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.
Women make up only about one-quarter of the tech workforce, and even less are in gov tech leadership roles. Creating an inclusive environment and developing talent pipelines are key to changing that.
Jessica Tisch, commissioner of the New York City Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications, explains how she pivoted to address the pandemic while maintaining and modernizing the massive city’s systems.
With the groundwork for its online permitting portal already in place, when the Maryland Department of Commerce needed to quickly distribute funding for small businesses in the pandemic, IT stepped up to the plate.
As civil liberty groups have lobbied for police reforms nationwide, an increasingly hostile regulatory landscape is emerging for facial recognition technology. It throws into question whether there is a path forward for its use by state and local governments.
Tech experts who work with county court systems have implemented a number of changes to help the justice system continue to function in the time of COVID-19, and some of those changes may become permanent.
The changes wrought by the pandemic have underscored the need for creative, flexible leaders who expect the same from their technology. So perhaps it isn’t surprising that as-a-service technologies have met this moment.
Plus, NETGEAR cloud-managed multi-gig WAX610 access points provide secure access for multiple devices simultaneously, and the Logitech Swytch simplifies videoconferencing from any laptop without adaptors.
Plus, the amount of equity-based investments made in the space sector, Google Maps integrates bike share information after a year-long pilot in New York City, and app downloads in the U.S. versus China this year.
As schools embark on a year of virtual or hybrid learning, hackers are seeking to exploit weaknesses in systems largely unprepared to fend off attacks. States must take the lead by updating technology and training users.
By making connections between groups in need of digital assistance and local nonprofits, city and county CIOs are well-poised to help overcome the realities of digital inequity exposed by the pandemic.
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