NASCIO’s Monthly E-Newsletter

March 2007

Past Issues

NASCIO Home




TABLE OF CONTENTS



To submit information for the next edition, contact Dianne Adams, NASCIO Fast Facts editor.
 

TOP STORIES

  • NASCIO Midyear Conference Plans Take Shape

    Join us for the 2007 NASCIO Midyear Conference, Technology - Enabling Government for Citizens being held May 1-4 in Chantilly, Virginia at the Marriott Westfields Washington Dulles. The event will feature a keynote address by the Honorable David M. Walker, Comptroller General of the United States. Conference sessions include: Governors, Legislators, and the Fiscal Forecast; Architecting Citizen E-Authentication; Enterprise Service Oriented Architecture - A New Promise for State Government; The RHIO Recipe: CIOs in the Mix; and a roundtable discussion about IT Consolidation Strategies - What Worked and Why. To view the complete agenda, click here.

    Don't forget these upcoming conference deadlines:

  • NASCIO Members, Executive Director Honored Among Top 25 Doers, Dreamers and Drivers of 2006

    Government Technology has named four state CIOs and NASCIO's Executive Director among the Top 25 Doers, Dreamers and Drivers of 2006 for their insightful leadership and promotion of innovative uses of technology to advance the mission of government and better serve citizens.
    • Chris Cummiskey, Chief Information Officer, Government Information Technology Agency, State of Arizona - for his efforts in forwarding state initiatives in telecom overhaul, e-health, and the implementation of a state-wide telephone - and web-based 2-1-1 system
    • Bill Ezell, Chief Information Officer, State of Tennessee - for efforts that include the state's volunteer eHealth initiative, which joins Tennessee officials and medical professionals, to establish a statewide health network, reaching all healthcare providers in the state
    • Doug Robinson, NASCIO's Executive Director - for his efforts in identifying health IT as an issue of great significance for states, and for advancing the role of the state CIO as a key component of enterprise architecture planning in the health IT arena
    • Mary Carroll, former Chief Information Officer, State of Ohio - for her efforts on the Ohio Business Gateway, which has streamlined small and medium-sized businesses' interaction with the state
    • Doug Elkins, former Executive Chief Information Officer for the State of Arkansas - for his leadership and oversight of numerous projects that increased the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of state operations including a budgeting tool that helps agencies align IT spending with business goals and a business continuity and disaster recovery project
    For the complete story, click here.

  • Nominations Open for the 2007 NASCIO Recognition Awards

    For the nineteenth consecutive year, NASCIO will honor outstanding information technology achievements in the public sector through its Recognition Awards for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Information Technology. These awards honor information technology initiatives which exemplify best practices, support the public policy goals of state leaders, assist government officials to innovatively execute their duties, and provide cost-effective service to citizens.

    Notable changes to the awards program for 2007 include the addition of a new category for Information Security and Privacy initiatives and the expansion of the Business Continuity category to include Disaster Recovery initiatives. Complete details about the Recognition Awards program as well as instructions for submitting nominations are available at www.nascio.org/awards/. The final deadline for nominations is June 6, 2007.

  • NASCIO to Unveil Disaster Recovery Planning Video

    NASCIO will hold a press teleconference on Thursday, March 29, at 1:30 pm ET to release Government at Risk: Protecting Your IT Infrastructure. This highly anticipated disaster recovery video, a joint product of NASCIO’s Disaster Recovery Working Group and its Corporate Leadership Council, is designed to address elected officials and government leaders who influence funding decisions related to disaster recovery planning by demonstrating the critical dependencies that government has on the functions enabled by IT. Members of the media are invited to register to attend the call; click here to register. Please contact NASCIO Communications Coordinator, Stephanie Czuhajewski, at (859) 514-9156, or sczuhajewski@AMRMs.com for more information.

  • NASCIO Launches New Website

    NASCIO is pleased to announce the launch of their completely redesigned website. The new site incorporates numerous enhanced features including Google search capabilities and RSS feeds. Fast Facts is now available via RSS subscription. Please visit www.nascio.org for more details.

NASCIO In The News


Members In The News

  • CIO Transitions

    OHIO
    R. Steve Edmonson was sworn in as the State Chief Information Officer and Director of the Ohio Office of Information Technology on Monday, February 12, 2007. Most recently, Edmonson worked for Cardinal Health as Vice President of Information Technology Business Management from 2003-2005 and as Chief Information Officer and Vice President of Information Technology for a division of Cardinal Health, from 1997-2003. Click here for more information.

    RHODE ISLAND
    John Landers was recently appointed to serve as CIO for the State of Rhode Island. Landers, who began his state service on February 28, most recently held the position of VP of Information Technology for Filenes Department Stores, a $3.5 billion dollar retailer, where he led several company mergers and integrations; network infrastructure upgrades and technological upgrades to legacy application systems. Landers’ industry experience also includes 18 years with the IBM Corporation, operating in various management capacities including serving as the Hardware/Software Engineering Manager responsible for large retail accounts in the Metropolitan Boston area.

