Authors

David Raths

contributing writer


October 1, 2019

Managing Software Updates Still a Government Stumbling Block

Patch management is a cornerstone to information security in today's highly digitized environment. So, why is it still such a vulnerability, and how are some IT organizations approaching the issue systematically?
March 1, 2019

Four States Work Toward a Single Log-In Credential

As they grapple with security and data access, Utah, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Indiana explain how they are leveraging identity and access management to achieve their single sign-on goals for both staff and citizens.
September 1, 2018

6 Organizations Making a Big Impact on Smart Cities

Partnerships with nonprofits and foundations drive city innovation.
January 8, 2018

3 Gov Tech Pioneers on What It Takes to Succeed in the Market

We talked to three leading startups about getting started, gaining ground and going forward in gov tech.
January 1, 2018

Next-Generation Emergency Alerts — What’s Working Where?

From hurricanes to wildfires, emergency events are getting more destructive and more deadly. States, counties and cities are finding ways to reach a mobile population where they are with the vital information they need.
September 1, 2017

Agile Acquisitions: Rethinking Public-Sector Purchasing

State contracts are undergoing big changes as agile development takes root.
July 3, 2017

What's Next for the CIO?

As outside forces reshape how IT interacts with government agencies, the role of CIO must evolve. But how?
June 1, 2017

Visualization Takes Open Data to the Next Level

An in-depth look at five interactive websites that offer fresh views of data.
January 30, 2017

A Road Map for Chief Data Officers

As the number of state and local CDOs grows, a newly released white paper identifies some common best practices for the position.
January 10, 2017

How APIs Are Central to One County’s E-Government Revitalization

Douglas County, Colo., is working to find better ways of sharing data both with the public and between government offices.
January 9, 2017

5 State IT Leaders Detail Their Path to the CIO's Office

Four state CIOs who came to their positions after careers in other fields and one longtime state IT executive reflect on how their experiences informed their priorities, decision-making and relationship building.
October 28, 2016

Better Connections: Arkansas Rebuilds its Plodding K-12 Network into a Robust Broadband Service

By July 2017 the project will connect the state’s 274 school districts and 600,000 students to the all-fiber Arkansas Public School Computer Network.
October 26, 2016

Benchmarking Study Provides Wakeup Call for City Websites

A new study finds that there's a significant need in the market for website redesign and a set of tools to make those websites more mobile-first, user-centered and services-oriented.
October 12, 2016

Legislating Cybersecurity: Breaches Grab Lawmakers’ Attention

It often takes a data breach for lawmakers to pass significant legislation around cybersecurity.
October 11, 2016

Legislating Cybersecurity: Lawmakers Recognize Their Responsibility with Cyberthreats

Legislators who take the time to study cybersecurity issues and ask tough questions of CIOs and CISOs are still the exception rather than the rule. But that may be changing.

September 1, 2016

The Big Redesign: What's Next for Government Websites?

States and localities have their work cut out for them when it comes to modernizing their portals.
August 2, 2016

Assessing the Next-Gen 911 Funding Gap

While FirstNet gets $7 billion, next-gen 911 gets $150 million from the feds.
June 3, 2016

Can Vendor Scorecards Cut Down on IT Project Failures?

California wants to find out.
March 4, 2016

When Publishing Open Data, Cities and States Have Variety of Platform Choices

As the open data publishing market heats up, all levels of government have more partners to choose from.
January 12, 2016

Sending Medicaid to the Cloud

Led by Wyoming, states are ready to pioneer MMIS as a service.
September 30, 2015

The Promise and Pain of Building a Regional Justice Information Network

This network in the Pacific Northwest not only links data for police officers in the field, it also provides a common platform for jails, computer-aided dispatch centers and district attorneys’ offices.
August 31, 2015

States and Localities Consider Security as a Service

Is security the next as-a-service offering you’ll be sending to the cloud?
July 31, 2015

New Benefits Emerge from Traditional Public Works Infrastructure

In January, the Portland Water Bureau in Oregon flipped the on switch for the first project in the U.S. to produce energy from in-pipe hydropower in a municipal water pipeline.
July 28, 2015

Disruptive Technology that Could Transform Government-Citizen Relationships

Examples across the spectrum prove that leading-edge technology is spilling into the public sector today.
July 23, 2015

First Responders Experiment with Social Media in Disaster Response

Emergency management agencies are beginning to work on how to incorporate social media into operations to improve situational awareness for responders
June 12, 2015

Trading Places: What's It Like to Move from One Government Level to Another?

