for California’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. While the chatbot was developed to respond to simple questions and direct users to relevant resources, Renteria says the process helped to inform goals and objectives of the new AI Studio. She also discusses the main takeaways of the Code For America Summit at the end of May, such as the primacy of AI for improving government services.11:26StateScoop’s Priorities podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here.If you want to hear more of the latest across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Soundcloud, and Spotify.
Alongside concerns of cyberattacks and a growing interest in generative artificial intelligence, efforts to improve digital services are retaining status in the offices of state chief information officers. On this week's Priorities podcast, Ohio CIO Katrina Flory and New Hampshire CIO Denis Goulet share how their digital services efforts are maturing in 2024. Speaking last spring from the National Association of State Chief Information Officers midyear conference in National Harbor, Maryland, Flory says the state’s InnovateOhio platform is continually improving how it connects residents to government services, while providing agencies with better data. Goulet shares how New Hampshire’s multiyear effort to retool its online services started with evangelizing state agencies that were initially reluctant to participate.
Tracey Haslam, CEO of the recycler Full Circle Electronics, joins StateScoop’s Priorities podcast to discuss how her company helps government agencies dispose of e-waste responsibly and comply with data-destruction standards and other state policies. Haslam says e-waste can become a threat to the environment and human health if not properly treated. For government agencies, which dispose of millions of devices each year as they upgrade to modern systems, managing e-waste is a significant task.StateScoop’s Priorities podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here.If you want to hear more of the latest across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Soundcloud, and Spotify.
John Blythe, director of cyber psychology at the English software company Immersive Labs, joins this week’s Priorities podcast to share the results of a recent study that revealed cybersecurity vulnerabilities in generative AI chatbots and why he believes that many cybersecurity training programs aren’t as effective as they could be. Blythe says one frequent mistake in cyber training programs is that their advice is too generic. Instead, he recommends “meeting people where they’re at” and framing training around personal issues they care about. “In cybersecurity, we focus on understanding what prevents people from engaging in cybersecurity best practices and how we can design interventions and training to tackle those psychological barriers,” Blythe says.StateScoop’s Priorities podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here.If you want to hear more of the latest across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Soundcloud, and Spotify.
State CIOs are continuing their cautious embrace of generative artificial intelligence, along with all the opportunities and challenges it brings to government operations. On this week's Priorities podcast, two state chief information officers share updates on their latest efforts to improve their IT organizations, speaking from the midyear conference in National Harbor, Maryland, early this month, hosted by the National Association of State Chief Information Officers. Indiana CIO Tracy Barnes shares how he’s thinking about AI, cybersecurity and policy improvements. Later, Texas CIO Amanda Crawford shares how data literacy is a key part of her state's embrace of generative AI.
John Toney, Vermont's new chief information security officer, starts his day with threat intelligence briefs — reading, watching or listening to the latest cybersecurity news.Toney, a former Secret Service special agent, joined Vermont's Agency of Digital Services last month, at a time when more sophisticated cyberattacks against state and local governments across the United States are on the rise, especially from foreign cybercriminals targeting critical infrastructure in rural communities, such as water facilities.This week, Toney spoke with StateScoop reporter Sophia Fox-Sowell about some of the projects he's working on, including compliance and procurement. He also emphasized the importance of staying up to date with threat intelligence news and the need for proactive measures to address these growing cyber threats, including identifying vulnerabilities with regular scans, improving security protocols, and reducing operational redundancies through automation.
On this week's Priorities Podcast, we're joined by Rhode Island Gov. Dan McKee and former Congressman Jim Langevin to discuss the state's new artificial intelligence task force, which was created by an executive order signed in March and chaired by Langevin. "There's two sides of this coin — there is a really positive side of the AI, and there's a potentially damaging side of AI. So we have to get ahead of it on security reasons," McKee says. The governor also discusses the traits he hopes the state's new chief data officer will have, a role that was also created by the executive order, and what he hopes the new task force will accomplish in the next six months.
On this week’s Priorities podcast, StateScoop’s editorial staff share what they’ve learned in recent weeks while reporting on data privacy, broadband and other state government IT news. A South Carolina Senate finance subcommittee issued a report claiming that the state’s treasurer, Curtis Loftis, risked a cyberattack by claiming that he would post detailed information about the state’s finances online. StateScoop’s Skylar Rispens joins to break down that story and the current status of federal broadband funding. Several new generative AI laws activate in Utah next week, including one closing a loophole for using AI to commit crimes. StateScoop’s Keely Quinlan joins to review the American Privacy Rights Act and a new report from the Open Technology Institute critiquing states’ online age verification laws.
Earlier this month, the North Carolina 911 Board, a division of the N.C. Department of Information Technology, announced the state has completed a yearslong effort to modernize its aging emergency response system to a next-generation 911 platform.Next-generation 911 provides a faster, more resilient system that allows digital information — including voice, photos, videos and text messages — to flow from the public to first responders.North Carolina’s project to upgrade to next-generation 911 started nearly a decade ago, when a proof of concept in 2015 outlined the transition away from the state’s decades-old copper-wire system. Pokey Harris, executive director of the North Carolina 911 Board spoke to StateScoop about how North Carolina’s 124 emergency call centers that receive funding from the state board are now part of the state’s next-generation 911 network.
On this week’s Priorities podcast, Christia Hallquist, director of the Vermont Community Broadband Board, and Heryn Herzog, the board’s communications and outreach manager, talk about the creation of the documentary “Connected: Vermont’s Grassroots Effort for Rural Broadband.” The documentary, which was released in March, explores the parallels between Vermont’s grassroot-effort to connect homes with electricity decades ago and how that spirit is still alive and well today when it comes to making fiber optic internet available to all Vermonters. Throughout the documentary, viewers hear from a wide range of residents who all rely on an internet connection at home to grow their businesses, access healthcare and education.
On this week’s Priorities podcast, Debbie Cox Bultan, chief executive of NewDeal, a nonprofit that works with government officials on democratic policies, joins us to discuss how state legislators and election officials are combatting AI-generated deepfakes. As states across the country race to pass legislation that targets the production of AI-generated deepfakes in an effort to curb deceptive information practices ahead of the 2024 presidential election, Bultan says tabletop exercises and public information campaigns can also help. New Deal recently released a report that advises election officials on how to mitigate disinformation campaigns in their states. StateScoop’s Priorities podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here.If you want to hear more of the latest across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Soundcloud, and Spotify.
On this week's Priorities podcast, two experts from the International Association of Privacy Professionals join us to discuss what's coming down the pipeline this year in state legislatures regarding data privacy, as 17 states are currently considering at least one privacy bill in committee. Cobun Zweifel-Keegan, the managing director of IAPP, and Andrew Folks, IAPP's Westin Research Fellow, break down this slew of legislation, and what consumers and privacy practitioners can expect as new laws take effect in the coming weeks and months. They also discuss how the three states with comprehensive privacy laws going into effect this year — Montana, Oregon and Texas — have been preparing for the new data regulations. Plus, the pair talk about Washington’s landmark My Health My Data Act, which is coming online this month and will cement the state as the first in the nation to offer broad protections for consumer health data. And lastly, the experts tell StateScoop about how upcoming privacy legislation is interacting with state level efforts to govern artificial intelligence usage.
On this week's Priorities podcast, four state chief information security officers say generative AI presents an opportunity for states to embrace an emerging technology and "really do things right."During a panel discussion at StateScoop's Cybersecurity Modernization Summit this week, Vitaliy Panych, the CISO of California, says he's trying to overlay security controls into the entire process of how the state is embracing generative AI. California Gov. Gavin Newsom released a report on how the state will approach the technology last year.Panych was joined on the panel by West Virginia CISO Danielle Cox, Maryland CISO Greg Rogers and Pennsylvania CISO James Sipe.
On this week's Priorities podcast, New Jersey's Chief Innovation Officer says that digital services are a top focus for him as he steps into the role. Dave Cole, who took the helm of the state's innovation team in January, says he's also looking at how the state can incorporate generative artificial intelligence into processes to save employees time. Cole started at the state in 2020 as an innovation fellow, and has also ran for public office, worked for software company Mapbox and served in the White House under President Barack Obama.
On this week’s Priorities podcast, two IT leaders from Normal, Illinois, say the future of the “smart cities” movement may be in small cities like theirs. Vasu Gadhiraju, the CIO of Normal, Illinois — a town in central Illinois with 54,000 residents — says that while the phrase “smart cities” means different things to different communities, it indicates an attempt to embrace change and innovation to solve government challenges in her city. Gadhiraju, along with project and resource manager Sara Schelinksi, outline how the city approaches their smart city and data efforts, and how they’re aiming for growth in the future.StateScoop’s Priorities podcast is available every Thursday. If you want to hear more of the latest across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Soundcloud, and Spotify.
On this week's Priorities podcast, Washington state Chief Information Officer Bill Kehoe says he thinks the state's recent executive order could help agencies better understand the many implications AI has for their operations.https://statescoop.com/washington-governor-signs-ai-order-plotting-yearlong-policy-path/StateScoop’s Priorities podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here.prioritiespodcast.com
On this week's Priorities podcast, Alaska’s Chief Information Officer Bill Smith talks about the challenges and successes of his state's cloud migration, which so far has included the migration of over 700 state applications from physical data centers into the cloud without interrupting service to the residents of Alaska.StateScoop’s Priorities podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here.www.prioritiespodcast.com
On this week's Priorities podcast, researchers at the National Institute for Standards and Technology warn of new artificial intelligence threats.https://statescoop.com/nist-security-threats-ai-state-local/StateScoop’s Priorities podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here.http://www.prioritiespodcast.com/
On this week's Priorities podcast, Pennsylvania CIO Amaya Capellan says the state's purchase of 50 enterprise ChatGPT licenses is a "natural way" for the state to get involved in generative artificial intelligence.statescoop.com/pennsylvania-openai-chatgpt-pilot-program-2024/In the news this week:Missouri Auditor Scott Fitzpatrick is alleging that the state’s Secretary of State has refused to provide copies of cybersecurity reviews for Missouri’s 116 local election authorities.statescoop.com/missouri-jay-ashcroft-cybersecurity-reports-elections/The Utah state auditor conducted a privacy review of over 1,600 government entities and nonprofits.statescoop.com/utah-privacy-policy-audit/State attorneys general are expressing concerns that the rise of AI-powered telemarketing could bypass existing laws against robocalls.statescoop.com/state-attorneys-general-artificial-intelligence-telemarketing/StateScoop’s Priorities podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here.prioritiespodcast.com
On this week's Priorities podcast, the author behind a complaint to the Federal Trade Commission against automated public-benefit fraud detection software explains why he's asking for more responsible use of artificial intelligence by governments and their vendors.https://statescoop.com/nonprofit-ftc-complaint-automated-benefits-responsible-ai/StateScoop’s Priorities podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here.prioritiespodcast.com
On this week's Priorities podcast, Code for America's Eleanor Davis and No Kid Hungry's Marisa Kirk-Epstein explain a new playbook designed to help state governments connect students to nutritious food options over the summer.statescoop.com/code-for-america-playbook-summer-ebt-program/StateScoop’s Priorities podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here.prioritiespodcast.com
On this week’s Priorities podcast, Nevada CIO Timothy Galluzi says the move of the state’s IT office from the Department of Administration to the Office of the Governor is helping his team become a “great enabler of government services."StateScoop’s Priorities podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here.http://www.prioritiespodcast.com/
n this week's Priorities podcast, two Kansas information technology officials say their state is preparing for the embrace of artificial intelligence as it approaches key state priorities like cybersecurity and digital services.statescoop.com/kansas-generative-artificial-intelligence-policy/Also on the podcast, Maryland's new CIO Greg Rogers offers his thoughts on how the state can continue to expand and grow its cybersecurity posture.StateScoop’s Priorities podcast is available every Thursday.Listen more here.prioritiespodcast.com