  • Lohrmann Featured in GCN

    Michigan Chief Information Security Officer, Dan Lohrmann, answered questions about business continuity planning in Michigan and cybersecurity efforts at the state and national levels in a recent interview with GCN. Lohrmann represents NASCIO on the IT Government Coordinating Council (GCC) led by the Department of Homeland Security. To read the complete interview, click here.

  • North Carolina Honored for ITIL Project of the Year

    The state of North Carolina was awarded the ITIL Project of the Year for 2006 at a ceremony during the 11th Annual International IT Service Management Conference and Exhibition in Las Vegas, Nevada in February. For more information, click here.

  • New Corporate Members

    NASCIO welcomes the following corporate members: Grant Thornton, LLP, Hughes Network Systems and Insight Public Sector.


    • Corporate Membership Renewal Deadline
    Corporate member benefits will expire on April 1, for any firm that has not renewed its membership dues for 2007. After the deadline, representatives from non-renewing firms will no longer be eligible to attend or sponsor NASCIO conferences, to serve on NASCIO committees, or to receive access to members-only information until the firm's membership is restored. Please contact Stephanie Czuhajewski at (859) 514-9156 or sczuhajewski@amrms.com if you have any questions about the status of your firm's membership.

NASCIO on the Road

  • The Healthcare Information Management Systems Society (HIMSS) held its 2007 Annual Conference & Exhibition in New Orleans, Louisiana on February 25 - March 1. NASCIO President Teri Takai was a featured speaker at the CIO Forum held on February 25 and also conducted an educational session on February 26. Over 28,000 conference attendees came together to discuss the latest developments in health information technology, participate in over 300 education sessions, and network with some of the top names in health information technology. Keynote speakers included Steven Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft; Governor Phil Bredesen of Tennessee; former Secretary of State General Colin Powell; and author Steven Covey.
  • Teri Takai, NASCIO President and CIO, state of Michigan, Doug Robinson, NASCIO Executive Director, Dan Lohrmann, CISO, state of Michigan and Christina Rosendahl, NASCIO's DC representative from Collins and Company, briefed Greg Garcia, who was recently appointed as Assistant Secretary for Cyber Security at the US Department of Homeland Security. Garcia was joined by key executives in the Cyber Security and Telecommunications directorate as the NASCIO delegation outlined the association's advocacy efforts and interests in strengthening the cyber security posture in the states.
  • Eric Sweden represented NASCIO at the February 20-22 meeting of the Global Infrastructure and Standards Working Group. NASCIO participated in the Global Executive Architecture Committee and the Services Committee. In addition to preparing the next version of the Justice Reference Architecture for SOA (Global JRA), this recent meeting included discussion of draft proposals for Guiding Principles for Global JRA, Methodology for Identifying and Designing Services, Service Specification focused on Fingerprint Identification Services, and Global JRA Service Design Principles. Global also met with representatives from the Information Sharing Environment (ISE) with the intention of building a collaborative relationship with this important initiative.

    Details on the Global JRA and related initiatives are available at www.it.ojp.gov/topic.jsp?topic_id=242. More information about the Information Sharing Environment is available at www.ise.gov/.

  • Doug Robinson, NASCIO Executive Director and Aldona Valicenti, Oracle Vice President for Business Development and Strategy for State and Local Government, collaborated to present a panel session on March 7 at the 21st Annual Information Processing Interagency Conference (IPIC) in Orlando, Florida. The topic discussed was "Federal and State Information Sharing - What’s Working, What’s Not?”
  • On March 7-9, 2007 in Washington, DC, NASCIO Senior Issues Coordinator Mary Gay Whitmer attended the conference of the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP). Conference sessions included a keynote by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and interactive break out sessions on managing a data breach, health IT and privacy, and maintaining privacy when outsourcing to a third party, as well as a government privacy roundtable. Attended by many private sector and government officials, the conference provided a good opportunity to raise awareness of the work that NASCIO has done on IT privacy.