Five public CIOs who have made significant career changes talk about how they made the transition and use their previous experience in their current role.
May 27, 2015

Why Public CIOs Are Attempting to Move 'Shadow IT' to 'Shallow IT'

Lately, the term “shadow IT” has grown to include the unsanctioned use of public cloud infrastructure for collaboration or file sharing, and some IT officials are looking to bring that use into the light.
April 7, 2015

Medicaid IT Systems: The Perfect Storm

Most state governments continue to have trouble with the implementation of Medicaid Management Information Systems, but some are starting to take different approaches.

March 20, 2015

How New CIOs Can Work with State Legislatures

How does a new CIO gain credibility in the statehouse?
February 18, 2015

North Carolina CIO Sees Restructuring as Key to Success

CIO Chris Estes addresses some of the weaknesses highlighted in a recent state auditor’s report that found 74 percent of IT projects were being delivered a year late and over budget.
January 19, 2015

NYC Talks Data Needs for Disease Outbreak Management

Better health IT integration, and rapid access to clinical and lab data are critical for evaluating persons under investigation during an outbreak.
January 13, 2015

OpenFDA: Making Federal Public Health Data Sets Accessible

Taha Kass-Hout, chief health informatics officer for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, talks about the creation of openFDA.
January 13, 2015

Digital Health Dilemma: Regulators Struggle to Keep Pace with Health-Care Technology Innovation

Health IT firms are urging Congress and federal agencies to clarify and simplify several aspects of regulation, and to more frequently update their guidance.
November 17, 2014

4 Roadblocks to Agile Development and How to Overcome Them

Agile development -- where software projects are broken into short sprints -- isn't as easy to implement in government as one might expect. Here are the key impediments and how CIOs are working to overcome them.
November 7, 2014

Growing Innovation: Winning Formulas for Tech Incubators

The best-performing tech incubators collect client outcome data more often and for longer periods of time than their peers, while most high-achieving incubators are nonprofit models, and public-sector support contributes to program success.
October 9, 2014

The Role of Chief Security Officer is More Vital than Ever

Security leaders sound off: The CSO role may look different in every organization, but in an increasingly connected and open society, it's a critical one.

August 21, 2014

‘Big Gig Challenge’ Seeks to Bolster Muni Fiber Projects in Northeast Ohio

If cities don’t take charge of their own fate for high-speed Internet, they could be waiting years to get fiber infrastructure in their community.
August 6, 2014

How the Cloud is Changing Everything for Government IT

More governments are doing big data analytics, high-performance computing, collaborative applications and disaster recovery in the cloud.
June 5, 2014

What Do Public Health Officials Want From Big Data?

Health Datapalooza panelists describe work-arounds they have developed to get the granular, neighborhood-level data they need.
May 20, 2014

CIOs Forge Stronger Ties with Decision-Makers, Build Better Business Cases

Increasingly CIOs and budget directors are finding that they need to be on the same wavelength to make the case for IT investments.

April 9, 2014

Next-Generation 911: What You Need to Know

An explanation of what next-generation 911 is, implementation challenges and how soon it will become a reality.
April 3, 2014

States Use Big Data to Target Hospital Super-Users

Analytics and data sharing help spot areas with high rates of emergency room use and hospital re-admissions.
April 2, 2014

Overcoming Data Governance Challenges in HHS

Multi-agency collaborative efforts key to attaining benefits of ACA, say officials speaking at the State Healthcare IT Connect Summit.
February 28, 2014

FirstNet Needs State Technology Chiefs to Play Vital Role

States have lots of questions about FirstNet; here’s why CIOs are key to making it work.
February 4, 2014

Does 3-D Printing Change Everything?

The technology is fostering innovation from the space station to elementary schools, but its impact is still a great unknown.
December 5, 2013

States and Localities Reap the Benefits of Shared Services

We ask customers what they think of government-to-government shared services.
May 1, 2013

Cyber-Responders Seek New Ways to Respond to Cyberattacks

A new breed of information security firms helps defeat targeted attacks.

January 31, 2013

Will the Chief Innovation Officer Transform Government?

When the concept first started taking hold in 2008, the focus was on education reform and sustainability. But once the recession hit, that focus changed to how to deal with budget cutting, economic development and job creation.