On this week's Priorities podcast, Delaware Chief Information Officer Greg Lane explains how his department is pushing forward the state's broadband expansion, bolstered by state and federal dollars.statescoop.com/delaware-gov-carney-broadband-first/ Also on the podcast, Pennsylvania CIO Amaya Capellan outlines her top three priorities. And later, Michael Watson, Virginia's chief information security officer, explains how he's approaching the state and local cyber grant program.StateScoop’s Priorities podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here.prioritiespodcast.com
On this week's Priorities podcast, California CIO Liana Bailey-Crimmins outlines how her office approached putting together its first report on generative artificial intelligence. statescoop.com/california-generative-ai-use-cases/Also on the podcast, Maryland's artificial intelligence adviser Nishant Shah explains his approach to the role. Later, Arkansas CIO Jonathan Askins talks about how he's looking to implement good governance rules around cybersecurity in the state.StateScoop’s Priorities podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here.prioritiespodcast.com
On this week's Priorities podcast, the director of the Texas Broadband Development Office says a new broadband infrastructure fund will give the state "flexibility" to expand broadband across the state.statescoop.com/texas-voters-approve-broadband-infrastructure-fund/Also on the podcast, Illinois CIO Sanjay Gupta gives a view of his top priorities list. Later, Arizona CIO J.R. Sloan explains his approach to digital services expansion in the state. In the news this week:North Carolina’s technology office is seeking public comment on a draft of the state’s digital equity plan.statescoop.com/north-carolina-seeks-public-comment-on-states-digital-equity-plan/Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen is suing Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram.statescoop.com/montana-attorney-general-sues-meta-deceptive-practices/The Detroit Smart Parking Lab has received half a million dollars in funding and grants from the state government to support emerging parking technologies.statescoop.com/detroit-parking-technology-test-lab-receives-500k-in-state-funds/
On this week's Priorities podcast, the executive director of Pennsylvania's digital services team says she's embracing "the wild ride" of the department's first six months, and looking to prioritize user experience and design in the process.statescoop.com/pennsylvania-digital-services-code-pa/Also on the podcast, Massachusetts CIO Jason Snyder says identity and access management will drive the state's work on digital services. And later, North Carolina CIO Jim Weaver offers an update on how he's working to continue broadband expansion.In the news this week:The North Texas Municipal Water District recently suffered a cybersecurity incident that disrupted its operations and phone system.statescoop.com/north-texas-municipal-water-district-suffers-cyberattack/Vermont has a new deputy secretary for its Agency for Digital Services.statescoop.com/vermont-appoints-new-deputy-technology-secretary/The National Association of State CIOs is drawing attention to the need for statewide digital accessibility coordinators across the country in a new report.statescoop.com/nascio-digital-accessibility-coordinators-report/StateScoop’s Priorities podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here.prioritiespodcast.com
On this week's Priorities podcast, South Dakota Chief Technology Officer Pat Snow says the state is continuing to roll out additional services on top of its enterprise identity platform. Also on the podcast, Washington, D.C.'s Associate CTO for Customer Experience Mike Rupert says the district's digital services efforts are playing a big role in Mayor Muriel Bowser's "big comeback" effort post-pandemic. Later, Minnesota CIO Tarek Tomes says his state is pursuing an "ambitious agenda" for digital transformation.In the news this week:Nearly two-thirds of local government officials believe their budgets are inadequate to support their cyber programs, according to new survey results from the Public Technology Institute.https://statescoop.com/pti-cybersecurity-survey-local-government/Results for America, a nonprofit aiming to help governments use data to solve community challenges, is recognizing 10 states for their use of data decision-making.https://statescoop.com/results-for-america-evidence-decision-awards/New York state is proposing a new set of cybersecurity regulations for the state’s hospitals.https://statescoop.com/new-york-cybersecurity-regulations-state-hospitals/The Priorities Podcast is available weekly on Thursdays.Listen here.https://statescoop.com/show/priorities/
On this week's Priorities podcast, Georgia Chief Information Officer Shawnzia Thomas says the state is moving fast to embrace artificial intelligence. statescoop.com/georgia-generative-ai-summit-atlanta/Also on the podcast, Alaska CIO Bill Smith says his state is looking to mature its operations across the board. Later, Wyoming interim CIO Timothy Sheehan explains how his state is trying to think differently about procurement.In the news this week:The District of Columbia U.S. Attorney is dropping charges against Chistopher Rodriguez, the district’s chief technology officer, after he was arrested for domestic assault against his wife.statescoop.com/dc-cto-christopher-rodriguez-domestic-dropped-charges/The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency are looking to bolster cyber workforce development and training with a total of $3 million in grants to two nonprofit organizations.statescoop.com/cisa-3-million-cybersecurity-workforce/Washington, D.C., is distributing free Apple AirTags to drivers in selected police service areas in an effort to combat the rise in car thefts.statescoop.com/dc-police-apple-airtags-car-theft/StateScoop’s Priorities podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here.prioritiespodcast.com
On this week’s Priorities podcast, Texas CIO Amanda Crawford says the state’s advisory council will guide the state’s embrace of generative artificial intelligence.https://statescoop.com/state-government-generative-ai-uses/Also on the podcast, U.S. Virgin Islands’ Bureau of Information Technology Deputy Director Jonathan Tucker outlines his approach to digital transformation.In the news this week:Colorado’s Department of Higher Education waited more than a month to report a massive data breach to the state attorney general’s office, evading state law, according to an investigation by the Denver Gazette.https://statescoop.com/colorado-data-breach-disclosure/Contracts for technology services awarded to a private firm in Orange County, New York, are drawing scrutiny from state legislators after an alleged conflict of interest was discovered between the contracted company’s owner and the county’s human resource coordinator.https://statescoop.com/orange-county-ny-tech-contract-scrutiny-scandal/Civic technology nonprofit Code for America announced it’s reached a collective bargaining agreement with its union, CfA Workers United, after nearly two years of negotiations.https://statescoop.com/code-for-america-ratifies-first-union-contract/StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here.www.prioritiespodcast.com
On this week’s Priorities podcast, North Carolina’s chief data officer shares her state’s “journey” developing an enterprisewide algorithm that’s helping to unify data efforts.https://statescoop.com/nascio-2023-state-award-winners/Later on the podcast, Mark Smith, the chief information officer at the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, explains how replacing a paper-based internal process for requesting system access with a digital one is reducing errors and saving time.https://statescoop.com/nascio-names-finalists-of-2023-state-it-recognition-awards/In the news this week:New York State has hired its first chief customer experience officer.https://statescoop.com/new-york-first-chief-customer-experience-officer/Philadelphia city government officials say they were hit by a cyberattack in May.https://statescoop.com/philadelphia-city-health-data-cyberattack-orange-county/Nonprofit civic tech group U.S. Digital Response is leading a new initiative to assist state and local government agencies hire and retain staff with digital skills.https://statescoop.com/state-local-government-workforce-usdr/The Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday.Listen more here.https://statescoop.com/show/priorities/
On this week’s Priorities podcast, a North Carolina technology official outlines how a new, experimental emergency paging system for first responders is gaining traction in his state.The project won a 2023 NASCIO State IT Recognition Award.https://www.nascio.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/NC_Information_Communication_Technology_Innovation.pdfhttps://statescoop.com/nascio-2023-state-award-winners/In the news this week:State CIOs are focusing on shifting financial models and a bubbling interest in generative artificial intelligence in 2023, according to a new CIO survey from the National Association of State CIOs.https://statescoop.com/gen-ai-financial-models-states-nascio-2023/Kansas has a new IT leadhttps://statescoop.com/jeff-maxon-kansas-cio-cito/Broadband providers will be required to display easy-to-understand information about the cost and performance of broadband services both online and in stores by 2024, according to an announcement for the Federal Communications Commission.https://statescoop.com/fcc-broadband-label-deadline/StateScoop’s Priorities podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here.http://www.prioritiespodcast.com/
On this week’s Priorities podcast, the National Association of State CIO’s Amy Glasscock and Eric Sweden offer their thoughts on NASCIO’s latest report on digital government. https://statescoop.com/nascio-report-examines-citizen-centric-digital-government-experiences/NASCIO’s Voices Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/nascio-voices/id1487714735In the news this week:States are continuing to expedite the adoption of cloud computing, according to new research from NASCIO. https://statescoop.com/state-government-cloud-computing-nascio-survey-2023/The Georgia Department of Labor is replacing its four-decades old unemployment insurance benefit, tax and appeal systems with cloud services.https://statescoop.com/georgia-ditches-80s-era-unemployment-system-cloud/A ransomware attack delayed paychecks for more than 4,500 employees across 14 school districts in Pinal County, Arizona. https://statescoop.com/ransomware-attack-pinal-county-schools-delays-pay-arizona/StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here.www.prioritiespodcast.com
On this week's Priorities podcast, Tyrone Spratt and Devendra Gajway of Minnesota IT Services talk about how they modernized the state's Farmlink app, which helps connect the state's aging generation of farmers with the upcoming crop of agriculturalists interested in keeping the industry alive.www.statescoop.com/nascio-names-finalists-of-2023-state-it-recognition-awards/New York state’s education commissioner is banning the use and purchase of facial recognition technology in public and non-public elementary and secondary schools.www.statescoop.com/new-york-state-bans-facial-recognition-schools/The U.S. Department of Labor announced it will award more than $200 million in grants to labor departments in 18 states, as well as the U.S. Virgin Islands, to modernize and strengthen unemployment insurance systems.www.statescoop.com/labor-department-state-unemployment-204-million/A ransomware incident that affected several city services in Dallas earlier this year leaked the information of more than 30,000 individuals, city officials say.www.statescoop.com/dallas-ransomware-attack-cyberattack-data/
On this week's Priorities podcast, Commissioner of Minnesota's Department of Labor and Industry Nicole Blissenbach talks about how the state rolled out its Frontline Worker Pay program during the COVID-19 pandemic with the help of automation.https://statescoop.com/nascio-names-finalists-of-2023-state-it-recognition-awards/Also on the podcast, Loudoun County High School Business and IT Teacher Jennifer Marden explains the CyberSlam — an annual event that exposes high school students to cybersecurity education. The next CyberSlam will take place on January 19, 2024.https://lcps.schoolcashonline.com/Fee/Details/18745/371/False/TrueIn the news this week:Republican governors from 25 states are calling on President Biden to provide them with detailed data related to people who are entering the country through the U.S.-Mexico border. https://statescoop.com/republican-governors-federal-migrant-data/California lawmakers are seeking new regulations on generative AI. https://statescoop.com/california-generative-ai-regulation-bill-2023/Vermont has a new statewide CIO.https://statescoop.com/denise-reilly-hughes-vermont-cio-agency-digital-services/StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here.www.prioritiespodcast.com
On this week's Priorities podcast, Brenden Elwood, vice president of market research at CivicPlus, talks about his company's latest report that shows local governments can boost the public’s trust in its operations by offering government services in a digital format.https://statescoop.com/digital-services-trust-local-government-report/Also on the podcast, Amazon Web Services Vice President of U.S. Public Sector Education, State and Local Government Kim Majerus explains the company's commitment of $20 million for K-12 cybersecurity education.https://statescoop.com/k12-cybersecurity-white-house-miguel-cardona/In the news this week:Delaware is implementing its own data privacy act into lawhttps://statescoop.com/delaware-consumer-data-privacy-law/The National Association of State Chief Information Officers announced the finalists of its annual State IT Recognition Awards program.https://statescoop.com/nascio-names-finalists-of-2023-state-it-recognition-awards/A new generative artificial intelligence policy outlines how executive branch agencies in Kansas can embrace the new technology in a way that prioritizes citizens’ data and privacy while remaining nimble enough to adapt to new innovations.https://statescoop.com/kansas-generative-artificial-intelligence-policy/StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here.www.prioritiespodcast.com
On this week's Priorities podcast, Jayson Cavendish, the new chief security officer of Michigan, talks to StateScoop about his start in information security and how maintaining a breadth of vision helps build a comprehensive cyber strategy. https://www.michigan.gov/dtmb/services/cybersecurityIn the news this week:Civic tech nonprofit Code for America announced it’s eliminating 35 staff positions and making major changes to its strategyhttps://statescoop.com/code-for-america-inches-closer-to-union-clarity/The New York City Police Department’s use of drones in response to calls and complaints about large gatherings — including private events hosted in backyards — over Labor Day weekend is drawing ire from privacy activists. https://statescoop.com/nypd-drones-backyard-labor-day-party/Dave Fletcher, Utah’s longtime chief technology officer, is retiring after serving nearly 20 years in the position. https://statescoop.com/dave-fletcher-utah-cto-retires/Register now for StateScoop's IT Modernization Summit on September 19.itmodernizationsummit.upgather.comStateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday.Listen more here.www.prioritiespodcast.com
