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While the 2020 election appears to have potentially impacted far fewer state CIOs than in past years, the National Association of State Chief Information Officers’ (NASCIO) state CIO membership continues its “churn” according to executive director, Doug Robinson. He also weighs in on plans for the next NASCIO conference in DC in spring 2021.

To put it mildly, 2020 has indeed been a year of disruption at so many levels, and the National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) is not immune. Unrelated to the COVID-19 pandemic, however, New Hampshire CIO Denis Goulet took over the reins as president, following outgoing President Eric Boyette, who was CIO of North Carolina until his governor appointed him transportation secretary back in February. Consequently, Goulet began his NASCIO term just as the pandemic was about to metastasize around the globe. John Thomas Flynn asked Goulet about the effect on the Granite State, on this week's Ask the CIO: SLED Edition.

South Dakota CIO Jeff Clines began his job in Pierre this past April, right in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak -- and even in to the new fiscal year COVID response is front and center. He gave me an update on where things are headed.

Jeff Clines left Illinois secretary of state CIO position to become South Dakota CIO during the spring 2020, the crucible of the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak. The cabinet position, full operational authority and the governor's keen executive sponsorship played a large part in his decision. The state's culture has led to success of the their reaction o the pandemic.

Montana has garnered national recognition for its decision several years ago to plan to retire its mainframe infrastructure. State CIO Tim Bottenfield said, on Ask the CIO: SLED Edition, that "the writing was on the wall that it was not going to be sustainable for us to maintain our mainframe services." Being a small state resource-wise, many agencies were beginning to divest themselves of the requirements to keep their mainframe services as far back as 10 years ago. He told John Thomas Flynn how that's progressing.

As with all state chief information officers, Montana's Tim Bottenfield has been at the epicenter of the state’s efforts to continue operations during the coronavirus. He's been teleworking for the most part from his cabin just outside Glacier National Park, about 200 miles north of the state capital. He said Montana was ready thanks to the fact that the state had multiple solutions available, whether that was via VPN or VDI, plus utilizing 365 and the cloud. Hear more from his talk with host John Thomas Flynn on Ask the CIO: SLED Edition.

In part 1 of his interview with Carlos Rivero, the Commonwealth of Virginia’s first chief data officer, host John Thomas Flynn opined that the growing establishment of state CDO positions across the country resembled the creation of the state chief information officers in the mid-1990s. In addition, the position’s placement within the state organizational hierarchy also continues to evolve with about half reporting to the state CIO while the other half are located within the states' “administration secretariat." Hear the rest of the interview on Ask the CIO: SLED Edition.

Since its inception during the last decade, the chief data officer position in state government has matured whereby half of the states now boast one. While the original CIOs were primarily embedded within the states’ “administrative” agencies, over the last several years more and more have been set up as heads of cabinet agencies. Over a dozen states now have a state CIO in their governors’ cabinets, and that trend appears to grow with each new election. John Thomas Flynn spoke to the Commonwealth of Virginia’s CDO Carlos Rivero on Ask the CIO: SLED Edition.

State IT leadership across the country has for the most part been widely praised for stepping up during this coronavirus pandemic and successfully implementing continuity of operations plans almost seamlessly. However, one area of concern which affected scores of states has been the surge of unemployment insurance (UI) claims and its devastating impact on legacy applications. At least one state's fortuitous UI modernization effort a few years ago has spared it from much of the turmoil affecting so many others. Ask the CIO: SLED Edition spoke with Anthony Fantasia, the chief information officer for the Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

If the Great Recession of 2008-2009 when millions of local public sector workers lost their jobs is any indication, the pandemic’s impact on this sector in 2020 will be staggering. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said the near term effects on state and local employment will be devastating. In part 2 of his interview on Ask the CIO: SLED Edition with host John Thomas Flynn, Alan Shark, the long-time executive director of the Public Technology Institute (PTI), said how the answers could lie in telework and technology.