January 4, 2013

What's Next After Obama's Re-Election?

President Obama’s re-election clarifies the future of health IT, the Affordable Care Act and other key initiatives.
October 10, 2012

FirstNet: Answers to Key Questions

The national public safety broadband network board must hit the ground running to deal with funding, governance, partnerships and broadband projects already in progress.
August 22, 2012

4 Approaches to Health Information Exchanges

Federal deadlines mean that states need to be working toward building statewide HIEs.

June 15, 2012

NIC Marks 20 Years of Creating State Portals

Since its inception 20 years ago, few organizations can match NIC’s influence on state government portals.

February 10, 2012

Marketing the IT Department

Offering more shared services, IT departments work on building their brand and targeting new customers.
January 3, 2012

Shared and Regional Services Are on the Rise

The Great Recession forces government IT leaders to take another look at shared services and contracting.

November 14, 2011

States Look to Modernize Their Aging Tax Systems

Revenue agency CIOs tackle integration and data analytics, with mobility and social media on the horizon.

October 11, 2011

Tax System Modernization Is a Priority Among States

Revenue agency CIOs tackle integration and data analytics, with mobility and social media on the horizon.
July 5, 2011

Federal Fingerprint Sharing Program Meets Resistance

Local leaders attempt to opt out of controversial DHS Secure Communities program -- but it's unclear whether they can.
June 27, 2011

Application Consolidation — Where the Real Savings Is

After several years of virtualizing servers, CIOs look toward the next step: eliminating redundant software applications.
May 12, 2011

A New Approach to Medicaid Management Information Systems

States consider strategies for replacing or upgrading Medicaid systems.
February 11, 2011

IT Managers Have Trouble Adding Business Analysts to Their Lineups

Finding staff to analyze business processes and apply IT solutions can be difficult.
December 17, 2010

Federal Health-Care Reform Puts Growing Pressure on Public CIOs

Federal reform means state CIOs must consider replacing legacy Medicaid systems and building health information exchanges.

October 18, 2010

New York, California, Defense Department Look at Renegotiating Software Licensing Agreements

IT leaders learn to better track usage and look beyond the upfront costs of new software.

September 30, 2010

States and Localities Explore Alternatives to Big ERP

State and local officials explore more streamlined, customizable enterprise resource planning solutions.
July 25, 2010

Flexible Procurement Terms Help States Boost Competition for IT Contracts

States and localities are modify contracting terms to encourage more competition on large technology projects.
April 13, 2010

CIOs Expanding Their Roles by Managing Consolidated Departments

Change-agent CIOs see their job duties expand and broaden as governments cope with budget pressures by consolidating departments and leveraging CIOs' project management experience.
April 13, 2010

Tempe, Ariz., CIO Takes Step Back Due to Cost Cutting

As was the case in Tempe, Ariz., not all CIOs are seeing their roles increase.
September 7, 2009

Public CIOs Struggle to Manage Mobility Demands

Smartphones and laptops increase management issues for public-sector CIOs.
July 12, 2009

Government CIOs Diagnose Health Information Technology Options

Economic stimulus funding for health IT means CIOs have a role in fixing the U.S. health-care system.
June 21, 2009

How Stimulus Money Will Benefit Public Safety

Federal grants will benefit public safety but come with limits in some cases.
April 15, 2009

Georgia Aims to Save State Money With IBM Outsourcing Deal

Georgia CIO Patrick Moore and chief operating officer Jim Lientz explain why the state outsourced its information technology infrastructure.
February 22, 2009

Economic Development is Growing Task for Government CIOs

Ontario County, N.Y., Virginia, use technology to increase economic development.
February 5, 2009

California Braces for Fires, Landslides, Chemical Spills and Deaths That Follow a Massive Quake

Quake would be unlike anything the state has experienced.
December 8, 2008

Handful of Government CIOs Aid Economic Development

Few government CIOs view economic development as one of their jobs. But that attitude is beginning to change.
December 8, 2008

Economic Development: CIO Links Businesses and Universities

Virginia's Aneesh Chopra plays active role in bringing investment to his state.
November 14, 2008

Southern California Braces for the Big One During Earthquake Drill

ShakeOut prepares residents for biggest quake in 100 years.
October 16, 2008

Government Remains Skeptical About Cloud Computing

Security and privacy concerns slow adoption of cloud computing despite potential cost savings.
October 13, 2008