On this week's Priorities podcast, Martha Norrick, the chief analytics officer of New York City, says her department's Open Data Help Desk hit a milestone in fielding inquiries from residents about its Open Data program. https://opendata.cityofnewyork.us/learn-open-data/In the news this week:The U.S. Digital Response is calling for the creation of a “Common App” to standardize, streamline and simplify the federal grant process for state and local governments. https://statescoop.com/us-digital-response-federal-grant-common-app/A Maryland school district said that the personal information of school staff may have been leaked online after a cyberattack hit its network servers earlier this month. https://statescoop.com/maryland-schools-personal-data-cyberattack/The National Telecommunications and Information Administration published draft rules outlining which materials for federally-funded broadband buildout must be made in the U.S., versus which can be purchased from overseas providers. https://statescoop.com/bead-equipment-american-made-ntia/StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here.www.prioritiespodcast.com
On the Priorities podcast, New York state’s Chief Cyber Officer Colin Ahern says the state’s new cybersecurity strategy will bring together cyber resources across government to confront a “unified response” to growing cyber threats. https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/governor-hochul-announces-nation-leading-cybersecurity-strategy https://statescoop.com/new-york-opens-joint-cybersecurity-center-state-local/
In the news this week:
Wisconsin is creating a task force to evaluate how artificial intelligence will impact the state’s workforce. https://statescoop.com/wisconsin-creates-task-force-for-ais-impact-on-workforce/
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration released draft rules outlining which materials used in federally-funded broadband deployment must be made in the U.S. https://statescoop.com/bead-equipment-american-made-ntia/
Former West Virginia CIO Josh Spence has taken a role at managed service provider Alpha Technologies. https://statescoop.com/joshua-spence-west-virginia-alpha-technologies/
Register now for StateScoop's IT Modernization Summit on September 19. https://itmodernizationsummit.upgather.com
StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here. www.prioritiespodcast.com
On the Priorities podcast, New York state’s Chief Privacy Officer Michele Jones says the state’s executive-level buy-in around privacy differentiates the state’s program. https://statescoop.com/new-york-state-privacy-officer-michele-jones/
In the news this week:
Maryland is adding five key hires — four of which fill newly created positions — to its IT leadership team. https://statescoop.com/maryland-new-hires-2023-ciso-digital-experience/
Andy Hanks, CISO of Montana, has left his role. https://statescoop.com/montanas-ciso-andy-hanks-cis-cybersecurity/
New Orleans will revamp antiquated IT systems used by its courts and public safety agencies. https://statescoop.com/new-orleans-antiquated-justice-system-tech-upgrade/
StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here. www.prioritiespodcast.com
On the Priorities podcast, Pennsylvania Chief Information Officer Amaya Capellan tells StateScoop that after just a few weeks in the role, she’s sketched out a vision for how she plans to improve the state’s digital services. https://statescoop.com/amaya-capellan-pennsylvania-cio-digital-services/ https://statescoop.com/pennsylvania-code-pa-digital-services/
In the news this week:
West Virginia may allocate some surplus funding in the state budget to boost a burgeoning cybersecurity program at Marshall University. https://statescoop.com/west-virginia-critical-infrastructure-cybersecurity/
The U.S. Department of Transportation is accepting applications for the second round of its Strengthening Mobility and Revolutionizing Transportation grants. https://statescoop.com/smart-grants-transportation-innovation-2023/
The Colorado Department of Higher Education reports it was the victim of a data breach following a ransomware attack this past June. https://statescoop.com/colorado-higher-education-department-reports-ransomware-attack/
StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here. www.prioritiespodcast.com
On the Priorities podcast, Boston CIO Santiago Garces says the city’s complexity means that it needs a strategic plan to guide its future growth. https://statescoop.com/boston-cio-santiago-garces-strategic-plan/
In the news this week:
San Jose is rolling out guidelines for how city employees are permitted to use generative AI tools like ChatGPT in their daily work. https://statescoop.com/san-jose-calif-publishes-generative-ai-guidelines/
New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced plans to expand the city’s Big Apple Connect broadband program to 17 additional public housing developments in Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx. https://statescoop.com/nyc-eric-adams-big-apple-connect-municipal-broadband/
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced $18 million in funding for projects that use advanced technologies in energy-efficient buildings. https://statescoop.com/new-york-state-18-million-advanced-building-technology/
StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here. www.prioritiespodcast.com
On the Priorities podcast, two Arkansas Administrative Office of the Court leaders say their efforts to build a new system instead of going with a commercial product is saving the state a significant amount of money. https://statescoop.com/arkansas-courts-it-modernization/
In the news this week:
Delaware’s new CIO Greg Lane says he’s looking forward to completing some key projects that he helped develop during his time as the state’s CTO now that he’s in the top job himself. https://statescoop.com/delaware-greg-lane-cio-digital-government/
Long-awaited proposals to update a section of the Americans with Disabilities Act and introduce technical standards to improve the accessibility of state and local government websites and apps are imminent, according to Justice Department officials. https://statescoop.com/state-local-web-accessibility-standards-doj/
Seven subway stations in New York City are now equipped with some type of artificial intelligence to track fare evasion, according to a May report from the city’s transportation authority. https://statescoop.com/nyc-ai-subway-fare-evasion/
Register now for StateScoop’s IT Modernization Summit https://itmodernizationsummit.upgather.com/
StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here. www.prioritiespodcast.com
On the Priorities podcast, Nebraska CIO Ed Toner says that his focus on availability of services is simply down to the fundamentals of what his job is as an IT leader. https://statescoop.com/nebraska-cio-ed-toner-availability-resiliency/
In the news this week:
The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation is calling on Congress to eliminate broadband funding programs that have been made redundant by other more effective ones. https://statescoop.com/itif-urges-congress-cut-redundant-broadband-programs/
Ed Toner’s CIO Blog https://cio.nebraska.gov/blog/index.html
New York state has a new lead for finance and technology. https://statescoop.com/albert-pulido-finance-technology-new-york/
Boston cloud services firm NWN Carousel will provide the City of Baltimore with next-generation 911 capabilities. https://statescoop.com/baltimore-next-generation-911-nwn-carousel/
Register now for StateScoop’s IT Modernization Summit https://itmodernizationsummit.upgather.com/
StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here. www.prioritiespodcast.com
On the Priorities podcast, Utah CIO Alan Fuller says the state is working to streamline and modernize applications and services as part of Gov. Spencer Cox’s initiative to improve government operations. Fuller is a StateScoop 50 Award winner this year. https://statescoop.com/list/announcing-the-winners-of-the-2023-statescoop-50-awards/
Also on the show, North Carolina’s new chief risk officer joins to talk about his approach to continuing the state’s whole-of-state cybersecurity journey. https://statescoop.com/north-carolina-election-security-to-lead-statewide-cybersecurity/
In the news this week:
New York is expanding its shark monitoring efforts along the state’s shoreline. https://statescoop.com/new-york-state-expanding-shark-drones-long-island/
Pennsylvania has a new CIO. https://statescoop.com/amaya-capellan-pennsylvania-cio-comcast/
Oklahoma has a new chief information officer. https://statescoop.com/joe-mcintosh-oklahoma-cio/.
Register now for StateScoop’s IT Modernization Summit https://itmodernizationsummit.upgather.com/
StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here. www.prioritiespodcast.com
On the Priorities podcast, Arizona CIO J.R. Sloan says the state has made so much progress on embracing cloud computing that he can now talk not just about encouraging cloud use, but maximizing it.
Sloan is a StateScoop 50 Award winner this year. https://statescoop.com/list/announcing-the-winners-of-the-2023-statescoop-50-awards/
In the news this week:
More than a year after cryptocurrency markets crashed, there’s evidence that the economic benefits many mayors sought out by encouraging digital currencies in their cities did not stick. https://statescoop.com/crypto-bounce-mayors-researchers-brookings-paper/
Georgia’s IT agency is helping agencies embrace cloud by offering free Amazon Web Services certifications. https://statescoop.com/georgia-cloud-training-workforce-college-partnership/
California’s former chief technology and innovation officer is now the state’s CTO, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced. https://statescoop.com/jonathan-porat-california-promotes-innovation-chief-cto/
Register now for StateScoop’s IT Modernization Summit https://itmodernizationsummit.upgather.com/
StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here. www.prioritiespodcast.com
On the Priorities podcast, Maricopa County, Arizona’s new CIO Richard McHattie says he’s looking to lean on his experience pushing technology and innovation forward to help improve customer service and reduce costs in the nation’s fourth-largest county. https://statescoop.com/richard-mchattie-appointed-as-maricopa-county-ariz-cio/
Also on the show, Wyoming’s interim CIO Timothy Sheehan explains his approach to workforce, and Illinois CISO Adam Ford explains his approach to cyber grant funding.
Sheehan and Ford are 2023 StateScoop 50 Award winners. https://statescoop.com/list/announcing-the-winners-of-the-2023-statescoop-50-awards/
Register now for StateScoop’s IT Modernization Summit https://itmodernizationsummit.upgather.com/
In the news this week:
President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris announced how nearly $42.5 billion in Broadband, Equity, Access and Deployment funds will be divided among states and territories as the federal government steps in to help close the digital divide. https://statescoop.com/biden-bead-broadband-grants-white-house-40-billion/ https://statescoop.com/heres-how-much-every-state-is-getting-from-bead-grant-program/
State government agencies in Maine are prohibited from using generative artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT for at least six months after a cybersecurity directive from the state’s IT agency. https://statescoop.com/heres-how-much-every-state-is-getting-from-bead-grant-program/
Tens of thousands of public school students and employees in New York City had their personal data stolen in the recent hack of the file-transfer software MOVEit, the city’s department of education revealed. https://statescoop.com/nyc-schools-hit-by-moveit-breach/
StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here. www.prioritiespodcast.com
On the Priorities podcast, North Carolina CIO James Weaver says his agency is pivoting its focus from being focused on the capability to deliver online services, to thinking more about what those services mean to the individual using them. https://statescoop.com/north-carolinas-broadband-office-over-115000-locations-without-high-speed-internet/
Also on the podcast, Indiana CIO Tracy Barnes gives an update on how his state is handling its funding from the state and local cyber grant program and Tennessee’s Bob Pucci gives more detail on his state’s automation efforts. https://statescoop.com/state-local-cyber-grants-cisa/ https://statescoop.com/radio/stephanie-dedmon-automation-ai/
Weaver and Pucci are 2023 StateScoop 50 Award winners. https://statescoop.com/list/announcing-the-winners-of-the-2023-statescoop-50-awards/
In the news this week:
At least six states have reported a confirmed or potential exposure to a global cyberattack by a ransomware group exploiting a recently discovered vulnerability in the popular file-transfer platform MOVEit. https://statescoop.com/state-governments-report-moveit-vulnerability-exposure/ https://statescoop.com/maryland-joins-states-affected-by-moveit-vulnerability/
The New Mexico Human Services Department awarded a $39 million contract to General Dynamics IT as part of an ongoing effort to replace the state’s Medicaid enrollment and provider management system. https://statescoop.com/maryland-joins-states-affected-by-moveit-vulnerability/
The Biden administration is preparing to distribute $930 million for 35 broadband construction projects around the country aimed at building out the middle mile infrastructure that connects large, regional fiber networks to the local networks that reach individual homes and businesses. https://statescoop.com/ntia-awards-930m-middle-mile-broadband-grants/
StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here. www.prioritiespodcast.com
On the Priorities podcast, Tennessee CIO Stephanie Dedmon says her state’s focus on automation is not designed to reduce headcount in the state, but rather to free up employees to work on more complex tasks. https://statescoop.com/tennessee-launches-new-round-of-statewide-automation-projects/
Also on the podcast, Georgia CIO Shawnzia Thomas explains how her state is rolling out additional endpoint protections, and StateScoop 50 Award winner Jon Minshew talks about how he’s hoping to help state and local governments from the private sector. https://statescoop.com/list/announcing-the-winners-of-the-2023-statescoop-50-awards/
Both Dedmon and Minshew are winners in the 2023 StateScoop 50 Awards. https://statescoop.com/list/announcing-the-winners-of-the-2023-statescoop-50-awards/
In the news this week: Florida’s CIO, Philadelphia’s CIO and Delaware’s CIO all announced they would step down this week. https://statescoop.com/florida-cio-james-grant-steps-down/ https://statescoop.com/philadelphia-cio-mark-wheeler-technology-transformation-services/ https://statescoop.com/delaware-cio-jason-clarke-resigns/
Texas is forming an artificial intelligence advisory council. https://statescoop.com/texas-abbott-ai-advisory-committee/
Minnesota’s Department of Education says that personal information of about 95,000 students was breached as part of an ongoing and global exploit of a popular file-transfer system. https://statescoop.com/minnesota-department-education-moveit-cyberattack/
StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here. www.prioritiespodcast.com
On the Priorities podcast, Virginia CIO Bob Osmond says he’s trying to position his agency as an effective partner for other state agencies looking to transform technology.
Also on the podcast, Connecticut CIO Mark Raymond outlines his state’s digital government journey. VMware’s Chirstopher Montgomery also talks about his career path from New York City government, as well as New Jersey state government, to the private sector.
