NASCIO Releases Unmanned Aerial Systems, Governance and State CIOs: On the Radar

LEXINGTON, Ky., May 27, 2015 — The National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) released a policy brief on state government use of unmanned aerial systems (UAS) today. The paper focuses on the myriad ways UAS are deployed in state government and why state CIOs should be actively engaged in the governance and use of UAS.

“In NASCIO’s 2014 State CIO Survey, we asked state CIOs to characterize their role with respect to UAS in their state and 63.5 percent said they were not on their radar. We believe UAS should be on the radar of every state CIO, which is why we developed this policy brief,” explained NASCIO Executive Director Doug Robinson.

The paper encourages state CIOs to focus on data standardization, privacy, safety, communications infrastructure and security issues when developing a governance model for UAS. The paper also encourages state CIOs to play an active role in the governance process.

“UAS are already in use nationwide and if state CIOs don’t take an active role in addressing these important policy issues sooner rather than later, they will likely be asked to deal with a host of complicated issues in the near future. We particularly need to address privacy, security, safety and data standardization as soon as possible to avoid a mess down the road,” said NASCIO President and Ohio CIO Stu Davis.

Read the policy brief at www.nascio.org/OnTheRadar.