Lucas Ropek is a staff writer for Government Technology. He has worked as a newspaper reporter and writer in Massachusetts and New York. He received his Bachelor's degree in English from Kenyon College in Ohio. He lives in Northern California.
A recent influx of funding was meant to fix the state’s struggling Licensing and Registration System. Now, lawmakers are grappling with whether to pull the plug and start from scratch.
Legislation being lobbied for by tech company TransparentBusiness would mandate contractor monitoring to ensure work/time verification. Critics contend it would cause unnecessary security risks to government data.
After Maine elected a new governor in November, longtime IT leader Jim Smith stepped down as CIO. Now the state has a new CIO in Fred Brittain, who spent more than two decades with the University of Maine system.
Ned Lamont has put forward several initiatives that would make the state more digital, smarter and more responsive to residents. The effort could also reduce state costs by 75 percent in certain areas.
The California city and the U.S. Marine Corps will work together on a number of projects designed to enhance security and services for residents.
During the 2019 California Public Sector CIO Academy in Sacramento, technology leaders gathered to discuss the future and how best to transform citizen-facing services.
New legislation would create a working group to assess the technology's potential applications and possibly recommend policies and state investments to help make Florida a leader in blockchain technology.
A new series of bills would create a position for a chief data officer, as well as an associated task force to help develop, manage and implement state data policies.
Steve Emanuel, who formerly served as the CIO for the state of New Jersey, now returns to the public sector to helm operations for the state's largest city. Emanuel has decades of public and private IT experience.
Continually improving information sharing, mapping and content management systems have allowed law enforcement agencies across the country to keep better watch of some of society's most dangerous criminals.
A bill newly passed in the North Dakota state Senate would overhaul the state's cybersecurity strategy, emphasizing unity and greater centralization.