A seasoned journalist with 20+ years' experience, Adam Stone covers education, technology, government and the military, along with diverse other topics. His work has appeared in dozens of general and niche publications nationwide.
The winners in this year’s Digital Cities survey have long been following well-laid plans for modernizing infrastructure, cybersecurity and citizen services, meaning they were prepared to stand up to the pandemic.
2020 put all states to the test as they moved to deliver more services online than ever before. Leading states had laid the groundwork with strong as-a-service platforms and pivoted quickly to take on new challenges.
State and local public-sector agencies have long been making a move toward “cloud first” and now “cloud smart” strategies. COVID-19 gave them the change to prove whether those investments paid off.
In the 18th annual Digital Counties Survey, leading jurisdictions had made investments in broadband, remote collaboration and digital citizen engagement long before COVID-19 tested whether they were up to the challenge.
At the IBM Think Gov Virtual Summit, state, local and federal public-sector IT leaders discussed the challenges and opportunities presented by COVID-19, like increased cyberthreats and rapid workforce shifts.
As automation becomes an ever-more viable tool for government for everything from cameras on light poles to using AI to set prisoners’ bail, can policymakers ensure it is used responsibly and ethically?
Ohio Chief Information Officer Ervan Rodgers explains his approach to infrastructure consolidation, how to make a smart transition to cloud-based services and how the Innovate Ohio program will bolster citizen services.
Private-sector salaries and benefits often lure potential public employees away from state and local IT jobs. Here’s how government recruiters are reaching and keeping a new generation of tech talent.
In the third annual Government Experience Awards, winning jurisdictions took citizen experience to the next level by streamlining websites, focusing on user-friendly design and incorporating real-time feedback.
Since it debuted last year, the first dedicated communications network for emergency responders has signed on 9,000 public safety agencies, and plans to grow in areas including portable services and improved connections.
In the 17th annual Digital Counties Survey, the top 58 counties nationwide stand out for their commitment to using tech to improve quality of life, shore up cybersecurity, support municipal resources and more.
Americans want more control over their data, but little is being done at the federal level to update regulations for the digital age. Here's what some state IT leaders are doing to fill the gaps.
At the state, county and city levels there has been an influx of chief information officers who are new to either their positions or government itself. They offer insight into what they’re working on and what’s ahead.
An Opioid Analytics Users Group will unite stakeholders in government, industry and academia to analyze available data to identify patterns and more effectively direct prevention and treatment activities.
In office since January, Chief Information Officer Theresa Szczurek is tackling big projects like cybersecurity, broadband, telehealth and even blockchain with an agile, “it’s OK to fail” philosophy.
Laurel Caldwell, IT director in the county of just 39,000 residents, discusses delivering a full suite of online services and building strong relationships among county agencies despite limited resources.
The South Coast Air Quality Management District reports high engagement with a new mobile application meant to equip citizens with knowledge about current smog levels as well as air quality forecasts.
The Coachella Valley Water District has overhauled and modernized its IT infrastructure, as part of a $16 million capital improvement plan that will improve data management, simplify payments and boost conservation.
A partnership with software firm Social Solutions will allow city schools to connect with nonprofit agencies and give students more holistic support based on up-to-date data.
At the Elsinore Valley Municipal Water District in western Riverside County, Calif., smart meters throughout its coverage area and an upgraded ERP system are transforming how they operate.
While a handful of Oregon state agencies are already piloting e-procurement, an audit shows that a statewide system could have saved more than $1 billion over the last two years, enough to close the 2019-21 budget gap.
This year's winners in the Center for Digital Government’s Digital Cities Survey are finding creative ways to solve government problems with technology, pushing the envelope of what is possible in the public sector.
The results of this year's survey show that top states prioritize collaboration, good governance and strong citizen engagement in their use of technology to serve the public.
Guarding against the latest cyberthreats requires an aggressive training program. But can the human element ever be completely overcome?
This year's Best of California awards go to agencies and individuals championing innovative public-sector tech, from transportation analytics and electronic health records to drones and smart swimming pools.
By uniting under the GTY organization, the companies could leverage their marketing power, while also making it easier for government entities to access needed services.
Across the country, governments at all levels are working to improve the way they reach citizens digitally. This year's first-place winners include Utah, Oakland County, Mich., and Louisville, Ky.
A $10,000 grant from smart cities accelerator US Ignite allows drone-powered visuals from accident scenes to be viewed by necessary personnel from multiple locations.
This year's winners use tech to improve government, even when the odds are stacked against them.
5G wireless networks could accelerate the smart city revolution. But the technology's hefty price tag has meant few takers so far.
We check in with the second wave of chief innovation officers charged with bucking the status quo.
Tech-enabled collaboration and streamlined service delivery are on display in this year's lineup of honorees.
