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NASCIO Releases Top State CIO Priorities for 2023

A survey by the National Association of State Chief Information Officers has identified the top priorities for state technology leaders for the coming year — and cybersecurity remains at the top of the list.

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The National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) today released the State CIO Top Ten Policy and Technology Priorities for 2023, and unsurprisingly, cybersecurity remains a central focus.

This resource, created through the nationwide survey of state and territory CIOs, identifies the top 10 priorities for the coming year.

The survey contains two categories: Priority Strategies, Management Processes and Solutions for 2023 and Priority Technologies, Applications and Tools for 2023.

For the 10th year in a row, cybersecurity and risk management remain the top priority within the first category. And for the fourth year in a row, digital government and digital services followed in the second place spot.

The remaining priorities are as follows: workforce; legacy modernization; identity and access management; cloud services; consolidation and optimization; data and information management; broadband and wireless connectivity; and customer relationship management.

A key change this year is the move of workforce to the No. 3 spot, from seventh place in 2022 — while cloud services dropped in the rankings.

“State CIOs continue to face increasing challenges with IT workforce, especially in the area of cybersecurity. It is no surprise that workforce jumped to a much higher position this year as CIOs continue to struggle to recruit and retain a qualified workforce,” said NASCIO Executive Director Doug Robinson in the announcement.

Legacy modernization and identity and access management both moved up in the ranking from the previous year, while broadband and wireless connectivity moved down.

Regarding the state CIO’s top 10 priorities for the second category, identity and access management took first place, followed by legacy application modernization and renovation. Cloud solutions, which held first place last year, dropped to third place.

There is some overlap in the priorities seen in the NASCIO survey and those identified in the Center for Digital Government’s* 2022 Digital States Survey, which also listed cybersecurity as a top priority.

“Our 2022 survey results reveal that states agree that their top priorities include cybersecurity, constituent/customer engagement/experience, IT staffing, modernization of legacy technologies and broadband/connectivity/addressing the digital divide,” Teri Takai, senior vice president of CDG, said earlier this year.

*The Center for Digital Government is part of Government Technology’s parent corporation, e.Republic.