Both Montgomery and Osmond are winners in the 2023 StateScoop 50 Awards. https://statescoop.com/list/announcing-the-winners-of-the-2023-statescoop-50-awards/
In the news this week:
Illinois has a new CIO. https://statescoop.com/illinois-gov-pritzker-appoints-federal-tech-leader-as-new-cio/
Government Sourcing Solutions, an IT procurement consulting firm, has hired a cadre of former state CIOs. https://statescoop.com/procurement-consulting-firm-adds-former-state-cios/
California’s chief data officer is stepping down. https://statescoop.com/californias-chief-data-officer-of-three-years-steps-down/
StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here. www.prioritiespodcast.com
Maryland CIO to focus on ‘clarifying’ enterprise servicesOn the Priorities podcast, Maryland’s CIO Katie Savage says she plans to offer agencies more clarity on the enterprise services the state’s IT department offers to others within state government.https://statescoop.com/maryland-katie-savage-state-technology-secretary/Also on the podcast, StateScoop’s Lindsay McKenzie offers an update on the FCC’s new broadband map, and Matt Behrens, Iowa’s state CIO, joins the show to talk about local government cybersecurity collaboration. Cisco’s Mike Witzman, a 2023 StateScoop 50 Award winner, also joins the show to highlight how industry leaders can help states work through their workforce challenges.https://statescoop.com/fcc-broadband-map-update-adds-1-million-new-locations/https://statescoop.com/list/announcing-the-winners-of-the-2023-statescoop-50-awards/https://statescoop.com/nascio-2022-survey-workforce-cio-roles/In the news this week:North Carolina has a new chief risk officer. https://statescoop.com/north-carolina-election-security-to-lead-statewide-cybersecurity/Virginia will drop degree requirements for the majority of state classified jobs in July.https://statescoop.com/virginia-to-drop-degree-requirements-for-state-jobs/The U.S. Labor Department is making more than $650 million in funding from the American Rescue Plan available to states to help modernize their unemployment insurance systems. https://statescoop.com/labor-dept-releases-653m-to-help-states-fix-unemployment-systems/StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here.www.prioritiespodcast.com
On the Priorities podcast, New York state acting CIO Jennifer Lorenz says that nearly a decade after the state’s massive IT consolidation, data and privacy will drive the next era of maturity for the state’s technology operations.Also on the podcast, StateScoop’s Keely Quinlan explains the latest in biometric privacy legislation and policy. https://statescoop.com/biometric-data-definition-states-ftc/Ohio’s Katrina Flory talks about her focus on next-generation 911.StateScoop 50 Award winner Red Hat’s Doug Ross also joins the show to talk about IT modernization.https://statescoop.com/list/announcing-the-winners-of-the-2023-statescoop-50-awards/In the news this week:The National Association of Counties is creating a new committee to explore artificial intelligence.https://statescoop.com/county-government-ai-risk-ethics-uses/Washington state’s tech bureau is staffing up with the hire of a new CISO, CDO, CTO and chief of staff in recent months.https://statescoop.com/washington-state-watech-cio-cto-cdo/Cybersecurity planning and training is lacking across multiple branches of government in Utah, according to a report from the state legislature’s watchdog office. https://statescoop.com/utah-cyber-audit-finds-shortfalls-across-state/StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here.www.prioritiespodcast.com
On the Priorities podcast, California CIO Liana Bailey-Crimmins explains how she is leading the “middle-mile” efforts of broadband expansion in the state.https://statescoop.com/list/announcing-the-winners-of-the-2023-statescoop-50-awards/Also on the podcast, Washington, D.C.’s new chief data officer outlines his approach to the new role, and Deloitte’s Srini Subramanian offers his thoughts on being a StateScoop 50 Award winner, as well as what NASCIO-Deloitte’s 2022 cybersecurity survey means in 2023. https://statescoop.com/washington-dc-matt-sokol-chief-data-officer/https://statescoop.com/nascio-deloitte-ciso-survey-cybersecurity-2022/In addition, StateScoop’s Benjamin Freed offers updates on Code for America’s 2023 Summit, their employees’ efforts to unionize and the latest with the group’s brigade network.https://statescoop.com/nascio-deloitte-ciso-survey-cybersecurity-2022/https://statescoop.com/code-for-america-former-brigades-regroup/In the news this week:The U.S. is charging a Russian national for carrying out multiple ransomware attacks, including a 2021 attack against the Washington, D.C. police department.https://statescoop.com/russian-charged-ransomware-attacks-dc-police/ The Bloomberg Philanthropies City Data Alliance is adding 20 new cities.https://statescoop.com/20-new-cities-mayors-join-bloomberg-philanthropies-city-data-alliance/Missouri CIO Jeff Wann is stepping down. https://statescoop.com/missouri-cio-jeff-wann-stepped-down/StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here.www.prioritiespodcast.com
On the Priorities podcast, Nebraska CIO Ed Toner explains why he changed his mind about embracing cloud services.Also on the podcast, Vermont CIO Shawn Nailor outlines his approach to the state’s network modernization initiative, and Socure’s Matt Thompson offers his thoughts on identity and access management in state government. https://statescoop.com/list/announcing-the-winners-of-the-2023-statescoop-50-awards/In the news this week:The ransomware outfit that compromised several city agencies in Dallas earlier this month is an offshoot of the notorious Conti operation, researchers from Palo Alto Networks’ Unit 42 say. https://statescoop.com/ransomware-gang-dallas-offshoot-conti-group/New York City council members are accusing the city’s chief privacy officer of providing false information about how the city and its agencies use facial recognition software. https://statescoop.com/city-council-accuses-nyc-privacy-chief-biometric-use/Oakland, California’s mayor is requesting an additional $10 million to spend on cybersecurity improvements over the next two years. https://statescoop.com/oakland-calif-mayor-seeks-10m-increase-in-cyber-spending-after-ransomware/StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here.www.prioritiespodcast.com
On the Priorities podcast, Illinois acting CIO Brandon Ragle says the state’s identity platform is driving how the state approaches digital services.Also on the podcast, Texas Department of Information Resources Chief People and Culture Officer Lisa Jammer explains her approach to workforce in the state. https://statescoop.com/younger-government-workers/StateScoop’s Keely Quinlan also joins the show to talk about the fashion of NASCIO midyear 2023.https://statescoop.com/fashion-nascio-midyear-2023/In the news this week:The Benton Institute for Broadband and Society has a new mapping tool that displays how many people are signed up for the Federal Communications Commission’s Affordable Connectivity Program where they live. https://statescoop.com/affordable-connectivity-program-enrollment-tracker/Tennessee has now automated more than 100,000 hours of work across more than a dozen executive branch agencies using robotic process automation.https://statescoop.com/rpa-tennessee-bob-pucci/More than 1800 state employees across Indiana have been trained in data literacy, according to the state’s chief data officer.https://statescoop.com/indiana-data-literacy-training-state-government/StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here.www.prioritiespodcast.com
On the Priorities podcast, the IT director of Tinley Park, Illinois, says a mutual aid effort, similar to the kinds in place with public safety entities, could provide local government IT operations the support they need in the event of an emergency. In the news this week:Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro is tackling digital services transformation in a new executive order released this week.https://statescoop.com/pennsylvania-code-pa-digital-services/California’s IT department is being criticized by the state auditor’s office after an audit found that the agency continues to struggle with long term strategic planning and project oversight. https://statescoop.com/california-it-department-strategic-audit-cybersecurity/Washington state is adding new layers of governance to the state’s cybersecurity practices. https://statescoop.com/washington-expanding-cyber-governance-inslee/StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here.www.prioritiespodcast.com
On the Priorities podcast, Scottsdale, Arizona, CIO Bianca Lochner says the city’s GIS and data-driven portal around short-term rentals will allow residents to track where short-term rentals are in the city — and find out what city government can do about it.https://statescoop.com/list/announcing-the-winners-of-the-2022-localsmart-awards/https://str.scottsdaleaz.govhttps://statescoop.com/bloomberg-philanthropies-city-data-alliance/In the news this week:While more than half of Americans prefer to interact with government agencies online, only about a quarter of them actually use the digital government services agencies develop, according to new research from Deloitte. https://statescoop.com/government-digital-services-online-deloitte-survey/The Bloomberg Center for Cities officially opened its doors at the Harvard Kennedy School this week. https://statescoop.com/harvard-opens-bloomberg-center-for-cities/New York City opened its fifth Gigabit Center, this one in Staten Island, this week.https://statescoop.com/fifth-nyc-gigabit-center-opens-staten-island/StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here.www.prioritiespodcast.com
On the Priorities podcast, Massachusetts CIO Jason Snyder says taking the helm of the cabinet-level IT agency in the state has “really empowered” what technology can do in state government.https://statescoop.com/massachusetts-cio-priorities/https://statescoop.com/harvard-cto-jason-snyder-massachusetts-technology-maura-healey/In the news this week:Pennsylvania’s current IT office opposes a bill currently circulating through the state legislature to restructure IT operations in the state. https://statescoop.com/pennsylvania-it-restructuring-bill-2023/Washington, D.C. has a new interim CTO. https://statescoop.com/michael-rupert-washington-dc-cto/New York state chief technology officer Rajiv Rao has resigned. https://statescoop.com/rajiv-rao-new-york-cto-resigns-contracts-investigation/StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here.www.prioritiespodcast.com
On the Priorities podcast, New York City Chief Information Security Officer Kelly Moan says the city’s first cohort of Cyber Academy graduates will serve as cyber liaisons between their agencies and the city IT office.https://statescoop.com/inaugural-class-nyc-cyber-academy-graduates/In the news this week:Former Wyoming CIO Bill Vajda will take the reins as the director of the Upper Peninsula Cybersecurity Institute at Northern Michigan University. https://statescoop.com/bill-vajda-northern-michigan-university-upper-peninsula-cybersecurity-institute/Austin, Texas, chief information officer Chris Stewart says he’s taking on a new position as an executive adviser to other city officials while they reorganize the city’s management structure. https://statescoop.com/austin-cio-chris-stewart-citywide-shakeup/Alabama’s pension agency will extend its contract with NTT Data for an additional eight years. https://statescoop.com/ntt-data-alabama-pension-agency/StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here.www.prioritiespodcast.com
On the Priorities podcast, Arkansas Chief Data Officer Robert McGough says his role exists in a middle ground between how the state government approaches security, privacy and transparency.https://statescoop.com/robert-mcgough-arkansas-chief-data-officer-cheerleader/Also on the podcast, Christine Hallquist, the director of Vermont’s Broadband Office, explains how she’s approaching broadband expansion in the state.In the news this week:Utah Gov. Spencer Cox signed two bills to limit minors from accessing social media sites without parental consent and during certain times of the day. https://statescoop.com/utah-social-media-minors-law/The Federal Communications Commission has been busy updating its national broadband map which will be “noticeably better,” chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel says.https://statescoop.com/broadband-map-update-rosenworcel-fcc/U.S. House members introduced legislation designed to speed up the national upgrade to a modern 911 system. https://statescoop.com/next-generation-911-funding-bill-2023/Voting is open for the 2023 StateScoop 50 Awardshttps://statescoop.com/statescoop50/vote/StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here.www.prioritiespodcast.com
On the Priorities podcast, Brian Tardiff, the newly-appointed chief information officer of Rhode Island, says he’ll continue the work underway from his predecessor, and will keep a solid focus on cybersecurity from his previous role as the state’s chief information security officer.https://statescoop.com/brian-tardiff-rhode-island-cio-transform-state-technology/In the news this week:Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon says a new bill that would allow the state to begin issuing a digital currency is underdeveloped, but he allowed to it to become law anyway without a signature. https://statescoop.com/wyoming-first-state-stablecoin-mark-gordon/Grace Simrall, the chief of civic innovation and technology at Louisville, Kentucky, says she’s stepping down.https://statescoop.com/grace-simrall-louisville-kentucky-civic-innovation-chief-resigns/The cryptocurrency exchange OKcoin suspended trading of the two city-based digital currencies operated by CityCoins.https://statescoop.com/citycoins-suspended-trading-miamicoin-nyccoin/StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here.