Committee & Work Group Updates

  • NASCIO released Harmony Helps: A Progress Report on State Government Internet Presence earlier this month. This brief explores how state web portals have matured and examines the impact of the 2003 expansion of the dot-gov domain to state and local governments. Highlights include trends in state portal domain naming conventions; trends in internet portal branding and marketing, and alignment of agency websites and state email addresses with the state portal. The brief also explores areas of cross-boundary collaboration for online services and areas for future progress in cross-boundary collaboration online. It is an update of a 2002 NASCIO brief entitled Proposed GSA Rule: New Policy for the Dot-Gov Domain.
  • NASCIO's Best Practices and Innovations Working Group continues work on their whitepaper. This document will serve as a resource guide to outline business best practices applicable to the state IT enterprise. Release of this whitepaper is anticipated later this spring.
  • NASCIO's Corporate Leadership Council (CLC) held its semi-annual Face-to-Face Meeting in Washington DC on February 27. Representatives from 40 corporate member firms attended the event, which featured an eHealth briefing by Kathleen Nolan, Health Division Director of the National Governors Association (NGA) and former Wyoming Governor Jim Geringer. Nolan and Geringer discussed the NGA's State Alliance for e-Health, a collaborative effort to improve health care through electronic health record sharing. NASCIO corporate members also received an Executive Committee briefing from NASCIO President Teri Takai and a government affairs briefing by NASCIO's Executive Director, Doug Robinson and Christina Rosendahl of Collins & Company. During the second half of the CLC Face-to-Face Meeting, attendees participated in a strategic planning session, designed to shape the committee's 2007 projects and initiatives.
  • The Cross-Boundary Collaboration Committee has begun preliminary work on their first deliverable. This project will begin to establish a framework for cross-boundary collaboration by outlining the benefits and challenges of collaboration.
  • NASCIO's Enterprise Architecture Committee recently released an educational brochure entitled Building Better Government through Enterprise Architecture. This document is intended to give a quick summary of what constitutes Enterprise Architecture in state government and is targeted towards new state CIOs, state policy makers, and business leaders.
  • NASCIO will be conducting a working session of the Enterprise Architecture Cooperative in conjunction with the Midyear Conference in Chantilly, Virginia. This working session will highlight recent efforts in the Commonwealth of Virginia, where Chuck Tyger and his staff have created a version of the Federal Business Reference Model (BRM) that reflects state government functionality. Information regarding the Cooperative is available within the members-only section of NASCIO's website. Contact Eric Sweden at (859) 514-9189 or esweden@amrms.com if you are interested in participating as a state member.


    NASCIO is looking for information sharing scenarios involving state government that cross lines of business. Examples include: public health to justice, environmental to public health, environmental to justice, etc. Please contact Eric Sweden at (859) 514-9189 or esweden@amrms.com if you are currently implementing these types of information exchanges.
  • The Infrastructure and Services Committee agreed to focus on data center consolidation strategies and business justification as the topic of its preliminary deliverables for 2007. The committee hopes to begin with a short state survey on data center consolidation, leading to a research brief based around the results.
  • In response to the release of the REAL ID regulations by the US Department of Homeland Security on March 1, NASCIO's REAL ID Working Group will reconvene this spring. As a reminder, this working group was established as a forum for state members only. The Working Group will review the regulations and decide on a course of action that could include submitting comments to DHS within the sixty-day comment period.
  • NASCIO's Security and Privacy Committee is currently working on a draft of its first deliverable for 2007, which will address ways for states to address the IT security insider threat. It is expected to be released later this spring.

Mark Your Calendar

  • Upcoming Webinars
    • Recognition Awards Best Practices Webinar
      NASCIO will host a webinar on Tuesday, March 20 at 2:00 pm ET featuring presentations from Pennsylvania's Justice Network on its Global XML 3.0 Document Creation Process and from Michigan's Department of Information Technology on its Email Consolidation Project.

      Presented in conjunction with NASCIO's 2006 Recognition Awards for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Information Technology, this webinar series is designed to highlight the innovative initiatives and best practices exemplified in each award-winning nomination. To register for this event, click here.

    • Disaster Recovery Webinar
      The Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Working Group in conjunction with the Corporate Leadership Council will host a webinar entitled Best Practices in Disaster Recovery Planning and Preparation, presented by Motorola, on Tuesday, March 27, 2007 at 2:00 pm ET. The webinar will feature speakers Ben Holycross, Radio Systems Manager, Polk County, Florida Division of Emergency Management and Jerry McNerney, Senior Director, Motorola Enterprise Mobility Business.

      This webinar is the third of a 12-part Disaster Recovery Webinar series, featuring presentations by NASCIO corporate members who have provided financial support for NASCIO's disaster recovery video project. To register for this event, click here.

  • Upcoming Committee Calls
    • Disaster Recovery Working Group - Wednesday, March 21 at 2:00 pm ET
    • Programs Committee - Wednesday, March 21 at 4:00 pm ET
    • Best Practice Working Group - Thursday, April 5 at 3:00 pm ET
    • Project Management Forum - Tuesday, April 3 at 3:00 pm ET featuring a presentation on Project Success: Looking Beyond Traditional Project Metrics hosted by Brian Willard, BKSolutions, Inc.
    • Cross-Boundary Collaboration Committee - Wednesday, April 4 at 3:00 pm ET
    • Executive Committee - Thursday, April 5 at 2:00 pm ET
    • Security and Privacy Committee - Wednesday, April 9 at 1:30 pm ET
    • Health IT Working Group - Tuesday, April 10 at 3:00 pm ET
    • Enterprise Architecture Committee - Thursday, April 12 at 2:00 pm ET
    • Infrastructure and Services Committee - Thursday, April 12 at 2:00 pm ET
    • Corporate Leadership Council - Thursday, April 12, 4:00 pm ET featuring an interview with Georgia CIO, Patrick Moore
  • Other Events of Interest
    Innovations in Justice: Information Sharing Strategies and Best Practices
    BJA Regional Information Sharing Conferences
    • March 27-29, Minneapolis, Minnesota
    • June 4-6, Jacksonville, Florida
    The cost to attend either event is only $75. For more information, visit www.search.org/conferences/2006reginfosharing/.