FirstNet and AT&T distributed 80 FirstNet devices to fire, police and incident response teams to help connect first responders during the Boston Marathon.
A new platform could shave weeks off a monthslong process of putting together Rochester's annual financial report.
Housed in the Office of the Chief Information Officer, centrally-located geospatial expertise is fueling GIS projects across Washington state.
Over the last decade, state and local governments have invested in open data initiatives. Have those efforts done what we thought they should?
Orlando's first innovation director, Matt Broffman, has identified 225 city services that could be Web-enabled and he's hiring an innovation team to get them online.
This year's winners are focused on deploying technology where it makes the most impact for residents.
The company has released city-specific sites featuring publicly available data using the Amazon Web Services platform.
To date, 27 states have officially opted in to FirstNet, increasing the forward momentum behind the nation's broadband first responder network.
The $50 million cyberlab will bring together state government, academia, law enforcement and private-sector players in a bid to shore up the cyberworkforce and strengthen defenses.
Buying with public money is difficult by design, but are there fair ways to fix it?
By deploying smart meters at 500 homes in the coming months, the county is looking to get a more granular read on water usage and provide consumers with more detailed information on their own consumption.
Since 2014, the city has been using smart meters with positive outcomes, and now has its eye on sensors that can be programmed to zero out a meter when a car pulls away, for instance.
As lessons from the pilots roll in, they are fed back to the Valley Transportation Authority’s innovation lab, which aims to develop, test and showcase new technologies related to transportation.
Technology leaders in Indianapolis have been using information to attack opioid abuse since 2013, and have become increasingly sophisticated in how they apply data science to combat the problem.
How to get talent in the door, keep them engaged and soften the blow of the retirement wave.
State and local government IT leaders are implementing lightweight tech fixes that generate big returns.
Warren Lemmens, the CTO of Nokia Oceania, discusses Australia's emerging smart city landscape — and what the U.S. can learn from it.
On the theory that a civic approach to wellness starts with data, some 2,000 residents in Lake Nona, Fla., have signed on to be eligible for a longitudinal research study on local health and wellness issues.
By the end of the year, San Diego expects to have 3,200 multi-sensor pods attached to light poles all around the city to listen for gunshots, count cars and monitor air temperature.
All of the new features are intended to enhance the customer experience as the convention center vies for its share of business against dozens of other cities.
A newly formed collaboration aims to organize efforts and blur the line between academic research and applied practice in Pacific Northwest cities.
The new Street Talk data portal includes information about what Los Angeles collects, from whom and where the money goes.
Anchorage recently hired a chief innovation officer, launched an open-data portal and won hands-on support from Code for America.
In Asheville, N.C., Code for Asheville’s core of 20 to 30 volunteer coders now work in close tandem with community organizations to address specific, tangible needs.
Researchers now can look across the growth trends in the world’s biggest cities over the course of a quarter century.
For this year's smart cities workshop, participants came not just with enthusiasm and curiosity, but also with practical ideas.
The number of information sources streaming into government has never been greater. But is it making us smarter?
Little has been said so far, but the White House and Congress will impact digital education in a number of ways.
IBM says its supercomputer Watson can help give analysts an edge in the cybersecurity war. But not everyone is convinced artificial intelligence is the solution.
A new study by William Eggers finds cities that tap the wisdom of the masses can maximize the impact of smart technology investments.
A new partnership aims to deliver access to apps that will help utilities derive the most benefit from the vast Internet of Things deployments that are expected in the next few years.
As a finalist in the running to host the 2024 Olympic Games, Paris has said it will deliver a highly sustainable event, with many of the venues taking place in the heart of the city.
A new report from the Sunlight Foundation delves into a number of best practices for cities looking to engage with citizen information.
Planners of the $73 million Virtual Singapore project are working with government agencies to see how they might best make use of the simulated city.
City planners adopted a new Web-based application for this year’s count of homeless people and got a much more accurate understanding of how many people are actually bunking on the streets.
Many cities are excited to get to work on smart cities initiatives, but a new report finds that only 16 percent are prepared to fund their projects.
As cities face the potential for bad actors to take control of drones or tap into their intelligence, security needs to be a primary concern. A new guide from the Cloud Security Alliance may help.
To combat low voter turnout in local elections, the U.S. Vote Foundation is using data to improve those numbers by making polling information more easily available to voters.
CityGrows, which won 2016's Hack the Beach coding competition, is a suite of next-generation data management tools that provide access and transparency for smarter city services.
Sustainable Jersey's Coding for Community contest will generate new tools for local municipalities seeking tech solutions to their environmental issues.
Transportation analytics firm Miovision has launched a new division that will help cities make sense of all the new data from connected devices and leverage it wisely.
Just 5 percent of city and county workers rated their agencies as "outstanding" in effective citizen engagement, and only 26 percent think their agency's website is "highly effective."