On the Priorities podcast, Lynn Overmann, the new director of the Beeck Center for Social Impact and Innovation at Georgetown University, says that the center is working to emphasize the delivery of services and move beyond evangelizing the importance of digital government.https://statescoop.com/lynn-overmann-beeck-center/In the news this week:A recent breach of D.C. Health Link, a health care insurance exchange in the nation’s capital, has exposed the sensitive information of at least 21 current members of Congress.https://statescoop.com/dc-health-data-posted-online/New York State will soon publish a revamped portal that will make it easier for employers to give staff early notice of mass layoffs or office closures.https://statescoop.com/new-york-layoffs-portal-warn-act/Connecticut is installing new sensors along ramps to highways that notify police of wrong-way driving. https://statescoop.com/connecticut-wrong-way-driving-sensors-state-police/StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here.www.prioritiespodcast.com
On the Priorities podcast, Rhode Island Department of Commerce Secretary Liz Tanner says the state will introduce blockchain to help modernize business registration services.https://statescoop.com/rhode-island-commerce-department-blockchain-2023/In the news this week:New York State CIO Tony Riddick will leave state government. https://statescoop.com/new-york-state-cio-tony-riddick-retire/Ernst & Young is building a Center for Government Modernization. https://statescoop.com/ernst-young-center-government-modernization/Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar is requesting new funding from the legislature to update two major computer systems. https://statescoop.com/nevada-elections-verms-cisco-aguilar/StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here.www.prioritiespodcast.com
On the Priorities podcast, King County, Washington’s new CIO Megan Clarke says she’s bringing her experience in local government, higher education and the organizations behind the Oscars and Grammys to the Seattle-area county.https://statescoop.com/megan-clarke-oscar-voting-online-king-county-cio/In the news this week:The White House is requesting state and local law enforcement agencies submit information on their current data practices for a report aimed at increasing trust in policing and the criminal justice system. https://statescoop.com/white-house-state-law-enforcement-data-practices/States that receive funding from the Department of Homeland Security’s grant programs will be required to spend at least 3 percent of their award funds on election security, according to new documents. https://statescoop.com/dhs-election-security-requirement/Florida is launching a $30 million program to distribute cybersecurity improvement grants to local governments across the state. https://statescoop.com/florida-dhs-cyber-program-grants/StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here.www.prioritiespodcast.com
On the Priorities podcast, Colorado State Sen. Cleave Simpson says he’s convinced artificial intelligence can help the state fight wildfires. https://statescoop.com/colorado-ai-wildfire-smoke/In the news this week:New York City needs to create better artificial intelligence usage policies for city agencies, according to a new state audit.https://statescoop.com/new-york-city-ai-usage-policies-audit/West Virginia is creating what Gov. Jim Justice is calling the first full digital clearinghouse for vehicle titles for non-resident businesses.https://statescoop.com/west-virginia-vehicle-title-out-state-businesses/Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis proposed legislation that would ban TikTok and other Chinese-made software on state-government devices and on networks operated by public schools, including state universities. https://statescoop.com/florida-tiktok-ban-desantis-digital-rights-china/StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here.www.prioritiespodcast.com
On the Priorities podcast, Los Angeles CIO Ted Ross says he’s ready to align the city’s IT operations with the focuses for the city’s new mayor Karen Bass.https://statescoop.com/ted-ross-los-angeles-karen-bass-lebron-james/Also on the show, Wyoming Chief Information Security Officer Aaron Roberts says the state is continuing on in its journey to improve its cybersecurity operations.In the news this week:City officials in Oakland, California, say that many municipal services remain offline as it continues to dig out from a ransomware attack that started last week. https://statescoop.com/oakland-calif-still-largely-offline-after-ransomware-attack/Washington, D.C. is debuting a beta version of a new website designed to help small businesses navigate the bureaucratic and legal processes of setting up shop in the nation’s capital. https://statescoop.com/washington-dc-unveils-new-small-business-portal/South Dakota Chief Information Officer Jeff Clines says it will cost $70 million to replace a critically-outdated financial system in the state. https://statescoop.com/south-dakota-financial-system-jeff-clines/Register now for the Cybersecurity Modernization Summit:https://cybersecuritymodsummit.upgather.comStateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here.www.prioritiespodcast.com
On the Priorities podcast, New York City Chief Privacy Officer Micahel Fitzpatrick says the city’s new privacy policy will further the way the cybersecurity and privacy operations within the city collaborate.https://statescoop.com/new-york-city-updates-privacy-policy-cyber-2023/In the news this week:Code for America will cut off financial and operational support for its network of local volunteer groups.https://statescoop.com/code-for-america-local-brigades-ending/Texas is the latest state to ban TikTok and other Chinese-made software and hardware from government-owned computers and networks. https://statescoop.com/texas-tiktok-ban/California has a new director of its Data and Innovation Office. https://statescoop.com/nolwenn-godard-california-office-data-innovation-new-director/StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here.www.prioritiespodcast.com
On the Priorities podcast, San Jose Deputy City Manager Rob Lloyd says that community engagement will be crucial as cities evaluate the role that “smart cities” efforts in their planning post-pandemic.https://statescoop.com/san-jose-cio-khaled-tawfik-san-jose-california/https://statescoop.com/list/announcing-the-winners-of-the-2022-localsmart-awards/In the news this week:Students on Nantucket Island in Massachusetts were sent home early this week when the local public school district got hit with ransomware. https://statescoop.com/ransomware-nantucket-k12-massachusetts/California CTO Suzie Changus is leaving the state’s IT agency after just three months.https://statescoop.com/suzie-changus-california-chief-techology-officer-resigns/Bill Vajda has stepped down as Wyoming’s top technology official. https://statescoop.com/suzie-changus-california-chief-techology-officer-resigns/StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here.www.prioritiespodcast.com
On the Priorities podcast, Louisville, Kentucky, Chief of Civic Innovation Grace Simrall outlines how her team played a part in preparing the city’s new mayor to take office.https://statescoop.com/radio/louisville-kentucky-codifies-open-data-portal/https://statescoop.com/list/announcing-the-winners-of-the-2022-localsmart-awards/The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency published its much-anticipated review of cybersecurity readiness at K-12 school districtshttps://statescoop.com/cisa-publishes-k12-cybersecurity-roadmap/Phoenix is building out its wireless infrastructure ahead of this year’s Super Bowl.https://statescoop.com/phoenix-5g-wireless-infrastructure-super-bowl/South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem is barring state agencies from conducting any business with technology and telecommunications companies tied to what she deemed “evil foregin governments.”https://statescoop.com/kristi-noem-south-dakota-evil-foreign-governments/StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here.http://www.prioritiespodcast.com
On the Priorities podcast, Baltimore chief data officer Justin Elszasz says the city’s new digital services team is ready to hit the ground running.https://statescoop.com/baltimore-launches-digital-service-city-performance-unit/https://statescoop.com/shelby-switzer-baltimore-digital-services-director-shift-mindsets/In the news this week:Katie Savage will take the helm as the new chief information officer of Maryland. https://statescoop.com/maryland-katie-savage-state-technology-secretary/New York Gov. Kathy Hochul is proposing a $35 million increase in the state’s cybersecurity spending. https://statescoop.com/new-york-state-cybersecurity-ics-kathy-hochul/Shawn Nailor is now officially Vermont’s CIO. https://statescoop.com/vermont-cio-shawn-nailor/StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here.http://www.prioritiespodcast.com
On the Priorities podcast, Oklahoma’s digital services lead Jay Doyle says the state’s latest foray into digital government is far from its last.https://statescoop.com/oklahoma-disability-placards-omni-channel-accessible/In the news this week:Illinois CIO Jennifer Ricker is stepping down. https://statescoop.com/illinois-cio-to-step-down-as-gov-pritzker-begins-second-term/California is using a high-tech airplane normally used for wildfire response to optimize how the state deals with a severe wind and rain storm.https://statescoop.com/california-new-years-storms-firis-plane-data-modeling/ Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly is naming new technology leadership for her second term. https://statescoop.com/kansas-interim-it-chief-admin-secretary-laura-kelly/StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here.http://www.prioritiespodcast.com
On the Priorities podcast, Delaware CIO Jason Clarke says the state is looking to connect the last 12,000 addresses in the state lacking connection to broadband. https://statescoop.com/ntia-distributes-30-million-broadband-grant-planning/In North Carolina, though the number of unconnected is higher, state CIO Jim Weaver says the unique confluence of support from the governor and legislature will result in big broadband expansion gains across the state.https://statescoop.com/north-carolina-satellite-internet-pilot-starlink/StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here.http://www.prioritiespodcast.com
On the Priorities podcast, Nebraska CIO Ed Toner says his state’s work over the last six years on consolidation has enabled his office to think more strategically about the path forward.https://statescoop.com/nebraska-consolidation/Also on the show, Tennessee CIO Stephanie Dedmon outlines the state’s efforts to embrace robotic process automation.Later on, Vermont’s interim CIO Shawn Nailor explains the path forward for the state’s digital services. StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday.Listen more here.http://www.prioritiespodcast.com
On the Priorities podcast, Wyoming CIO Bill Vajda says preparing for the future is informing how he handles day-to-day business leading the state’s IT operations.Also on the show, Wyoming Chief Data Officer Drew Dilly says the state’s data governance council is prompting good momentum for further growth in the state.Later on in the show, Michigan’s Jayson Cavendish explains how the state is centralizing reporting and data sharing with its Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Program. https://statescoop.com/nascio-2022-finalists-state-it-recognition-awards/StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here.http://www.prioritiespodcast.com
On the Priorities podcast, NASCIO Executive Director Doug Robinson says states will continue to prioritize workforce in 2023.nascio-top-ten-priorities-2023-cybersecurity-digital-governmentLater on the podcast, Illinois CIO Jennifer Ricker outlines her team’s work to modernize the human capital piece of the state’s enterprise resource planning system refresh. Also on the show, Ana Vargas, the deputy director of the waste division for Arizona’s Department of Environmental Quality, explains the state’s efforts to track safety compliance of underground storage tanks.https://statescoop.com/nascio-2022-finalists-state-it-recognition-awards/StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here.http://www.prioritiespodcast.com
On the Priorities podcast, Arizona CISO Tim Roemer says he’s gearing up for a period of change as Gov. Doug Ducey wraps up his term. https://statescoop.com/nascio-2022-finalists-state-it-recognition-awards/Later on the podcast, Maine CIO Fred Brittain outlines his approach to the state’s new IT strategic plan.Also on the show, John McKay, a senior network engineer for Washington State Ferries, explains how his agency outfitted boats with new connectivity. https://statescoop.com/nascio-2022-finalists-state-it-recognition-awards/In the news this week:DeAngela Burns-Wallace is stepping down as chief information technology officer for the state of Kansas. https://statescoop.com/kansas-it-chief-deangela-burns-wallace-departs/San Francisco will spend more time considering whether, and under which circumstances, the city’s police department may use its existing fleet of land-based robots to kill people. https://statescoop.com/san-francisco-punts-killer-robot-question-committee/New York City is opening a new facility in Queens to offer free high-speed internet access to residents as part of the city’s ongoing efforts to close its digital divide.https://statescoop.com/nyc-third-gigabit-center-high-speed-wi-fi-access-queens/StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here.http://www.prioritiespodcast.com
On the Priorities podcast, Massachusetts CIO Curtis Wood says he’s preparing for the first governor’s office transition since the state’s Executive Office of Technology Services and Security was elevated to the cabinet. Also on the podcast, Rex Menold, Michigan’s director of enterprise information, content and identity management, gives an update on MiLogin.https://statescoop.com/how-michigans-identity-management-platform-won-over-state-agencies/https://statescoop.com/statescoop50/vote/In the news this week:South Dakota is banning the use of TikTok on government-issued devices.https://statescoop.com/south-dakota-tiktok-ban-china-kristi-noem/The San Francisco Board of Supervisors is voting to allow the city’s police department to outfit remote-controlled robots with lethal capabilities. https://statescoop.com/san-francisco-police-killer-robots/Buffalo, New York’s, 311 call center received more than 4,000 calls from residents during a snowstorm last week. https://statescoop.com/buffalo-new-york-snowstorm-hybrid-311/StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here.http://www.prioritiespodcast.com
On the Priorities podcast, Texas Department of Information Resources’ Director of Strategic Digital Services Jennifer Buaas says the state’s digital services platform has more than 3 million accounts and has processed more than 4 million transactions. https://statescoop.com/texas-citizen-services-app-automate-driving-test-paperwork/
Also on the podcast, Glenn Mack and Terri Catlett from North Carolina’s Department of Public Safety explain their efforts to roll out a robust telemedicine platform to the state’s prisons. https://statescoop.com/nascio-names-winners-of-2022-state-it-recognition-awards/
In the news this week:
Arizona is contracting with Tanium to further its ‘whole-of-state’ cybersecurity program, the cybersecurity company says. https://statescoop.com/arizona-tanium-whole-state-cybersecurity/
Michigan will spend $78 million with Deloitte to install a modern unemployment benefits system. https://statescoop.com/michigan-deloitte-unemployment-system-2022-78-million/
Cybersecurity capabilities across K-12 schools are improving, but the sector continues to lag behind other parts of government and the private sector according to a new report from the Center for Internet Security. https://statescoop.com/k-12-cyber-maturity-improving-but-still-lags-behind-other-sectors/
StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here. http://www.prioritiespodcast.com
On the Priorities podcast, Jon Rogers, the Indiana Office of Technology’s director of strategic workforce planning, says the state’s training residents with and without college degrees to take on careers in the state’s IT operations. https://statescoop.com/nascio-2022-survey-workforce-cio-roles/
Also on the podcast, Tennessee's Executive Director of Intelligent Automation Bob Pucci explains how the state is automating processes to improve customer experience, maximize employee resources and imbue services with greater flexibility and scalability. https://statescoop.com/nascio-names-winners-of-2022-state-it-recognition-awards/
In the news this week:
Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson says an apparent denial-of-service attack took down websites operated by his office for much of Election Day. https://statescoop.com/mississippi-election-day-ddos-incident/
Pennsylvania is moving forward with next-generation 911 after selecting a vendor to guide the state through the migration, implementation and post-migration phases. https://statescoop.com/pennsylvania-next-generation-911-mission-critical-partners/
Washington state has a new CISO. https://statescoop.com/washington-ciso-ralph-johnson-los-angeles-times/
StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here. http://www.prioritiespodcast.com
On the Priorities podcast, departing North Dakota CIO Shawn Riley says his efforts to continue to chase impact will lead him to a focus on clean energy and cryptocurrency in his next career move. https://statescoop.com/north-dakota-cio-shawn-riley-crypto-bitzero/ https://statescoop.com/north-dakota-cio-shawn-riley-bitzero-mars/
Also on the podcast, Dhwani Pandya, an IT director for the Connecticut Office of Early Childhood, explains the state’s efforts to create a new Parent Portal as a hub of all of its digital services. https://statescoop.com/nascio-2022-finalists-state-it-recognition-awards/
In the news this week:
Nevada is working to distribute its biggest-ever investment in broadband infrastructure, but its plans may be disrupted by requirements from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. https://statescoop.com/nevada-broadband-ntia-bead-funding-dispute/
