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Archived Government Notes
Published in 2020
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Four States Share Realities of the Transition to Telework
by Noelle Knell
On the second day of the virtual NASCIO conference, state CIOs discussed the tech that enabled the quick shift to remote work, whether any of it will stick and how the pandemic will affect digital transformation plans.
Across the country, technology leaders have found that whatever foundation they had previously laid to prepare their organization for telework has paid dividends during the pandemic. Tools like virtual private networks, virtual desktop infrastructure and “soft” phones via laptops, as well as encryption, multi-factor authentication and other cybersecurity protocols, then, simply had to be scaled up to accommodate an increase in users.
Day two of the virtual NASCIO Midyear event featured a discussion among four state chief information officers about their respective transitions to a largely remote workforce. Moderator and Virginia CIO Nelson Moe was joined by Nebraska CIO Ed Toner, Maryland CIO Michael Leahy and Missouri CIO Jeff Wann for a morning session entitled “Not Business as Usual: Technology and Process Innovations.”
Now that the initial disruption of stay-at-home orders is behind them, the tech leaders reflected on early challenges in quickly buying laptops and licenses for remote work tools and supplementing support resources to ensure newly home-bound workers could do their jobs.
Read full story at GovTech…
first published week of: 05/11/2020
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GAO tracking size, scope of federal pandemic contracts
by tom temin
Congress appropriated a couple of trillion dollars in the federal response to the pandemic. A surprisingly small fraction of that money went to contracts awarded by agencies. Still, billions aren’t nothing, and the Government Accountability Office has been tracking the contracts and the agencies issuing. For the size and scope of pandemic contracting, Federal Drive with Tom Temin turned to GAO’s director of contracting and national security acquisition issues, Marie Mak.
Read full story at Federal News Network…
first published week of: 08/17/2020
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Geofencing Feature Could Give Lime a Competitive Advantage
by skip descant
A Lime scooter sits on Market Street in San Francisco. The company is making its devices more responsive to geofence zones …
(Ben Miller/Government Technology )
Upgrades to the company’s electric scooters will make the devices more responsive to travel restrictions set by local rules. Since coming to cities nationwide, governments have struggled to regulate them.
Lime, one of the largest operators of the small, electric, app-based scooters, is in the process of upgrading its scooters so they respond more quickly to operational requirements inside geofenced zones.
“We’re launching the feature globally this week, and rolling it out, technologically, to all of our scooters,” Adam Kovacevich, head of Americas government relations at Lime, said last week. “It requires updating the firmware in the scooter itself.”
Technology today works by having the scooter “ping” a central server about every 60 seconds. In the industry these signals, which relay location data in the form of GPS coordinates, are what’s known as the “heartbeat” of the scooter, Kovacevich explained. The server, which contains all of the area’s geofence maps, compares the scooter’s GPS location with the map.
“The challenge is that if you have this happening every 60 seconds, it can delay the execution of the zone command,” said Kovacevich. By not getting the command right away, compliance with the geofence zones is delayed.
Read full story at GovTech…
first published week of: 03/23/2020
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Georgia DOT Partners with 3M on Smart Roadway Tech
by phil goldstein
3M's connected lane marking technology is designed for high visibility in all weather conditions, by both human and machine-operated vehicles.
In August, the Georgia Department of Transportation announced a plan to turn an 18-mile portion of Interstate 85 in southern Georgia into a test bed for connected vehicle technology, including vehicle-to-infrastructure connectivity. The highway is known as The Ray, named after Ray C. Anderson, a Georgia businessman and environmentalist. There are several goals for the pilot, including using the data collected to help develop traffic management platforms. Another is to create the foundation for future connected highway technologies.
The Georgia DOT, 3M and The Ray announced this week that all lanes of the 13 miles of Interstate 85, from the Georgia-Alabama border to Exit 13-LaGrange, are now marked with 3M’s Connected Roads All Weather Elements striping technology. The striping tech is designed for high visibility in all weather conditions, by both human and machine-operated vehicles. 3M elements provide visibility daytime, nighttime and in dry or wet weather conditions, which is made possible with unique 2.4 (wet) and 1.9 (dry) refractive index bead technology.
Read full story at StateTech…
first published week of: 10/26/2020
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Government Surveillance by Data
by Shira Ovide
This is the ultimate example of what’s broken in digital life: The locations of people who used apps to pray and hang their shelves wound up in U.S. military databases.
Vice’s Motherboard publication this week reported that data on people’s movements collected by seemingly innocuous apps passed through multiple hands before being bought by U.S. defense contractors and military agencies. It’s not clear what the military is doing with the information.
This isn’t an isolated case of government authorities buying commercially available databases containing the movements of millions of people. U.S. law enforcement agencies and the Internal Revenue Service have done this, too. After about a year, the I.R.S. determined that the data didn’t help find any targets of tax investigations, The Wall Street Journal reported recently.
