Survey Says: States Are Frontloading Security and Aligning Data and AI

States are building security into applications at the earliest stages of development; they’re aligning AI and data governance policies; and they are redefining resilience in response to growing uncertainty and volatility.

These are a few findings from an extensive analysis of data submitted for the Center for Digital Government’s 2024 Digital States Survey.* The biennial survey evaluates all 50 states on their technology practices, collecting comprehensive information on how states are adopting emerging technologies, addressing critical issues like cybersecurity, and upgrading systems in critical program areas such as public safety, transportation, and health and human services. A new Digital States Best Practices report digs deeper into the survey information to identify key issues and important trends across state government.

Among the findings:
States are addressing application security earlier in project life cycles. Once treated as an add-on, security is increasingly integrated into technology projects from the start. More than 50 percent of survey respondents said their state intended to launch or expand DevSecOps initiatives that foster closer collaboration between development, security and operations teams.

States are strengthening data governance to fuel the growth of artificial intelligence. Data quality and availability are growing concerns for state leaders, prompting them to launch enterprise data initiatives, data catalogs, interoperability working groups and data literacy programs. Almost 70 percent of respondents said their state had implemented data governance at the enterprise IT level and 54 percent had implemented common data standards to promote data sharing.

States increasingly view resilience as the ability to withstand change. In an environment where rapid technical advances, climate extremes, new cyber threats and budget uncertainties are commonplace, states are increasing collaboration and pooling resources to maintain critical operations during disruptive events. West Virginia is among several states that have appointed chief resilience officers to focus on system resilience and oversee cross-agency communication. More states are also incorporating contingency and cyber incident response into business continuity planning.

States are using data-driven story telling to connect budget investments to practical outcomes. Data dashboards are now a common method for communicating progress with internal stakeholders and the public. Almost 80 percent of states use internal dashboards to drive storytelling and 70 percent publish public-facing performance metrics online. For example, Missouri uses an enterprise data visualization and business intelligence platform to create performance dashboards that demonstrate accountability to residents. And a Colorado dashboard reports progress on IT goals linked to the governor’s policy agenda.

Download the full report here.

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