Iowa

Since state legislation started requiring Iowa schools to adopt policies on cellphones, administrators have reported a "great response," with teachers seeing a positive change and most students following directions.

A recent professional learning session for College Community School District educators featured speakers from Google and the University of Iowa, and conversations about AI's future in the workforce and the classroom.

The person selected will be charged with overseeing digital infrastructure, cybersecurity and enterprise systems. The city IT director is responsible for the strategic operational direction of all municipal IT.

Principal Jessiah Gilchrist said Cedar Rapids Taft Middle School has had a policy in place since 2020 restricting the use of cellphones, and he said it's been "so effective."

Veteran city exec Joe Pregler was affirmed last month as permanent CIO. His official arrival comes amid work on AI governance, and a data center move aimed at improving resilience and integrating operations.

Iowa CIO Matt Behrens explains how his team spent the past two years completely reorganizing how the state runs IT, with a four-phased approach that eliminated redundancies, streamlined systems, and made state government more efficient and effective.

The massive effort might be invisible to the average Iowan, says CIO Matt Behrens, but it's setting his organization up for "the delivery of IT for the future."

The Cedar Rapids Police Department recently finished installing stationary license plate reader cameras, which scan plates and run them through national crime databases.

Children would need permission from a parent or guardian to possess an online social media account under a bill that received bipartisan support Tuesday from an Iowa House committee.

Iowa’s governor believes the state’s government is “too big” and is now following in the footsteps of the presidential administration by creating a statewide DOGE task force to reduce spending.

Cities would be prohibited from contracting with vendors to collect speeding fines from automated traffic cameras under a proposal that took its first legislative step Tuesday at the Iowa Capitol.

The university's new policy requires anyone who wants to send a mass email to file a request to be evaluated by the UI Office of Strategic Communication, which will then use written standards to determine its validity.

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds used her eighth Condition of the State address Tuesday to call for a statewide policy requiring school districts to restrict the use of cellphones in the classroom.

The company is seeking financial incentives from the city of Cedar Rapids to build a massive $750 million data campus near Google's planned $576 million data center in southwest Cedar Rapids.

How Iowa was able to navigate the red tape involved with real-time child-care search, vacancy and supply and demand dashboards to help parents quickly find available child care in the state.

The Iowa Department of Education invested $3 million to bring the EPS Reading Assistant to elementary schools statewide. The tool uses speech recognition technology to correct students as they read out loud.

The city of Waterloo’s finance committee approved purchasing 21 kiosks for $161,960 Monday. The kiosks will allow parkers to pay by license plate on the machine that resembles an ATM.

Waverly-Shell Rock Community School District in Iowa is not one of a growing number of districts nationwide banning mobile device or headphone use, but it does have a few rules regarding such devices.