Read full story at NY Times…
first published week of: 11/23/2020
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Harris County, Texas, Names Interim CIO to Succeed Bruce High
by News Staff
The ongoing implementation of county ERP software prompted a close commission vote on whether to retain the services of the longtime CIO. After a contentious hearing, High was ultimately removed from the role.
Harris County, Texas, CIO Bruce High was relieved of duty following a contentious hearing and a 3-2 vote by county commissioners earlier this month.
Tensions ran high during the Sept. 15 virtual proceedings, and focused on the troubled implementation of a new county enterprise resource management system from PeopleSoft.
High had served the county government since 2006 and oversaw several large technology undertakings, including the 2010 launch of a county LTE network for first responders.
... During an executive session, commissioners tapped Rick Noriega to serve as the interim CIO. According to his LinkedIn page, Noriega was formerly CEO of Ronald McDonald House Houston, a nonprofit that serves families with seriously ill children.
Read full story at Government Technology…
first published week of: 09/28/2020
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Help Your Local Agency Block Malware
by phil goldstein
Alaska’s recent data breach via a Trojan virus shows that state and local governments need to be vigilant about cybersecurity, even for old threats.
A government agency recently experienced a data breach after a computer became infected by a Trojan virus. This is not a story from 2004.
In late June, the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services (DHSS) disclosed that it experienced a cybersecurity breach which may have led to the exposure of the personal information of more than 500 individuals. The culprit behind the breach? The Zeus/Zbot Trojan virus, which was discovered in 2007 and which security firm Symantec first documented in 2010.
The breach, which occurred in late April, underscores the fact that many state and local agencies are susceptible to cybersecurity attacks that are about as old as the original iPhone. However, there are several tried-and-true technologies and best practices agencies can use to ensure they are as protected as possible from such attacks.
A defense-in-depth approach that emphasizes advanced threat protection, data loss prevention, encryption, endpoint security and next-generation firewalls can help agencies stay on guard. And, of course, the breach highlights the need for continuous cyberhygiene and training for users.
Read full story at StateTech…
first published week of: 02/10/2020
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How Drones Are Used in Public Safety, Fire Departments and Emergency Management
by phil goldstein
Drones are deployed by police departments and other public safety agencies for a wide range of missions.
Agencies across the country have steadily embraced drones in one form or another.
According to a May 2018 report from Bard College’s Center for the Study of the Drone, at least 910 state and local police, sheriff, fire, and emergency services agencies in the U.S. had acquired drones, formally known as unmanned aerial systems, as of the report’s publication. Notably, the center estimated the number of public safety agencies with drones increased by around 82 percent in the year prior to the report’s publication.
According to Dan Gettinger, a founder and the co-director of the Center for the Study of the Drone, the center is putting the final touches on an updated report, which should be released soon.
How is drone use in law enforcement, in fire departments and at emergency management agencies evolving?
Read full story at StateTech…
first published week of: 02/17/2020
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How IoT Helps Fight Fires
by phil goldstein
Fire departments and smart cities are increasingly turning to the Internet of Things to help battle blazes and improve safety.
First responders are benefiting from several advancements in safety technology in recent years, including Next Generation 911 and the First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet) public safety broadband network.
The Internet of Things is another technology development having an impact on a key area of public safety: firefighting. Fire technology is evolving to support IoT solutions, which benefit fire departments in numerous ways.
IoT sensors and devices can better monitor buildings in smart cities to detect fires more quickly, provide incident command centers with more information, enhance computer-aided dispatch, improved situational awareness for firefighters once they are on the scene of a fire and help with fire suppression in the form of smart sprinklers.
Read full story at StateTech…
first published week of: 09/14/2020
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How Local and Federal Government Use GIS
by USC
Geographic information science and technology have a long history with both federal and regional government. In fact, the Library of Congress contains the world’s most comprehensive collection of maps, and geospatial intelligence has played a vital role in resolving numerous historical conflicts between nations. But how does the government use GIS today?
Government GIS Data Sharing Continues to Grow
One of the common challenges for how the government uses GIS has been in sharing spatial data among different agencies. This has been a key problem even when considering state and local government organizations, but it can be even more difficult to determine how to effectively share information across the local, state and federal level. As noted by some researchers, as much as 80% of data stored by the government has a spatial component. However, differences in operational processes, the structure of the data itself and different policies regarding sharing have contributed to complexity in creating standardized ways for governments to implement spatial data sharing practices.
Many of the examples for organizations implementing sharing programs and building out spatial data infrastructures come from individual organizations. However, organizational leaders have started to look toward particularly effective practices to use as a model for larger scale sharing.
Read full story at USC…
first published week of: 05/18/2020