The group is slated to speak with the U.S. House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Cybersecurity Infrastructure Protection, in an afternoon hearing that will be livestreamed. The National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO), a nonpartisan group that represents state technology leaders, announced via LinkedIn that they would discuss “how the State and Local Cyber Grant Program has improved cybersecurity and what states are doing to protect their networks.” The trio includes CIOs from Florida and Tennessee, along with the director of security and intelligence for New York.
Congress has reauthorized the State and Local Cybersecurity Grant Program, but no allocations have been made. A Senate bill that proposed allocating $300 million during this year has not moved, despite the U.S. House of Representatives voting yes to the PILLAR Act to extend programming through 2033. That legislation now sits with this committee.
The total number of CIOs who have spoken with Congress about the SLCGP is now at four, following the March testimony of tech leaders from Connecticut and Utah. NASCIO has also sent a letter to federal officials urging funding for the grant program.
This new discussion of federal cybersecurity support comes as experts continue to warn that advancements in AI have created a terrifying new threat landscape. Specifically, Anthropic's new Mythos AI model is causing concern, with some describing it as "a defining moment in the evolution of digital risk." While the second Trump administration has at times distanced itself from cybersecurity — nearly one-third of the federal government's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has left since Trump returned to office — reporting this week suggests it is taking action on AI and cyber with an executive order.
Meanwhile, earlier this year a joint survey of state cybersecurity leaders by NASCIO and Deloitte found plummeting confidence in their ability to protect data, dropping from 48 percent being confident in 2022 to 22 percent in 2026.
Many in the space have said the SLCGP is of vital importance to keeping the nation's cities and states cyber secure. From 2022 to 2025, the program doled out $1 billion for everything from enhancing security operations to hiring personnel to conducting cybersecurity practice exercises.
In an April letter to members of Congress, NASCIO Executive Director Doug Robinson urged them to continue funding the SLCGP, writing, "The overall result of the first four years of SLCGP has been a significantly improved ability to prevent, detect and respond to cyber threats with limited resources."
