Opinion

New technology has brought tremendous benefits to the emergency response community, but it has also brought significant change as well. Finding a better way to process that change will be the key to success going forward.

The gap between proprietary legacy systems and transformative open source can be broad, but open platforms provide state and local IT with a promising, yet sometimes overlooked, third option.

Turning data from the Internet of Things into something usable can be difficult. But smart cities are leveraging middleware and mobile tools to decode IoT data and turn it into intelligence.

State and federal privacy laws have the potential to put those accused of crimes at an even greater disadvantage in an already unbalanced legal system by limiting defendants’ access to key evidence.

While most public safety operations in an EOC are guided by time-tested principles, digital response before, during and after a disaster is surprisingly uncharted territory.

While the private sector has struggled with unethical uses of data, government can learn from these mistakes and craft best practices by creating a data framework that is both principled and innovative.

From 5G networks to specially equipped communications trucks and drones, the nation’s first responders have a growing arsenal of tech tools that keep them communicating during the worst kinds of emergencies.

The rise of ransomware has forced local governments to take more aggressive action to protect their systems and data from attack. One novel approach involves crowdsourcing ethical hackers to find bugs and vulnerabilities.

Thanks to wireless technology, the number of non-urgent, unintended and prank calls to 911 has skyrocketed. But dispatchers have a number of tools and strategies at their disposal to fight back.

In many underserved areas of the country, to the chagrin of some early childhood experts, online early learning programs are growing as an alternative to traditional brick and mortar preschools.

When cities like San Francisco block the use of a technology that continues to mature, they stall its progress towards becoming a safe and useful tool for public safety. Education and regulation should be the responses.

GDPR has been in effect in the EU for one year, and regulators, consumers and businesses are facing its unintended consequences. Other countries can take those outcomes and do better with their own data protections.

Managing an IT crisis can be complex and difficult. But government CIOs and their operations teams can change the situation and improve the chances for success with better advanced planning, coordination and training.

Federal and state policymakers continue to ignore, weaken and, in some instances, block local input and control of broadband. This needs to stop if the country is to ever have viable, affordable broadband for all.

Overwhelmed by alerts and constrained by limited resources, state government needs a new battle plan to fight digital threats and attacks. Artificial intelligence could be the answer.

Citizens would like government to deliver more artificial intelligence-enabled services, but they aren’t confident it can be done ethically. That’s a trust issue, which CIOs can help solve by requiring AI fairness.

States and localities are saddled with legacy tech debt, but the problem can be fixed by delivering the variety, quality and timeliness of public services citizens expect, using this transformational, collaborative methodology.

Technology is evolving faster than ever before, from autonomous vehicles to facial recognition and beyond, but the charge of technologists to ensure it's introduced ethically is by no means new.