Alan Shark is amazed at the difference a few months can make. Before the coronavirus turned the world upside down, in January his organization the Public Technology Institute and the National Association of State CIOs coordinated on a webinar on the 2020 technology forecast for state and local officials. Given what has transpired over the ensuing months, those prognostications are being reconstituted due to the virus' impact on state and local government IT priorities and spending. Hear part 1 of Shark's discussion with John Thomas Flynn on Ask the CIO: SLED Edition.

This week should have capped off the National Association of State Chief Information Officers' 50th anniversary with its Midyear Conference taking place just outside of Washington, D.C. The coronavirus had other ideas, however, and forced NASCIO leadership to switch over to a virtual event. In addition to conference activities, Ask the CIO: SLED Edition spoke with NASCIO Executive Director Doug Robinson about the ever changing roles, impacts, and even the numbers in the state CIO ranks. For better or worse, the pandemic has certainly raised the visibility of state government IT leadership.

For only the second time since its founding in 1969 the National Association of State Chief Information Officers has been forced to cancel its premier midyear conference that had been scheduled to meet next week just outside Washington, D.C. This year their event fell victim to the impact of the novel coronavirus. Nonetheless, Doug Robinson, NASCIO’s executive director for the last 16 years, spoke with us this week about a virtual substitute on May 4-5 entitled the NASCIO Midyear 2020 Webcast Series. Hear more on Ask the CIO: SLED Edition

Although this interview with Kevin Plexico, senior vice president of information solutions at Deltek, who runs their market intelligence business, occurred prior to the full impact of the coronavirus pandemic, it set the stage for the significant budget revisions leading up to the new fiscal year on July 1. Plexico narrowed his perspective to New York and Texas, where he sees state and local governments creating innovation officer positions, focusing on citizen services, and all the while increasing spending on cybersecurity. Hear more on Ask the CIO: SLED Edition.

Each fall the new IT budgets are broken down by agency, department, and even project. And the state and local IT vendor community would absolutely drool over something similar to the data-rich content in the federal IT dashboard at the state and local level. Host John Thomas Flynn spoke to Kevin Plexico, senior vice president of information solutions at Deltek, and who runs their market intelligence business. Hear more on Ask the CIO: SLED.

If it’s any indication as to how well North Dakota is faring under the coronavirus pandemic, it was just reported this week that the state is under serious consideration for hosting National Hockey League postseason games in Grand Forks. The attitude about the state’s condition could be attributable to the resiliency of the state government’s continuity of operations plan and implementation. North Dakota Chief Technology Officer Duane Schell and Chief Security Officer Kevin Ford joined host John Thomas Flynn on Ask the CIO: SLED Edition to paint a portrait of the state’s readiness.

With confidence in Nebraska’s rigorous continuity of operations planning procedures, including testing and even a scorecard, Chief Information Officer Ed Toner continues to believe that his state is adequately prepared for the coronavirus pandemic. As of April 6, Nebraska is one of only eight states that had not issued a mandated so-called shelter-in-place directive. The Nebraska state workforce continues to come to the office but Toner said the focus has really been to be able to run the office of the CIO from home without any interruption. Hear more in the second part of his interview with John Thomas Flynn on Ask the CIO: SLED Edition.

Like the other 49 state chief information officers Nebraska’s Ed Toner, and thousands more in local governments, have been very busy on the front lines to help orchestrate the continuation of business operations for the millions of citizens they all serve during this pandemic. Toner agreed that Nebraska had been very much in sync with the other states. And his state agencies have all gone through rigorous continuity of operations planning for the last several years, with success. Hear more on this week's Ask the CIO: SLED Edition with host John Thomas Flynn.

If we've learned anything this last year at Federal News Network interviewing scores of state and local government chief information officers from across the country, it’s the tortuous paths most of these individuals have traveled prior to their government appointments. On the surface it may appear that Ann Dunkin, who just resigned as CIO of Santa Clara County, California, last month may be an exception to this pattern. She started the next stage of her heretofore successful career at Dell this week and spoke to John Thomas Flynn on Ask the CIO: SLED Edition.