Nearly 1,700 state and local government agencies and education institutions have bought telecommunications products made by Chinese firms banned from doing business with the federal government since 2015, according to a new report from Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emergency Technology. https://statescoop.com/state-local-government-china-telecom-equipment-huawei-zte/
Maryland officials said this week that a workforce development program will fund cybersecurity training for up to 100 state technology employees. https://statescoop.com/maryland-workforce-cybersecurity-training/
StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here. http://www.prioritiespodcast.com
On the Priorities podcast, leaders from the Illinois Department of Innovation and Technology say they’re working to integrate accessibility into how they plan for the state’s technology initiatives. https://statescoop.com/nascio-names-winners-of-2022-state-it-recognition-awards/
Also on the podcast, Nebraska State Patrol Captain Gerry Krolikowski and IT Applications Developer Lead Charlie Lucas explain their efforts to speed up reporting efforts for law enforcement using digital forms and electronic processing. https://statescoop.com/nascio-2022-finalists-state-it-recognition-awards/
In the news this week:
Pennsylvania Chief Information Officer John MacMillan is stepping down after nearly eight years in the role. https://statescoop.com/pennsylvania-cio-john-macmillan-says-hes-stepping-down/
Former Atlanta CIO Gary Brantley, who left city government in November 2020, is now the National Football League’s CIO. https://statescoop.com/former-atlanta-cio-gary-brantley-nfl/
The Education and Homeland Security departments still have much catching up to do against the continued ransomware threat against public school districts nationwide, according to a new report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office. https://statescoop.com/feds-behind-k12-cybersecurity-audit/
StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here. http://www.prioritiespodcast.com
On the Priorities podcast, NASCIO’s Meredith Ward and Deloitte’s Srini Subramanian say state cybersecurity leaders are staring down a workforce gap as they work to protect government networks. https://statescoop.com/nascio-deloitte-ciso-survey-cybersecurity-2022/
Also on the podcast, North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services Assistant Secretary for Technology Services Charles Carter explains his agency’s award-winning critical resource tracker that helped hospitals comply with federal and state reporting requirements during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. https://statescoop.com/nascio-names-winners-of-2022-state-it-recognition-awards/
In the news this week:
The use of mapping technology in voter registration systems and the drawing of precinct boundaries is expected to grow quickly over the next half-decade, according to new research from the National States Geographic Information Council. https://statescoop.com/gis-mapping-tech-elections-administration/
A report published Wednesday found that just one in four local election offices have moved their websites to the federally administered .gov domain, even as the Department of Homeland Security has made site registrations free. https://statescoop.com/just-25-percent-election-offices-dotgov-websites/
The National Association of State Chief Information Officers announced that Tennessee CIO Stephanie Dedmon will serve as the group’s president for the next year. https://statescoop.com/nascio-president-tennessee-cio-stephanie-dedmon/
StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here. http://www.prioritiespodcast.com
Doug Robinson, executive director of the National Association of State Chief Information Officers, joins the Priorities podcast this week to discuss the findings in the group's annual member survey, which was presented this week at its conference in Louisville, Kentucky. https://statescoop.com/nascio-2022-survey-workforce-cio-roles/
In the news this week:
More coverage from NASCIO's annual conference that drew hundreds of state IT and industry leaders to Louisville, including discussions about the workforce, challenges of building and the group's annual awards. https://statescoop.com/tag/nascio-22/ https://statescoop.com/whole-state-cybersecurity-nascio-cios-2022/ https://statescoop.com/nascio-awards-2022/
North Dakota CIO Shawn Riley is stepping down after six years to become chief executive of Bitzero International, a crypto-mining company backed by "Shark Tank" co-host Kevin O'Leary. https://statescoop.com/north-dakota-cio-shawn-riley-crypto-bitzero/
The U.S. Department of Agriculture launched is finally moving forward with the National Accuracy Clearinghouse, an interstate data system to identify individuals receiving duplicate Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits. https://statescoop.com/national-accuracy-clearinghouse-snap-data-states-local-governments/
StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here. prioritiespodcast.com
On the Priorities podcast, Los Angeles Controller Ron Galperin says his office’s emphasis on data visualizations and dashboards is an important tool in making government more accessible to residents. https://statescoop.com/la-controller-galperin-emergency-readiness-maps/
Also on the show, leaders from North Carolina’s Department of Health and Human Services explain their efforts to administer additional food assistance benefits to the state’s students and children during the pandemic — and what that means for the state going forward. https://www.nascio.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/NC_Cross_Boundary_Collaboration_Partnerships.pdf https://statescoop.com/nascio-2022-finalists-state-it-recognition-awards/
In the news this week:
Russian-speaking hacking group Killnet took responsibility for a denial-of-service attack that targeted several state government websites. https://statescoop.com/russia-ukraine-killnet-ddos-state-governments/
Many states still lack concrete plans for app modernization, according to a new survey out this week from the National Association of State CIOs. https://statescoop.com/many-states-still-lack-plans-for-app-modernization-nascio-says/
Idaho’s IT agency has a new director. https://statescoop.com/idaho-governor-names-new-administrator-for-it-agency/
StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here. http://www.prioritiespodcast.com
On the Priorities podcast, Oregon Department of Transportation Innovation and Planning Manager Ben Kahn says consolidating 99 legacy systems into one is enabling more services for residents, and making operations more efficient. https://statescoop.com/oregon-dmv-video-proctoring-knowledge-driving-tests/ https://statescoop.com/nascio-2022-finalists-state-it-recognition-awards/
Also on the show, Washington, D.C. CTO Lindsey Parker explains how her dual role as Assistant City Administrator is boosting the district’s modernization posture and preparing the city for digital services growth. https://upgather.com/it-mod-sled/live
In the news this week:
Alabama will funnel $83 million into expanding broadband across the state. https://statescoop.com/alabama-83-million-broadband-expansion/
Police in San Francisco will soon be able to access live footage from thousands of privately owned security cameras. https://statescoop.com/san-francisco-police-gain-live-access-private-surveillance-cameras/
Amazon Web Services is introducing a “smart city” credential. https://statescoop.com/aws-introduces-smart-city-credential/
StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here. http://www.prioritiespodcast.com
On the Priorities podcast, Urbana, Illinois, IT Director Sanford Hess says the small central Illinois city has a lot in common with its peers across the public sector landscape.
Also on the show, San Jose Chief Innovation Officer Clay Garner explains how he balances modernization and innovation in the city. https://upgather.com/it-mod-sled/live
In the news this week:
StateRAMP announced that several more governments and other organizations have begun using its standards. https://statescoop.com/stateramp-cloud-security-k12-university-north-carolina/
New York City plans to connect upward of 300,000 residents of public-housing facilities with free internet and basic cable service by the end of 2023. https://statescoop.com/eric-adams-matt-fraser-nyc-public-housing-internet/
The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration announced it’s accepting applications for two grant programs furthering the use of technology designed to make transportation safer, cleaner and more efficient. https://statescoop.com/smart-attain-grants-transportation-technology-160-million/
StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here. http://www.prioritiespodcast.com
On the Priorities podcast, Florida CIO James Grant says the state’s IT operations are looking to move beyond its “sordid past” and into a future where the state provides excellent cybersecurity services and strong support to agencies. https://upgather.com/it-mod-sled/ https://statescoop.com/florida-digital-service-james-grant-2022/
Also on the show, Miguel Sangalang, Executive Director of the Bureau of Street Lighting in Los Angeles, explains how the city’s lighting infrastructure is a perfect vehicle for expanding connectivity in the city. https://statescoop.com/tag/smart-city-expo-usa/
Then, blockchain expert Kat Faley, Director for State and Local Government at Chainalysis, talks to StateScoop about why state and local authorities need to pay greater attention to the evolution of cryptocurrencies. http://www.chainalysis.com/thestatescoop
In the news this week:
Several states with Democratic governors are launching websites that list out resources related to abortion services. https://statescoop.com/abortion-friendly-states-launch-websites/
Government technology startup incubator CivStart says 12 more companies are joining its fourth cohort of up and coming startups focused on government. https://statescoop.com/12-govtech-startups-join-civstart-accelerator-2022/
Ransomware outfit Vice Society is claiming credit for a ransomware attack that hit the Los Angeles Unified School District. https://statescoop.com/los-angeles-ransomware-vice-society/
This episode of the Priorities Podcast is sponsored by Chainalysis. http://www.chainalysis.com/thestatescoop
StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here. http://www.prioritiespodcast.com
Georgia’s new CTO will continue the state’s push to the cloud, he says on this week’s Priorities podcast. https://statescoop.com/georgia-chief-cloud-technology-officer-dmitry-kagansky/
Later on the show, Aurora, Illinois, CIO Michael Pegues outlines his city’s refreshed outlook on “smart cities” after the COVID-19 pandemic.
Amy Tong, California’s Secretary of Government Operations, also joins to highlight how her experience as the state’s CIO has prepared her to oversee the state’s main operational agency. https://statescoop.com/california-gov-newsom-picks-former-cio-amy-tong-to-lead-government-operations/
In the news this week:
Los Angeles Unified School District says its networks were targeted by a ransomware attack. https://statescoop.com/los-angeles-school-district-reports-ransomware-attack/
Bijay Kumar is stepping down as Rhode Island’s CIO. https://statescoop.com/rhode-island-cio-bijay-kumar-steps-down/
Vermont CIO John Quinn will depart state government after more than 20 years. https://statescoop.com/vermont-cio-john-quinn-leaves-state-government/
StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here. http://www.prioritiespodcast.com
Louisville, Ky.,’s Metro Council unanimously voted to codify the city’s open data practice and portal into law more than a decade after it was established via executive order.
Later on the show, Mayor Vince Williams of Union City, Ga., explains how he’s approaching the smart cities movement in the Atlanta suburb.
In the news this week:
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration awarded more than $630 million in tribal broadband grants this month. https://statescoop.com/tribal-broadband-programs-got-634m-this-month/
Officials in Lexington, Kentucky, said the city lost about $4 million in federal housing assistance funds to an email fraud scheme. https://statescoop.com/lexington-kentucky-4-million-housing-funds-bec/
Mesa County, Colorado Deputy Clerk Belinda Knisely plead guilty to three misdemeanor charges based on her participation in a May 2021 incident. https://statescoop.com/tina-peters-deputy-clerk-knisely-pleads-guilty-colorado-election/
Register for Smart City Expo USA: www.smartcityexpousa.com/register/
StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here. http://www.prioritiespodcast.com
Cities that are embracing the “smart cities” movement need to rely on collaboration with other government entities, one Florida city technology leader says.
Later on in the show, David Greisen, CEO of the Open Law Library, gives an update on the library’s efforts. https://statescoop.com/ux-user-experience-open-law-library-saving-legal-code/
In the news this week:
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation says a potential data breach earlier this year exposed information about staff and visitors who underwent COVID-19 tests, along with mental health information of current and former inmates dating as far back as 2008. https://statescoop.com/california-corrections-data-breach-mental-health/
The monkeypox virus is overwhelming the outdated technology infrastructure of some local health jurisdictions in Washington state. https://statescoop.com/monkeypox-local-health-office-lack-technology/
Government offices and several public services in Fremont County, Colorado, closed last week as officials attempted to recover from what’s been described only as a “cybersecurity event.” https://statescoop.com/fremont-county-colorado-cyberattack/
Register for Smart City Expo USA: https://www.smartcityexpousa.com/register/
StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here. http://www.prioritiespodcast.com
On this week’s episode of the Priorities podcast, California Department of Public Health COVID-19 Vaccine Task Force Multiethnic Press Secretary Yurina Melara says the state’s chatbot has processed more than 4,000 conversations in two languages. https://statescoop.com/california-covid19-misinformation-chatbot-whatsapp/
In the news this week:
Virginia’s IT agency has completed a move to a new, cloud-enabled data center. https://statescoop.com/virginia-cloud-data-center-migration-complete/
Fort Worth, Texas, is expanding a free Wi-Fi network for residents with limited internet access. https://statescoop.com/free-wi-fi-fort-worth-cisco/
Arlington County, Virginia CIO Jack Belcher is moving into a new advisory role after 22 years. https://statescoop.com/arlington-cio-jack-belcher-norron-lee/
StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here. http://www.prioritiespodcast.com
On this week’s episode of the Priorities podcast, Recorded Future’s Allan Liska says that while ransomware attacks appear to be happening less than last year, there’s still plenty of reason for public sector leaders to stay on guard. https://statescoop.com/ransomware-attack-count-down-2022/
In the news this week:
Georgia CTO Steve Nichols is leaving state government after 20 years. https://statescoop.com/georgia-cto-steve-nichols-steps-down-after-20-years/
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is releasing a guide to digital threats facing state and local election officials. https://statescoop.com/cisa-cyber-toolkit-elections/
Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy is creating a new statewide broadband office to help the state coordinate and accept funding from the federal government. https://statescoop.com/alaska-broadband-office-bill-parity-fund/
StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here. http://www.prioritiespodcast.com
On this week’s episode of the Priorities podcast, the Prison Scholar Fund’s CEO Dirk van Velzen says he plans to use $25,000 from the city to invest in technology education for the incarcerated. https://statescoop.com/seattle-digital-equity-grant-program-immigrants-ywca/
In the news this week:
California’s deputy state CIO will leave government later this year. https://statescoop.com/california-deputy-cio-russ-nichols-to-retire/
The number of ransomware attacks aimed at local governments and health organizations appears to have slowed, according to a report from the Ransomware Task Force. https://statescoop.com/ransomware-attack-count-down-2022/
The U.S. Department of Agriculture will distribute $401 million in loans and grants for rural broadband projects. https://statescoop.com/usda-401-million-rural-broadband/
StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here. http://www.prioritiespodcast.com
On this week’s episode of the Priorities podcast, New Mexico CIO Peter Mantos says he’ll focus on cybersecurity and broadband as he steps into the state’s top IT job. https://statescoop.com/new-mexico-broadband-cybersecurity-peter-mantos/
Later on in the show, New Jersey’s Office of Innovation’s Chief of Staff Kai Feder explains how the state is using data to drive its content strategy for the state website. https://statescoop.com/new-jersey-innovation-data-driven-redesign-services/
In the news this week:
Montana’s Commerce Department is the first agency in the state to achieve 100% digitization, the state’s governor says. https://statescoop.com/montana-commerce-department-100-percent-digital/
New York state is giving local government access to an endpoint detection program from CrowdStrike as part of the state’s new cyber operations center. https://statescoop.com/new-york-cybersecurity-operations-center-endpoint-local-government/
Colorado expects to add 150 new connected vehicles to the state’s roadways. https://statescoop.com/colorado-connected-vehicle-technology/
StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here. http://www.prioritiespodcast.com
On this week’s episode of the Priorities podcast, Former Louisiana Chief Information Security Officer Dustin Glover explains his new role as chief cyber officer. https://statescoop.com/louisiana-ciso-new-chief-cyber-officer/
Also on the show, Washington state Chief Information Officer Bill Kehoe outlines his plan for what he’s calling a One-WaTech approach to cybersecurity.
