NASCIO’s Monthly E-Newsletter

August 2007

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

TOP STORIES

  • NASCIO's Annual Conference Looks to the Future

    The theme for the 2007 Annual Conference, to be held September 30 - October 3 at the Marriott Starr Pass in Tucson, Arizona, will be Building on the Past, Managing the Present, Stepping into the Future. The conference will feature sessions on eGovernment 2.0, cross-boundary collaboration, state IT workforce challenges, shared services, digital preservation, IT security/data breaches, the greening of IT and health information technology serving the needs of the elderly. Click here to view the preliminary conference agenda.

    Please note: The deadline to receive NASCIO’s group rate at the Marriott Starr Pass is August 31, 2007. After that date, rooms will be taken on a rate and space availability basis. Click here to make your reservation today.

  • NASCIO to Release IT Security Awareness and Training Brief

    IT Security Awareness and Training: Changing the Culture of State Government, a product of NASCIO's Security and Privacy Committee, was released today. As data breaches and security incidents that originate from within state government appear to be on the rise, cultural change is needed. All state employees need to understand that IT security is everyone's job and understand how to use the state's IT resources in a way that does not create the risk of a security incident. This brief highlights awareness and training activities that state CIOs can implement to avoid internal threats that can lead to a full-on state government crisis. To assist CIOs in pursuing these efforts, this brief includes many examples of awareness and training activities that are currently taking place with the states. This brief will serve as a companion to the committee's earlier work, Insider Security Threats: State CIOs Take Action Now! which identified training and awareness efforts as important means of averting insider threats.

NASCIO In The News


Members In The News

  • CIO Transitions

    MASSACHUSETTS
    Anne Margulies has been appointed Assistant Secretary for Information Technology and Chief Information Officer. Margulies joins the Patrick administration from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where she was the Executive Director of the OpenCourseWare initiative. In a change from past administrations, Margulies will also be named an assistant secretary of the Massachusetts Executive Office of Administration and Finance and report directly to Leslie Kirwan. Margulies will begin her new role on September 4, 2007. Bethann Pepoli, who has been serving as Acting CIO since November 2006, will remain in her role as Deputy CIO for Massachusetts. For the complete announcement, click here.

  • Delaware and Michigan Honored as eGovernment Leaders

    The 2007 Brown University eGovernment Report on the states was released on July 24. This assessment ranks state portals on effective governmental use of web-based technology focusing on the areas of content, usability and services. The top five states this year are Delaware, Michigan, Maine, Kentucky and Tennessee. Click here to view the announcement. The full report is available at http://www.insidepolitics.org/egovt07us.pdf.

  • Special Report: State CIOs Speak Out

    In recent interviews with Public CIO, several state CIOs discussed the challenges and rewards of being a state CIO. The article featured responses from John Gillispie (Iowa), Tom Jarrett (Delaware), Gopal Khanna (Minnesota), David Litchliter (Mississippi), Teri Takai (Michigan), and Gerry Weaver (Indiana). For the complete story, click here.

  • Kundra Discussed Changes in DC

    An interview with the recently appointed CTO for the District of Columbia, Vivek Kundra, was published in ExecutiveBiz. Kundra commented on his top priorities and the role that the Office of the CTO will play in the transformation of the DC Public Schools. Click here to access the complete interview.

  • Locatis Interviewed by Center for Digital Government

    Colorado CIO Michael Locatis answered questions about current IT projects in the state and making the transition from local to state government in a recent interview with the Center for Digital Government. Locatis served as the CIO for the City and County of Denver prior to his appointment as state CIO earlier this year. To read the interview, click here.

  • New Corporate Members

    NASCIO is pleased to welcome new corporate members Blue Phoenix, CH2M Hill, ImageNow, Initiate Systems, Lexis-Nexis, New Energy Technologies, and TPI.

NASCIO on the Road

  • Senior Issues Coordinator Mary Gay Whitmer attended the Annual Meeting of the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) in Boston, Massachusetts, August 5 - 8. High priority topics included numerous hearings, committee meetings and panels on the REAL ID Act, Health IT, and Broadband. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, spoke about recent Congressional activity regarding homeland security and healthcare, among other topics, and the Secretary of the US Department of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, spoke about the REAL ID Act and immigration.
  • NASCIO Enterprise Architect Eric Sweden participated in the recent Global Infrastructure and Standards Working Group, Management and Policy Committee meeting in Seattle, Washington. This committee is currently developing a guidance document on SOA Governance. The immediate deliverable will be a pro forma management of understanding template. NASCIO's Enterprise Architecture Committee will participate in the review process for this document.

Staff Transitions

  • We are pleased to announce that Shawn Karrick has joined AMR Management Services as the new Membership and Communications Coordinator for NASCIO. In this role, Shawn will manage NASCIO's membership, development and communications activities. She will also support the Corporate Leadership Council. Shawn's previous experience includes serving as Director of Special Events at the Greater Lexington Chamber of Commerce. She has also held positions as Conference Coordinator at the Marietta Conference Center and Resort and the University of Kentucky.

