Sustainable Success: State CIOs and Health Information Exchange

While NASCIO has continued to track the role of the State CIO in Health Information Exchange (HIE), the recently released issue brief highlights the importance of a sustainable public HIE. Included in the brief are best practices for creating potential revenue streams, considerations for systems development, and innovative options that may reduce maintenance and lower costs. State CIOs and state policy officials need to consider the business drivers that will ensure that revenues exceed costs to plan, implement and operate an interoperable HIE. State CIOs recognize that there is no better opportunity than now for carrying out these goals, but continued ingenuity will be imperative in ensuring a state-run HIE is independently sustainable when public grants may no longer be available.

 

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State Cyber Security Resource Guide: Awareness, Education, and Training Initiatives

For the 2011 observance of National Cyber Security Awareness Month, NASCIO has updated its Resource Guide for State Cyber Security Awareness,Education, and Training Initiatives. The guide includes new information from our state members, who provided examples of state awareness programs and initiatives. This is an additional resource of best-practice information, together with an interactive state map to allow users to drilldown to the actual resources that states have developed or are using to promote cyber awareness. It includes contact information for the CISO, hyperlinks to state security and security awareness pages, and information describing cyber security awareness, training, and education initiatives.

The Resource Guide is a work-in-progress that should provide a valuable reference resource for Cyber Security Awareness Month, as well as the ongoing planning of security awareness and training efforts state programs may undertake thereafter.

 

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Capitals in the Clouds – The Case for Cloud Computing in State Government Part I: Definitions and Principles

Cloud computing has arrived as a serious alternative for state government. There are outstanding issues that must be faced and dealt with in order to maintain the reliability, responsibility, security, privacy, and citizen-confidence in government services. Government is exploring technology and business process innovations that will make the way for government to deliver existing services more economically. Cloud computing provides a number capabilities that have the potential for enabling such innovation.

 

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On the Fence: IT Implications of the Health Benefit Exchanges

Despite the contentious debate over national health care reform there seems to be one trend that has gained some degree of consensus at the state level – planning for implementation of state health benefit exchanges. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) has already provided $2.8 billion in funding to states to build benefit exchanges, expand Medicaid eligibility and continue prevention efforts. In addition to the substantial amount of funding states have already received, they will receive billions more during 2011 and beyond. The Affordable Care Act provides states with the unique opportunity to either develop and run their own exchange or default to the federal government to establish and operate the exchange. State CIOs will play varying roles in health care reform, but irrespective of their responsibilities it will be imperative to provide sound leadership and provide feedback to governors on any IT gaps that may exist during this momentous time.

 

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A Call to Action: Information Exchange Strategies for Effective State Government

NASCIO Recommends State Government Adopt the National Information Exchange Model (NIEM) to Enable Government Information Sharing

The National Information Exchange Model (NIEM) provides a broad range of products and capabilities for planning and implementing enterprise-wide information exchanges. Government effectiveness and citizen centric government services require effective cross line of business collaboration and communication. Use of national standards will avoid redundant investment and unnecessary variation. What is needed is a common discipline for information sharing that is employed by all government lines of business. NIEM exists as that discipline for federal, state and local government.

 

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State IT Workforce: Under Pressure

In 2007, state CIOs had offered anecdotal evidence that states could face a potential shortage of government IT workers in the near future due to anticipated retirements of baby boomers and a waning interest in government IT employment from a younger generation. To revisit this looming issue, in November 2010 NASCIO conducted a web-based survey for state CIOs to assess the landscape of the state IT workforce. The results of the survey State IT Workforce: Under Pressure have been compiled and NASCIO members should use the results as a tool in identifying and addressing state IT workforce trends. The state responses provide a broad perspective on state IT workforce issues as a whole, and also allow CIOs to further assess the IT employment outlook within their respective states.

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State CIO Top Ten Policy and Technology Priorities for 2011

Each year NASCIO conducts a survey of the state CIOs to identify and prioritize the top policy and technology issues facing state government. The CIOs top ten priorities are identified and used as input to NASCIO’s programs, planning for conference sessions, and publications.

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DO YOU THINK? OR DO YOU KNOW? PART II: The EA Value Chain, The Strategic Intent Domain, and Principles

Investment in business intelligence and business analytics must be driven by enterprise strategic intent. Proper leverage of analytics should start with a clear understanding of the outcomes state government is trying to achieve. This issue brief presents the rationale for analytics using the NASCIO Enterprise Architecture Value Chain as a framework for organizing the thinking and the questions which eventually drive investment in analytics capabilities. It builds on the foundational concepts discussed in NASCIO’s first issue brief on this subject, and strongly recommends an enterprise approach. Without an enterprise approach to analytics, investment across the enterprise is un-orchestrated and uncoordinated. That creates redundant investment in tools and training, and creates barriers to cross line of business collaboration. State government can not afford redundant and disconnected investment. One of the values of enterprise architecture is the management, optimization and simplification of investment within state government. Proper investment and application of analytics is essential to deploying effective and efficient government services. Finally, the level of complexity of analytical methods and tools depends on the complexity of the decisions and the issues.

 

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2010 Deloitte-NASCIO Cybersecurity Study – State Governments at Risk: A Call to Secure Citizen Data and Inspire Public Trust

People put a lot of trust in state governments to collect, maintain and protect the appropriate information necessary to execute their programs, protect individual rights, and ensure public safety. The volume of that information expands at an ever-increasing pace, and maintenance and protection of that information, particularly where it involves Personally Identifiable Information (PII) and Personal Health Information (PHI), becomes more and more challenging. The 2010 Deloitte-NASCIO Cybersecurity Study finds that states need to do more to secure citizen data and maintain public trust.

 

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