State CIO Priorities for 2018 – State Technology Leaders make Security and Cloud Services Top Priorities

LEXINGTON, Ky., Wednesday, November 29 – The National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) has released its annual survey of state information technology leaders on critical priorities for the coming year. As expected, security remains as the top priority, however cloud services moved into position as a close second. The prioritized rankings of strategies and technologies reflect voting by state CIOs and are available for download at www.NASCIO.org/topten.

In past years, there has been a noticeable gap in the votes for the number one spot and the runner up. Not this year. This emphasis on cloud services and the continuing strong position of budget and cost control are indicative that CIOs are still concerned about maintaining cost and quality of services. This is further supported by the fact that agile is on the Top Ten for the third year in a row. Shared services comes in sixth after being off the Top Ten for three years. There is a definite growing trend toward consolidating and unifying services across the enterprise.

Bo Reese, NASCIO president and chief information officer for the state of Oklahoma stated, "Data management and analytics, cloud solutions and certainly security are demanding our attention. Unification of services will drive the need to improve data management discipline, enterprise governance and optimization."

"There is an overarching continued consistency in the areas of budget and cost control, security and risk management," remarked NASCIO Executive Director Doug Robinson. "Digital government appears for the first time as priority four which is indicative of states' efforts to focus on citizen services using digital platforms and integration." 

NASCIO utilizes the annual list of priorities to develop strategic areas of focus for the coming year, formulate new committees and working groups and plan NASCIO conference sessions and publications.