While blockchain technology doesn't have the highest profile among senior executives, those government and business leaders who do understand it have big plans for putting it to use.
In the struggle to feed an ever-growing population, American university scientists are working to use a data-driven approach to the global problem.
A new report on the Department of Transportation's Smart City Challenge finds that transit projects are managing not only commuting and congestion, but also broader social issues like job access and even infant mortality.
GIS systems have had to evolve in step with their technology foundations. For government, this evolution is painful, but ultimately necessary.
While Internet access remains a priority, it is no longer the driving need behind tech projects being funded in Seattle.
With a new offering, city planners will be able to shift their point of view as they move through the virtual space, and a series of toggle options will add a range of virtual data overlays to the main visual.
A year into AT&T’s smart cities framework, a clear vision has emerged.
Municipalities are using the latest communications tools to make government meetings more available to the public.
The Soofa Sign is getting tested in local government and could co-mingle public and commercial information in a single space.
Hard data enables Louisville, Ky., residents to know their broadband speeds and it's also proving beneficial to the city, which is looking to kick off new connectivity projects.
Organizers of a contest around such systems especially wanted to ensure they would be able to surmount what is perhaps the highest hurdle facing e-voting: the public’s reluctance to try something new.
Water has yet to take a place in the roster of smart city regulars, but there’s much that technology could do to improve water infrastructure.
When it comes to data, the research suggests government is limited not by a lack of data, but by the process and tools it uses to examine it. Before data transformations can occur in government, researchers argue the institutions using it must embrace strategic change.
Some say that a president with a business background should understand the value of data in decision-making.
Municipalities across Kansas are mobilizing their data to inform the citizenry and drive performance improvements.
At a recent board meeting, FirstNet officials laid out a 100-day plan that indicates a number of strategic milestones the authority plans to hit once an award is made.
Dallas is one of several municipalities incorporating animal service data into its citizen-facing portal. Louisville, Ky., Los Angeles, Miami-Dade County, and Aurora, Colo., have all gone this route.
The AllTransit database delivers routes and times for bus, rail and ferry services delivered by over 500 city agencies, then cross-references this against demographic data, jobs information, housing, parking and a range of other critical metrics.
Civic User Testing Groups are taking off as as a novel way to evaluate new government websites and apps, and put them through their paces before launch.
A new playbook provides best practices based on work in 22 cities around the globe.
City planners aim to take the platform’s data-management capabilities and eventually leverage them through the use of its own data analytics tools, presently in development.
The new system brings together 92 databases, giving users free access to raw data, as well as presenting them with 17 maps highlighting different geospatial features across this county of 1.2 million people.
Wide ranging as the action plan's recommendations may be, they all share a common foundation: to use data to drive concrete, practical change.
In many cases, the data needed to drive smart pollution analytics already is readily available.
Each unit from Totem Power serves as a power station, can be wired in to collect power from other nearby solar cells or wind turbines, includes Wi-Fi and 4G capabilities, and can act as a charging station for electric vehicles.
Government IT executives find themselves in a pitched battle with the private sector to woo cyberpros from what most describe as an insufficient labor pool — but CyberSeek hopes to help.
Looking forward, the goal is for practices associated with open data to become simply a part of good government management in the future, rather than being viewed as a separate concept.
In places like Cobb County, Ga., and Forsyth County, N.C., officials have implemented GIS applications to give the public easy access to polling-station wait time information, along with other relevant election data.
With an award on the $7 billion First Responder Network Authority program potentially just weeks away, those on the front lines say that despite years of planning, they still have more questions than answers — but the need for such a network remains.
Key players across the nation are forming alliances to ensure that when new cyberthreats emerge, all relevant participants can be prepared to act.
The vision begins with something tangible: a fiber network that will span the entirety of the development, providing connectivity for business tenants, residents and the public.
The city, incorporated in 2012, set money aside for a big smart-city initiative before competing needs could scarf up every line item in the budget.
Montgomery County, Md., wants to ensure that all children have access to the Internet to further their education, and public officials are devising a strategy to make it happen.
Broadband is commonly described as a critical piece of modern infrastructure. Here’s how a city, a state and a school district are working to make sure everyone has access.
About 2,000 residents have created profiles that include personal and property details that can help inform emergency personnel responding to 911 calls.
The initiative is part of the city’s broader effort to generate data-driven decision-making in its parks department, a move reflected in large and small municipalities nationwide.
Investor interest is helping to point a lot of startup energy at government. Does this mean there's a place for innovation at city hall?
The city’s Office of Digital Inclusion aims to give all residents access to digital and communications technology, and make sure they understand technology and its relevancy to their daily lives.
Structural upheavals and a budget reality that threatened a major connectivity initiative aren’t stopping the work of these state and local government CIOs.
Instead of the sweeping overhaul first envisioned, today’s smart city initiatives are evolving on a far more modest scale.
