LEXINGTON, Ky., Wednesday, January 15—The National Governors Association (NGA) and the National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) today released Stronger Together: State and Local Cybersecurity Collaboration. With a dramatic uptick in ransomware attacks across the country, governors, state chief information officers (CIOs) and state government executives are designing and implementing programs to strengthen local partnerships in cybersecurity. The publication outlines promising programs that states have initiated to enhance collaboration with their local government counterparts for cyber resilience. It also provides high-level recommendations for state officials looking to strengthen partnerships with local government officials on cybersecurity.

“Governors and states are at the forefront of cybersecurity, which is a collective responsibility and one of their most important priorities when it comes to protecting people and systems,” said Jeff McLeod, director of NGA’s Homeland Security & Public Safety team. “We know that effective strategies to prevent and recover from cyberattacks involve all levels of government, including local partners, as well as partners in the private sector.”

“More and more states are adopting a whole-of-state approach,” said Doug Robinson, NASCIO Executive Director.  “State CIOs know that cybersecurity is a team sport and local governments are important to everyone’s shared success.”

The publication can be found on NGA’s website, www.NGA.org, and NASCIO’s website, www.NASCIO.org.

WASHINGTON, D.C., Monday, November 2, 2019 —The National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) today endorsed S. 2749, the DOTGOV Act of 2019. Introduced by U.S. Senators Gary Peters (D-MI), Ron Johnson (R-WI), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and James Lankford (R-OK), the legislation takes serious steps to expand the adoption of the .gov domain in order to improve the cybersecurity of local  government websites. 

Specifically, the bipartisan bill would require the Department of Homeland Security to develop an outreach strategy to inform and support the migration to the .gov domain of local governments, as well as provide technical information on how to migrate online services to .gov. Additionally, the DOTGOV Act of 2019 authorizes the use of Homeland Security Grant funds as an allowable expense for the adoption of the .gov domain and further stipulates that the Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency may waive any fees associated with migration to .gov.

NASCIO President and North Carolina Secretary and State CIO Eric Boyette lauded the introduction of S. 2749 saying, “as local governments continue to be targets of a constant barrage of sophisticated cybersecurity and spoofing attacks, the .gov domain sends a message to the user that the domain is legitimate and secure. NASCIO has long advocated for the adoption of .gov domains and we greatly appreciate this legislative effort to provide assistance to vulnerable and under-resourced local governments.” 

The DOTGOV Act of 2019 was introduced in the United States Senate on October 30 and referred to the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. More information on S. 2749 can be found HERE.

The National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) presented the State Technology Innovator Award to three deserving public servants during the 2019 NASCIO Annual Conference in Nashville. The NASCIO State Technology Innovator Award honors outstanding state government employees who have made contributions to advance state technology policy through the promotion of best practices, adoption of new technologies and advancements in service delivery. Nominations were gathered from NASCIO members as well as non-members and selected by the NASCIO Executive Committee.

The following are the recipients of the 2019 NASCIO State Technology Innovator Award:

Nikhil Deshpande
Chief Digital Officer, State of Georgia
As Chief Digital Officer of Digital Services Georgia at the Georgia Technology Authority, Nikhil Deshpande leads the team responsible for managing Georgia.gov, the official online portal to Georgia state government, and Georgia GovHub, the state’s official publishing platform for delivering state-of-the-art, secure, accessible and compliant websites. Nikhil has spearheaded many initiatives including a state website rebranding initiative, ensuring the state’s websites meet the needs of constituents with disabilities and is responsible for Georgia being the first state to use responsive design technology on both its web portal and its enterprise publishing platform.

Tony Powell
Chief Information Officer, Department of Health, State of Florida
As the Florida Department of Health (FDOH) CIO, Tony Powell directs IT operations and modernization efforts across the department’s 400+ locations. Alongside peers from Florida and the greater U.S., Powell sought new ways to deliver consistent access to applications, provide dependable support and services, and ensure continuity of operations no matter the circumstances. Under Powell’s leadership, FDOH has adopted a multi-cloud and hybrid cloud approach for production workloads, non-production workloads and disaster recovery with encryption at rest and transport. The result is the ability to be nimble, adjust during disasters, operate when issues arise during day-to-day operations and provide maximum adaptability to meet all circumstances.

Tere Shade
Business Solutions Manager, State of Texas
Tere Shade is the Business Solutions Manager for the Department of Information Resources (DIR) Shared Technology Services (STS) Program in the State of Texas and oversaw the transformation of the STS program. Under her leadership, STS was able to establish a new service delivery system to support a shift from data center-driven environments to a broad host of managed IT service offerings available to eligible state agencies, city and county governments, higher education institutions and public school districts in the state of Texas. Additionally, she successfully led the September 2018 launch of the Outreach and Growth team, promoting the goal of integrating marketing automation, customer relationship management and IT service management systems. Her efforts have resulted in more than doubling the number of STS customers that now include approximately 150 cities, counties and public school districts in Texas.

Today, the National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) announced new leadership elected by its corporate members to serve as Chair and Co-Chair of the NASCIO Corporate Leadership Council (CLC). The CLC is comprised of dedicated NASCIO corporate members committed to utilizing private sector intellectual and financial resources to serve NASCIO and its members. CLC members promote information sharing among public and private-sector members, providing expertise to NASCIO issue focus areas and developing publications and projects.

The NASCIO corporate members have elected a new CLC Chair and Vice Chair for the 2019-2020 program year: Rick Webb (Accenture) will take the role as CLC Chair and Ron Baldwin (Deloitte) will be the CLC Vice Chair. The CLC Chair and Vice Chair hold an advisory seat on NASCIO's Executive Committee.

Additionally, NASCIO honored corporate members celebrating a longevity milestone this year. Corporations holding memberships in NASCIO for five years (and at 5-year intervals thereafter) are recognized during the annual conference.

NASCIO’s Corporate Longevity Award recipients for 2019 are:

25 years – Information Builders and Oracle
20 years – Deloitte
15 years – CDW-G and e.Republic
10 years – IDEMIA and Salesforce
5 years – Apptio, Compuware Corporation, EY, Forescout Technologies Inc., Integris Applied, KSM Consulting, Pure Storage, Security Mentor Inc., SHI International Corporation, Tanium and Veritas Technologies LLC