New Rule Slashes FEMA Disaster Funds for States, Critics Say

Change to FEMA Public Assistance Grants may shift more disaster costs to states.
September 1, 2008

IT Budget Woes: CIOs Plug Fiscal Gap with Consolidation, Innovation

Government's budget crisis gives CIOs chance to bring efficiency.
August 18, 2008

David Wennergren, Deputy CIO, U.S. Department of Defense

U.S. Department of Defense Deputy CIO David Wennergren works on strategic issues across all military branches.
August 11, 2008

Cloud Computing: Public-Sector Opportunities Emerge

Public CIOs analyze the benefits and risks of cloud computing.
August 4, 2008

Steve Reneker, CIO, Riverside, Calif.

Riverside, Calif., CIO Steve Reneker works to bring economic development, wireless broadband to city.
August 4, 2008

Hardik Bhatt, CIO, Chicago

Chicago CIO Hardik Bhatt helps deal with digital divide, improving online transactions for citizens.
August 4, 2008

Michael Locatis, CIO, Colorado

Colorado CIO Michael Locatis helps consolidate state IT operations.
August 3, 2008

911 Systems Upgrade to Accept Text Messages and Video

IP-based networks help call centers move beyond voice communications.
June 24, 2008

New Generation of Public CIOs Bring Talent, Innovation

Despite the challenges of working in the public sector, a new generation of CIOs is making itsmark with change and creativity.
June 19, 2008

NYC Transit Uses Digital Maps and 3-D Modeling to Help Travelers

Web-based trip-planning tool uses Microsoft Earth and other advanced tools.
June 11, 2008

Five Ways to Innovate During Budget Cuts

From consolidation to outsourcing, government CIOs accomplish more with less.
May 1, 2008

Aligning IT and Business Is Priority for Public CIOs

New strategies synchronize technology and agency missions.
April 1, 2008

Virtual Worlds Help Public Safety Officials Practice for Real-Life Threats

Full-scale exercises are expensive and time-consuming, while simulation allows for exercising a mass casualty event at less cost and with more flexibility.
March 4, 2008

Virtualization Saves Money and Energy by Eliminating Physical Servers

CIOs turn to server virtualization for more space in the server room.
February 20, 2008

Green Initiatives Gain Attention From Government CIOs

But environmental issues still get low priority unless political leaders are vocal proponents of change.
January 13, 2008

Child Welfare System Boosts Oversight of New Jersey Foster Care and Adoption

Statewide automated child welfare information system is designed to remedy shortcomings of old technology.
January 2, 2008

Data Warehouse and Business Intelligence Project Gets Major Performance Measurement

One federal agency CIO plans to study IT performance the way baseball general managers scrutinize hits and errors.
November 20, 2007

Stuck in a Pennsylvania Storm

Unacceptable response to a Valentine's Day snowstorm in Pennsylvania prompts an emergency management investigation.
October 12, 2007

Come Together

Tech-based collaboration is taking off in the public sector, but CIOs say it's mostly been a bottoms-up trend.  
August 8, 2007

Sidebar: Higher Ed Takes the Lead

"Corporate financial software is a square peg rammed into the round hole of higher education."
July 31, 2007

Marginal or Mainstream?

Talk about open source in government has been muted for some time, but that might be because it's happening under the radar.
July 9, 2007

Legacy Nation

The public sector is practically in a league of its own when it comes to data integration.
April 3, 2007

Deadline Pressures

Desperate times led the CIO of the Oregon Department of Human Services to use open source software.
January 29, 2007

Tweaker Houses

States create online registries to help the public identify methamphetamine labs and users.
December 26, 2006

Healthy Exchange

Hurricane Katrina spurs cooperation to build a prototype regional health information exchange in Louisiana.
September 7, 2006

Going Once, Going Twice ...

One Maryland county gets a charge out of reverse auctions.
July 6, 2006

Turning on the LITE

Louisiana officials hope supercomputing center becomes economic development magnet.
May 2, 2006

Mapping the Future

Will geospatial Web applications change the way local governments present information to the public?
March 1, 2006

The Price of Privacy

Like many counties nationwide, Allen County, Ind., is coping with a legislative mandate to remove Social Security numbers from public records.
December 2, 2005

Make Me a Match

The University of Missouri and Washington University help St. Louis nonprofits find board members through a matchmaking Web site.
Platforms & Programs