The city's partnership with insurer Allstate to leverage data analysis as a means to improve city services could represent a new means for public CIOs to take advantage of private-sector expertise.
Though not a widespread approach (yet), some in government are bringing data science in-house.
Each has some overlap with the CIO’s function, so each state and local government has to work out in its own way just which chief will oversee what domain.
Tomorrow's technology will enhance citizen services while improving how government functions.
Leaders of five major projects talk about what smart components they have and how they made those choices.
Legislation on the horizon could signal make-or-break issues for public CIOs. Here’s what you need to know about body-worn cameras, legalized marijuana and open data.
The state’s foray into blockchain may serve as notice to other public-sector entities that the technology’s potential soon may be coming to fruition.
The technology, known as the blockchain, is a sort of infinite running ledger, keeping exact track of every bitcoin transaction -- and it may have far-reaching impacts in government.
What’s it like to run a high-stakes project? We talk to CIOs leading some of the biggest.
As governments scramble to please mobile users, hybrid apps might be a winning option.
Four prominent CDOs discuss the work they do and the meaning of their jobs in the overall structure of civic governance.
In many states, IT planners in health and human services have sought ways to bridge the divide, gathering data from disparate sources across government to inform the public, drive better policy and improve social outcomes.
Myriad factors and unknowns cloud the question for now.
Longitudinal data sets give educators a 360-degree view of student performance at the push of a button -- and they're changing education at both the student and policy levels.
Some tech entrepreneurs are making headway, delivering a range of tools to improve government and ultimately better the lives of citizens.
The shortage of cybersecurity experts is well documented. So what are agencies doing to fill the gap?
Governments team up to develop backup arrangements for tech services in the event of an emergency.
Solutions to deal with security and data privacy issues have sprouted up in droves, but is there a good fix to the people problem?
Governments outside the U.S. have embraced the OpenDocument Format as the new way of doing business. What should state and local governments know about it?
Not everyone’s convinced of the value, but public CIOs must be involved in the decision.
Emergency managers are increasingly concerned about cyberattacks on 911 and other public safety systems.
By collecting and collating disparate data, government agencies are creating information repositories to assist decision-making.
With the launch of Cover Oregon, state officials expect their commitment to design thinking to pay off.
Video footage can help unravel an event and catch the perpetrators, but some say the presence of cameras could deter acts of violence.
Proponents say vertical stacking simplifies your data center — but will you be locked in?
Failure to change will leave government shackled to the status quo. Here are some ideas for changing your cultural mindset.
Listening to relevant posts from the public on social media platforms helps governments drive action and respond to emergencies.
The Web makes it easy to collect campaign cash, but raises the risk of phishing, hacking and data theft.
Utah makes guide for state workers to offer support, guidance on bring-your-own devices.
VoIP technology brings portability and cost savings to 911 call centers, making it the top choice for system replacement.
Real-time system in Maryland called the County Hospital Alert Tracking System lets emergency rooms give notice when they don't have room for patients transported by ambulance.
Using data to find the overlap between traffic accidents and serious crime, public safety managers can deploy resources efficiently and effectively.
Arlington County eases maintenance while reducing heat and noise for dispatchers.
Nonprofits let government agencies bypass their formal procurement processes.
Work force development is key to disaster recovery.
EMSystems, PIER Systems each had a role in minimizing death toll.
Florida Department of Children and Families uses voice recognition software to eliminate manual transcribing.
Emergency response was swift and massive, thanks to preparedness exercises.
Texas Department of Transportation taps data management system to make sense of crashes.
Texas cities get GIS for less.
With baby boomers leaving state employment, Boomerang system lists retirees with valuable skills.
State Division of Children and Family Services uses off-the-shelf software to show need for foster parents.
A Texas town builds IT solutions on a shoestring.
New technologies bring GIS data into the hands of mobile workers looking for real-time geographic information.
The U.S. Department of the Treasury partners with Illinois and South Carolina to let business taxpayers pay federal and state taxes simultaneously.
XQuery simplifies how enterprises can search XML data.
San Diego shares emergency telecommunications across region.
Biometrics help identify insurance agents, other workers.
A cooperative program between Google and King County could help transit users plan trips.
A test effort in Arizona seeks to reduce collisions between elk and cars.
Seeking public comment on policy issues, a Florida lawmaker finds a software solution.
Lawsuits challenge tax payments from online travel companies.
A new survey shows government workers still struggle to manage electronic documents.
PIER keeps emergency communicators in touch.
Attacks on open source doubled in just one year, and the open source community is bracing for more.
With judges' personal information available online, some question whether their right to security might override the public's right to access information.
Missouri legislators adopt CRM to better manage constituent communications and enhance services.
A co-op of Illinois technology companies and communities is rolling out a citywide wireless network in Rockford, Ill.