Committee & Work Group Updates

  • The Corporate Leadership Council (CLC) held its semi-annual Face-to-Face Meeting in Reston, Virginia on August 8. Representatives from 35 corporate member firms attended the event, which featured an Executive Committee briefing from NASCIO President Teri Takai and updates from Executive Director Doug Robinson. NASCIO corporate members reviewed the preliminary data from the State IT Workforce Survey recently conducted by the CLC. Attendees were also treated to a tour of Unisys’s Center of Excellence.
  • The Cross-Boundary Collaboration Committee is currently working toward their second deliverable which will examine the governance and financial challenges and opportunities in state-local collaborations and highlight success stories and lessons learned from case studies of state-local collaborations. This brief has an anticipated mid-September release date.
  • NASCIO's Disaster Recovery Working Group will complete its series of products on disaster recovery and business continuity by publishing an issue brief that addresses the challenges state CIOs may face when dealing with pandemics and the associated costs in personnel and lost productivity. This resource is scheduled for release in September.
  • The E-Discovery Working Group is completing work on an issue brief that will highlight the importance for state CIOs to be aware of the changes in the e-discovery related Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Release of this document is anticipated in late August. The working group is also drafting a longer research brief that will provide state CIOs with starting points regarding e-discovery and will explore the importance of good records management systems and practices to facilitate compliance with e-discovery requests. The research brief will be released in late September.
  • The Enterprise Architecture Committee released Part Two: Economic, Legal, and Organizational Issues of its Electronic Records Management and Digital Preservation series in late July. They will complete this series with Part Three: Technology Issues, The Promise of XML, Enterprise Architecture, Managing Digital Assets, Top Ten List for State CIOs in late August. The committee is also seeking examples for the second installment of its series on Organizational Transformation. States who would like to share examples of current or planned collaboration across government lines of business and across state boundaries, including collaborative purchase agreements, shared services, regional economic development strategies, or other initiatives, should contact Eric Sweden at esweden@amrms.com.


    The Enterprise Architecture Committee will hold a two-hour meeting on Sunday afternoon, September 30 at the NASCIO Annual Conference in Tucson, Arizona to review progress on the Enterprise Architecture Cooperative. This session will be co-facilitated by Eric Sweden and Chuck Tyger of Virginia. For more information, please contact Eric Sweden at esweden@amrms.com.

  • NASCIO's Infrastructure and Services Committee released the results of its national survey of state CIOs, Enterprise Data Center Consolidation in the States: Strategies and Business Justification on August 20. As a follow on to the survey findings, the committee will also produce a template slide presentation that states can use as a tool to help justify data center consolidation efforts within their IT enterprise. This resource should be released in late September.
  • On July 16, NASCIO's Health IT Working Group sponsored an All-States call featuring Rick Friedman, Director of the Division of State Systems within the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). On the call Friedman shared valuable information with attendees regarding MITA and Medicaid transformation and answered participant questions. The presentation slides have been archived as a resource for State Members. To access the archived presentation, click here.

    The Health IT Working Group released On the Road to RHIO: What State CIOs Need to Know in late July. The brief examines the impact of health IT and RHIO efforts on states and state CIOs and explores ways in which state CIOs can become more involved in these initiatives. The brief also contains examples of state CIOs involvement in their states' RHIO efforts. The Working Group is currently updating Profiles of Progress: State Health IT Initiatives for 2007 to reflect the current status of each state CIOs involvement with health IT efforts in their state.


Mark Your Calendar

Upcoming Webinars
  • Disaster Recovery Webinar
    NASCIO's Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Working Group, in conjunction with its Corporate Leadership Council, will host a webinar entitled "Are You Ready? An Emergency Management Perspective for Governmental CIOs," presented by CIBER on Tuesday, August 28, at 2:00 pm ET. The webinar will feature speakers Colonel Terry J. Ebbert, USMC (Ret), Director of Homeland Security for the City of New Orleans and A.J. Briding, CIBER, Inc. Certified Emergency Manager, Project Management Professional, Certified Manager of Quality/Organizational Excellence.

    Learn about Best Practices in Emergency Management during this eighth webinar in NASCIO's 12-part Disaster Recovery Webinar series, which features presentations by corporate members who have provided financial support for NASCIO's recently released DVD, Government at Risk: Protecting Your IT Infrastructure. Click here to register for this event.

  • Upcoming Committee Calls
    • Disaster Recovery Working Group - Wednesday, August 29 at 2:00 pm ET
    • Programs Committee - Thursday, August 30 and Thursday, September 13 at 1:00 pm ET
    • Cross-Boundary Collaboration Committee - Wednesday, September 5 at 3:00 pm ET
    • Executive Committee - Thursday, September 6 at 2:00 pm ET
    • Health IT Working Group - Tuesday, September 11 at 3:00 pm ET
    • Enterprise Architecture Committee - Thursday, September 13 at 2:00 pm ET
    • Infrastructure and Services Committee - Thursday, September 13 at 2:00 pm ET
    • Corporate Leadership Council - Thursday, September 13 at 4:00 pm ET
    • E-Discovery Working Group - Monday, September 17 at 12:00 pm ET
    • Project Management Forum - Tuesday, September 18 at 3:00 pm ET