In the news this week:
States will likely need an extension to take advantage of the federal cybersecurity grants included in last year’s infrastructure law. https://statescoop.com/states-may-need-extension-cyber-grants-nascio/
New research shows cities and counties are making progress spending their American Rescue Plan funding. https://statescoop.com/american-rescue-plan-tracker-brookings-institution-infrastructure/
New Mexico’s new CIO says he’s targeting cybersecurity as Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham pushes to connect more residents with broadband. https://statescoop.com/new-mexico-broadband-cybersecurity-peter-mantos/
StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here. www.prioritiespodcast.com
On this week’s episode of the Priorities podcast, Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold says insider threats are a growing challenge for state election officials. https://statescoop.com/election-security-insider-threats-cisa/ https://statescoop.com/colorado-election-equipment-password-breach-mesa-county/
Also on the show, Frank LaRose, the Republican Secretary of State for Ohio. LaRose says he’s facing similar threats in his state.
In the news this week:
Iowa has a new chief information officer. https://statescoop.com/iowa-cio-matthew-behrens/
San Jose’s new chief information officer wants the Silicon Valley city to become the “hub for government innovation.” https://statescoop.com/san-jose-cio-khaled-tawfik-san-jose-california/
The Election Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center is “reintroducing itself” after four years in existence. https://statescoop.com/election-infrastructure-isac-reintroduce/
StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here. http://www.prioritiespodcast.com
On this week’s episode of the Priorities podcast, Michigan State University CIO Melissa Woo says the university is pursuing broadband expansion across the state, thanks to funding from the federal government. https://statescoop.com/michigan-state-university-gets-10-5-million-to-expand-statewide-broadband/
Listen to the Cutting EDge podcast: https://edscoop.com/cutting-edge-podcast/ In the news this week:
Rhode Island could someday allow some of the state’s registered voters to cast their ballots online. https://statescoop.com/rhode-island-governor-signs-bill-allowing-internet-voting/
Nevada has a new state CIO. https://statescoop.com/timothy-galluzi-nevada-named-cio/ https://statescoop.com/nevada-cio-alan-cunningham-resigns/
A new law in Virginia requires state agencies and local governments to report cyber incidents within 24 hours of detection. https://statescoop.com/cyber-incident-reporting-law-takes-effect-virginia/
StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here. http://www.prioritiespodcast.com
On this week’s episode of the Priorities podcast, Washington state Chief Privacy Officer Katy Ruckle says the role provides state IT agencies an essential check on not only protecting resident data, but also on business goals. https://statescoop.com/chief-privacy-officers-state-nascio/
In the news this week:
New Mexico has a new chief information officer. https://statescoop.com/new-mexico-peter-mantos-it-secretary-cio/
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul named the state’s first chief cyber officer. https://statescoop.com/colin-ahern-chief-cyber-officer-new-york-state/
Chicago has a new CIO to lead a new digital strategy for the city. https://statescoop.com/chicago-it-modernization-lori-lightfoot/
StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here. http://www.prioritiespodcast.com
On this week’s episode of the Priorities podcast, Maryland’s assistant IT Secretary Stefanos Ghebrehewariat says the state’s new website design is informed by the elements that “95.5 percent” of users were looking for. https://governor.maryland.gov/2022/06/01/governor-hogan-announces-launch-of-new-maryland-gov/
In the news this week:
Former Virginia CIO Nelson Moe is joining Iron Bow, an IT services provider, as a sales strategist for the state, local and education market. https://statescoop.com/virginia-nelson-moe-iron-bow-technologies/
Twenty-one states now have chief privacy officers, and more are coming, according to a new report from the National Association of State Chief Information Officers. https://statescoop.com/chief-privacy-officers-state-nascio/
The House Energy and Commerce Committee’s communications and technology panel voted to approve an amendment to the Spectrum Innovation Act that would use funding from wireless spectrum auctions to raise $10 billion for next-generation 911. https://statescoop.com/spectrum-innovation-act-10-billion-ng911/
StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here. http://www.prioritiespodcast.com
On this week’s episode of the Priorities podcast, the Brookings Institution’s Tonantzin Carmona says on mayoral cryptocurrency ambitions need to take into account “a level of responsibility,” around embracing things like bitcoin. https://statescoop.com/crypto-mayors-emerging-tech-bitcoin/
In the news this week:
The former secretary of Maryland’s IT department plead guilty to charges surrounding a bribery and extortion scheme. https://statescoop.com/isabel-fitzgerald-maryland-cio-bribery-extortion/
A vast majority of city and county CIOs expect IT budgets to increase in the next year, according to new survey results from CompTIA’s Public Technology Institute. https://statescoop.com/comptia-local-cio-survey-cybersecurity/
California has a new CIO. https://statescoop.com/california-liana-bailey-crimmins-named-cio/
Read more from StateScoop & EdScoop’s special report on Emerging Tech. https://statescoop.com/special/emerging-tech-a-statescoop-edscoop-special-report/
StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here. http://www.prioritiespodcast.com
On this week’s episode of the Priorities podcast, Scott Bessler, the assistant superintendent for the Metropolitan Sewer District of Greater Cincinnati says a new sensor pilot has massive potential for how the city processes waste. https://statescoop.com/list/predictive-tech-government-7-ways/
Later on the show, Wyoming CIO Bill Vajda returns
In the news this week:
New York state has a new chief information security officer. https://statescoop.com/new-york-state-ciso-chris-desain/
Bitcoin has lost half of its value in the months since Miami Mayor Francis Suarez made public the city’s attempts to capitalize on cryptocurrency through a partnership with CityCoins. https://statescoop.com/crypto-mayors-emerging-tech-bitcoin/
Low or no code software development made big waves during the pandemic, but now advocates for the approach are calling on leaders to be cautious about security vulnerabilities and shadow IT. https://statescoop.com/state-government-low-code-no-code/
Read more from StateScoop & EdScoop’s special report on Emerging Tech. https://statescoop.com/special/emerging-tech-a-statescoop-edscoop-special-report/
StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here. http://www.prioritiespodcast.com
On this week’s episode of the Priorities podcast, Texas CIO Amanda Crawford says the state’s app, Texas by Texas (TxT), is the foundation for future growth for online citizen services in the state. https://statescoop.com/texas-launches-mobile-app-government-services/
Later in the show, New York CIO Angelo “Tony” Riddick gives an update on the state's Joint Security Operations Center. https://statescoop.com/video/new-york-tony-riddick-cybersecurity-center/
In the news this week:
Portland, Oregon lost $1.4 million after a business email compromise. https://statescoop.com/portland-oregon-business-email-compromise/
Somerset County, New Jersey, was hit with ransomware. https://statescoop.com/somerset-county-nj-ransomware/
Maryland is the second state in the U.S. to offer its state ID cards on the Apple Wallet app. https://statescoop.com/maryland-drivers-license-apple-wallet/
StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here. http://www.prioritiespodcast.com
On this week’s episode of the Priorities podcast, Pennsylvania CIO John MacMillan says he’s looking to data as the “life blood” of the state’s modernization and citizen service efforts. https://statescoop.com/pennsylvania-centralizes-digital-services-chief-data-officer/
Later in the show, Connecticut CIO Mark Raymond says consolidation of the state’s IT is underway and included in the state’s recent budget that Gov. Ned Lamont signed. https://statescoop.com/connecticut-consolidates-technology/
In the news this week:
Thirty-four states and territories have already signed up for the $45 billion in broadband funding from the federal government. https://statescoop.com/34-states-bead-broadband-program/
Georgia CIO Shawnzia Thomas says the concept of constituent-first has fueled her first year in the job. https://statescoop.com/shawnzia-thomas-georgia-cio-aws/
Chicago’s public school system is notifying 500,000 current and former students, as well as 60,000 current and former employees of a data breach. https://statescoop.com/chicago-public-schools-ransomware-battelle-for-kids/
StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here. www.prioritiespodcast.com
On this week’s episode of the Priorities podcast, North Carolina’s Nate Denny explains how his state is tackling the digital divide with the funding in the infrastructure law and American Rescue Plan. https://statescoop.com/ntia-bead-broadband-infrastructure-grants/ https://statescoop.com/n-c-officials-tout-unique-opportunity-for-broadband-expansion/
Later in the show, New Hampshire CIO Denis Goulet talks about how his state is approaching relief funding from the American Rescue Plan. https://statescoop.com/state-local-arpa-technology/
In the news this week:
California plans to merge its data analytics bureau with its innovation and digital services agency. https://statescoop.com/california-office-data-innovation-merger/
Bloomberg Philanthropies and several nonprofit groups are working to help local governments get the most out of the $550 billion in funding from last year’s federal infrastructure law. https://statescoop.com/bloomberg-local-infrastructure-hub-grant-funding/
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan is boosting cybersecurity and technology efforts in the state with his signature on three bills. https://statescoop.com/maryland-larry-hogan-cybersecurity-bills/
StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here. http://www.prioritiespodcast.com
On this week’s episode of the Priorities podcast, Vermont CIO John Quinn says he’s furthering the state’s work on IT modernization with $140 million from the state legislature. https://statescoop.com/it-modernization-vermont-john-quinn/
Also on the show, Oklahoma CISO Matt Singleton says his team is preparing for the first round of cyber grants coming later this year, even while state and local governments await additional guidance. https://statescoop.com/video/oklahoma-ciso-matt-singleton-nascio/
In the news this week:
Virginia is moving to end the widespread telework that began during the pandemic. https://statescoop.com/virginia-glenn-youngkin-telework/
Officials in Illinois’ largest county say a $25 million project upgrading more than 21,000 phone lines with VoIP is now complete. https://statescoop.com/cook-county-voip/
A data breach of an education vendor in New York City’s public schools has spread across the rest of the state. https://statescoop.com/illuminate-education-breach-new-york-state/
StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here. http://www.prioritiespodcast.com
On this week’s episode of the Priorities podcast, New York CTO Rajiv Rao on digital services. https://www.nascio.org/press-releases/nascio-technology-champion-award-honors-new-yorks-rajiv-rao/
Curtis Wood, CIO of Massachusetts, talks about the state’s opportunities to continue the momentum around IT modernization.
In the news this week:
New data from NASCIO shows that only 45 percent of states have a strategy in place to modernize their application portfolios. https://statescoop.com/application-modernization-states-nascio/
Analysts at the MissionSquare Research Institute say many public-sector workers continue to feel burned out by the COVID-19 crisis. https://statescoop.com/state-employees-burnout-workforce-cios/
State CIOs say smaller-dollar projects can be just as influential as big ones. https://statescoop.com/russ-nichols-california-tarek-tomes-minnesota/
StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here. www.prioritiespodcast.com
On this week’s episode of the Priorities podcast, Tennessee CIO Stephanie Dedmon says that state IT leaders prioritize diversity and inclusion in their workforce. https://statescoop.com/diversity-state-it-technology-nascio/
Wyoming’s cybersecurity team, including state CISO Aaron Roberts and Mikki Munson, cybersecurity and critical infrastructure protection program manager outline their approach to impending federal cybersecurity grants. https://statescoop.com/state-and-local-groups-praise-passage-of-long-awaited-infrastructure-bill/ https://statescoop.com/state-local-cyber-grant-program-summer-cisa/
In the news this week:
A school district in Texas has fired an employee suspected of installing cryptocurrency mining devices in school buildings. https://statescoop.com/galveston-school-district-cryptocurrency/
The U.S. Digital Response is adding a new program for local election officials. https://statescoop.com/us-digital-response-election-program/
California’s technology agency has a new plan for the $3.25 billion statewide broadband network that Gov. Gavin Newsom OK’d last year. https://statescoop.com/california-statewide-broadband-maps-draft-plan/
StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here. http://www.prioritiespodcast.com
On this week’s episode of the Priorities podcast, San Jose, California, Chief Innovation Officer Clay Garner explains how he’s approaching the digital divide in the city that is home to Silicon Valley. https://statescoop.com/pedestrian-deaths-san-jose-lidar/
In the news this week:
Virginia has a new CIO. https://statescoop.com/virginia-bob-osmond-cio-youngkin/
Texas’ Department of Information Resources has named Angelo State University as the first of several regional security operations centers around the state. https://statescoop.com/west-texas-regional-soc-dir/
California’s Department of General Services added GitLab to the state’s software licensing program. https://statescoop.com/california-gitlab-devops/
StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here. www.prioritiespodcast.com
On this week’s episode of the Priorities podcast, Kansas Chief Information Technology Officer DeAngela Burns-Wallace explains how the state prioritized collaboration and sharing in its approach to cybersecurity. https://statescoop.com/kansas-cyber-deangela-burns-wallace/
Jenna Leveille, president of the National States Geographic Information Council, as well as Dan Ross, its interim executive director, highlight the state of public sector GIS and outline the organization’s priorities as its newly-hired executive director John Jordan comes on board. https://statescoop.com/nsgic-executive-director-john-jordan/
In the news this week:
Colorado has a new chief information security officer. https://statescoop.com/colorado-ciso-ray-yepes/
Major technology upgrades are coming to Vermont, state CIO John Quinn says. https://statescoop.com/it-modernization-vermont-john-quinn/
Code for America will use a $100 million investment to launch a new initiative that helps state governments improve their social benefit programs. https://statescoop.com/code-for-america-safety-net-innovation-lab-states/
StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here. http://www.prioritiespodcast.com
On this week’s episode of the Priorities podcast, Christopher Bramwell, Utah’s government operations privacy officer, outlines his approach to incubating a culture of data privacy across state government. https://statescoop.com/utah-data-privacy-certified-professionals/
New York CIO Angelo “Tony” Riddick says the state saw “a recent uptick in traffic with IP addresses originating in Russia.” https://statescoop.com/russian-cyber-threat-new-york-angelo-riddick/
In the news this week:
Virginia has a new chief data officer. https://statescoop.com/virginia-chief-data-officer-ken-pfeil/ https://statescoop.com/virginia-cdo-ken-pfeil-interview/
Ransomware is “straining” local government services, according to a new bulletin from the FBI. https://statescoop.com/fbi-ransomware-local-government/
State IT leaders are “still waiting to hear” from federal government officials on what programs will be allowed under a new federal cybersecurity grant program. https://statescoop.com/state-tech-leaders-cyber-grants/ https://statescoop.com/state-local-cyber-grant-program-summer-cisa/
StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here. www.prioritiespodcast.com
On this week’s episode of the Priorities podcast, Delaware CIO Jason Clarke is trying to bring high-speed broadband to “each and every home and roadway. https://statescoop.com/delaware-spends-56-million-on-broadband-for-all-effort/
Rep. Jim Langevin is looking toward the next phase of federal cybersecurity legislation. https://upgather.com/cybersecurity-modernization-sled/live https://statescoop.com/jim-langevin-cybersecurity-modernization/
Nic Perez, Chief Technology Officer for Cloud at ThunderCat Technology and Brian Schoepfle, Manager, Partner Solution Architects at Amazon Web Services, explain how state and local agencies can get a return on cloud investment quickly.
In the news this week:
New York City Mayor Eric Adams wants an investigation of Illuminate Education, a software vendor for the Department of Education that experienced a data breach in January. https://statescoop.com/new-york-city-schools-vendor-breach/
Boston has a new CIO. https://statescoop.com/boston-mayor-cio-santiago-garces-julia-gutierrez/
A new Deloitte survey says many government leaders have shifted to long-term planning as the crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic begins to wane. https://statescoop.com/deloitte-government-trends-post-covid/
StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday.
This episode of the Priorities Podcast is brought to you by Amazon Web Services, Thundercat and DLT.
Listen more here. http://www.prioritiespodcast.com
On this week’s episode of the Priorities podcast, Doug Levin, the national director of the K-12 Security Information Exchange, encourages more collaboration around cybersecurity. https://statescoop.com/k12-cybersecurity-underreported-k12six/
Maryland chief data officer Pat McLoughlin says collaboration was essential for his state’s data inventory effort. https://statescoop.com/maryland-first-chief-data-privacy-officers/
In the news this week:
Chicago has a new acting commissioner of the department that oversees its information technology agency. https://statescoop.com/chicago-acting-commissioner-it-agency/
Cybersecurity leader Vinod Brahmapuram is stepping down from his post as Washington state’s CISO. https://statescoop.com/washington-ciso-vinod-brahmapuram-leaving-government/
Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser is proposing $12.6 million to improve the city’s digital services in her 2023 budget. https://statescoop.com/dc-mayor-budget-digital-services/
StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here. http://www.prioritiespodcast.com
On this week’s episode of the Priorities Podcast, Nebraska CIO Ed Toner explains how states should use data analysis as part of performance management efforts.
Texas CISO Nancy Rainosek, and state deputy CISO Matthew Kelly, offer an update on the state’s TX-RAMP effort. https://statescoop.com/stateramp-used-10-states-cybe/
In the news this week:
Agencies in Montana’s state government are competing to take services 100 percent digital. https://statescoop.com/montana-digital-services-100/
Cleveland, Ohio, has a new innovation and technology lead. https://statescoop.com/cleveland-justin-bibb-cito-froilan-roy-fernando/
The Multi-State Information Sharing & Analysis Center will receive $11 million as part of the $1.5 trillion omnibus spending bill President Joe Biden signed last week. https://statescoop.com/ms-isac-11-million-federal-spending-omnibus/
StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. http://www.prioritiespodcast.com
On this week’s episode of the Priorities Podcast, former New York City CTO John Paul Farmer reflects on his time in city government and how he’s bringing that experience to his new role at WeLink.
Karen Evans, the former U.S. administrator for e-government at the White House and former Department of Homeland Security CIO, offers tips on how to prevent more than 90 percent of ransomware attacks. https://statescoop.com/preventing-ransomware-local-government/
In the news this week:
Miami city commissioners are claiming only a “basic” understanding of how the city’s arrangement with CityCoins works. https://statescoop.com/miami-commissioners-miamicoin-crypto/
TransparentBusiness founder Alex Konanykhin is offering $1 million to any military official who arrests Russian President Vladimir Putin for war crimes due to the country’s invasion of Ukraine. https://statescoop.com/transparentbusiness-founder-offers-1-million-for-putins-arrest/
A hacking group linked to the Chinese government has compromised the networks of at least six state governments, according to new research from Mandiant. https://statescoop.com/mandiant-apt41-chinese-hackers-state-government/
Also new this week from StateScoop & EdScoop: A special report on data & analytics. https://statescoop.com/special/state-local-data-analytics-2022/
StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here: www.prioritiespodcast.com
On this week’s episode of the Priorities Podcast, Los Angeles City Controller Ron Galperin offers his views on how his office uses data — and open data — to make the city more accountable.
In the news this week:
President Biden will appoint a chief prosecutor to target fraudulent activity against the U.S. government’s pandemic relief programs. https://statescoop.com/biden-justice-department-chief-prosecutor-pandemic-unemployment-fraud/
A report from the NYU Brennan Center for Justice says 23 states are using voting equipment that’s more than a decade old and no longer manufactured. https://statescoop.com/voting-equipment-replacement-cost-350m/
City CIOs across the country are taking on new responsibilities and new titles. https://statescoop.com/city-cios-new-titles-new-brand/
New this week from Scoop News Group: The Cutting EDge podcast, which explores the trending topics and news across the higher education technology landscape. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. www.cuttingedgepodcast.com
StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here. www.prioritiespodcast.com
On this week’s episode of the Priorities Podcast, Colorado CIO Tony Neal-Graves offers his assessment of how the state can close the broadband gap with the influx of federal government funding from the American Rescue Plan and infrastructure package. https://statescoop.com/colorado-technical-debt-federal-infrastructure/
Chris Mitchell, the director of the Community Broadband Networks Initiative at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, says the funding should indeed be enough, assuming “states are smart” with how they spend the money.
Maryland CIO Michael Leahy talks about his time in the music industry. Leahy, the current NASCIO president, owned a recording studio and was a radio DJ. He still writes and produces music in his spare time. Leahy and other government IT leaders’ work in music will be featured in an upcoming piece on StateScoop.
In the news this week:
Phil Wittmer is stepping down as Virginia’s CIO after less than a month on the job. https://statescoop.com/virginia-cio-phil-wittmer-steps-down-one-month/
New York state is opening a “state of the art” cybersecurity facility in Brooklyn to serve as an operations center for state and local cybersecurity needs. https://statescoop.com/new-york-opens-joint-cybersecurity-center-state-local/
New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell is requesting the city reverse its ordinance banning facial recognition. https://statescoop.com/facial-recognition-new-orleans-mayor-cantrell-ban-overturn/
StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here: http://www.prioritiespodcast.com
On today’s episode of the Priorities podcast, former New York City cyber lead Geoff Brown reflects on his time in city government, and highlights what he’s excited about for his new role at Recorded Future. https://statescoop.com/geoff-brown-nyc-cyber-chief-looks-back/
In the news this week:
President Biden encouraged counties to use American Rescue Plan dollars to prepare for an impending boost of funding from the infrastructure package. https://statescoop.com/biden-tells-counties-rescue-plan-funds-can-be-used-ahead-of-infrastructure-boost/
County CIOs, though, are plotting out ways to make “realistic” IT spending decisions with that money. https://statescoop.com/county-cios-rescue-plan-money-realistic-it-projects/
Virginia IT Agency Chief Operating Officer Jonathan Ozovek announced he will leave state government just a month after the departure of former state CIO Nelson Moe. https://statescoop.com/virginia-it-coo-jonathan-ozovek-resigns/
A Missouri prosecutor announced that he will not pursue charges against a St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter who Gov. Mike Parson accused of “hacking” the state government. https://statescoop.com/no-charges-vulnerability-reporter-mike-parson/
StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more here. http://www.prioritiespodcast.com
News this week (00:48): California’s former CIO takes over as the state’s operations lead https://statescoop.com/california-gov-newsom-picks-former-cio-amy-tong-to-lead-government-operations/
Washington state works to bring systems online after a data exposure https://statescoop.com/washington-department-licensing-records/
Maryland’s new digital services portal is making big progress. https://statescoop.com/maryland-onestop-michael-leahy/
Bill Vajda, the former CIO of Alaska, returns to state government as Wyoming's new CIO. Vajda will prioritize cybersecurity, modernization and service delivery. (6:45) https://statescoop.com/new-wyoming-cio-bill-vajda-likes-newness-freshness/
Then, Auth0's Salman Ladha emphasizes the growing importance of identity and access management across state and local government. (23:48) https://statescoop.com/podcast/despite-massive-strides-more-work-ahead-for-government-on-identity/
This episode is brought to you by Auth0. StateScoop's Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. http://www.prioritiespodcast.com
On this week’s episode of the Priorities Podcast, CityCoins may expand next to Philadelphia after its initial rollouts in Miami and New York City. https://statescoop.com/philadelphia-citycoins-mark-wheeler-jim-kenney/
Texas’ IT agency has a new mobile application that allows residents to renew their driver’s license, vehicle registrations or professional licenses. More services are coming to the application soon, according to Texas CIO Amanda Crawford. https://statescoop.com/texas-launches-mobile-app-government-services/
Cleveland’s snow plow tracking website is back up and running after it malfunctioned just a day after its release during a snow storm. The tracker is new Mayor Justin Bibb’s response to residents frustrated with uncleared roads. https://statescoop.com/clevelands-gis-snowplow-overwhelming-demand-justin-bibb/
Doug Robinson, executive director of the National Association of State Chief Information Officers, and former Ohio CIO Stu Davis discuss the qualities that make a good state CIO. The two offer their perspective on the tactics, approaches and skills public sector technology leaders need to be successful in today’s government environment. https://statescoop.com/what-makes-good-state-cio/
Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis and Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards offer their takes on the incoming surge of federal dollars from the infrastructure bill. In addition to spending on roads and bridges, the governors are also going to have to make decisions on how money from $1 billion in state and local cybersecurity grants gets spent. https://statescoop.com/cisa-jen-easterly-national-governors-association/
StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. www.prioritiespodcast.com
On today’s episode of the Priorities Podcast, the Pew Charitable Trusts are warning governors and legislators to be wary of an impending financial “cliff” after the recent influx of federal aid expires. https://statescoop.com/most-states-have-a-budget-surplus-but-should-be-wary-of-financial-cliff/
NASCIO’s latest federal advocacy priorities are out, and state CIOs are looking for additional clarity from the federal government on state and local cyber grants. https://statescoop.com/nascios-federal-agenda-2022-cyber-grants/
Nelson Moe, now recently-former Virginia CIO, explains what’s next for him and his proudest accomplishments in the Commonwealth, and offers advice for his successor and state CIOs across the community. https://statescoop.com/longtime-virginia-cio-nelson-moe-exits/ https://statescoop.com/virginia-gov-youngkin-phil-wittmer-cio/
Meghan Sullivan and Thomas Beck, both from Deloitte’s Government and Public Services practice, offer their takes on NASCIO’s list of top 10 priorities for 2022. The two highlight the changing landscape for cloud services, as well as the spotlights on what’s ahead for state CIOs in the new year.
StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast is available every Thursday. Listen more: http://www.prioritiespodcast.com