As mentioned in the WHAT earlier this week, NASCIO has released its federal advocacy priorities for the year.
Yesterday we covered the status of Cybersecurity (check out that post here)—and updates on that will continue to come fast and furious. Today we focus on the often neglected but extremely powerful tool of modernizing outdated federal regulations that impact state IT.
The Office of Management and Budget finalized a consolidation of multiple circulars into an “omni-circular” that directs agencies to create more flexible grant rules that reflect the changes in technology such as consolidated cloud solutions, building data centers over time, and the costs of developing software. NASCIO worked with OMB for years to develop these changes, and the very positive results of this collaboration will go into effect this year. More information available here for grant guidance geeks.
There are also significant opportunities to modernize how the federal government interacts with states around Information Technology over the course of 2015. One state informed me recently that over 65 percent of their IT spend comes from federal funds. Those funds are segregated across various grant programs and agencies, and each come with a specific set of rules that constrain how those funds are utilized. This limits states from creating a comprehensive IT strategy that improves delivery of services to citizens, better secures data, and allows them to attract top talent to their IT shops. We hope to begin to change this dynamic in 2015.
New standards from NIST guiding federal information on non-federal systems, and FISMA information security reforms that ensure the federal government takes a more active than audit approach to IT security, provide openings to change duplicative and conflicting grant rules that, somewhat ironically, tend to be one of the greatest stumbling blocks to creating better systems and security at the state level. More on the proposed NIST standards in this blog post (and the draft standards themselves here).
Over the long term, we also look to explore opportunities to incentivize efficient technology across state government in partnership with federal government agencies. In addition, we want to ensure that regulations around data standardization occurs in a positive and well thought-out manner that reflect best practices, existing standards, and respect the fact that change takes effort, money, and time.
Finally, we want to continue to work with federal agencies to remove barriers that prevent states from responsibly utilizing modern technologies and business practices such as cloud computing and mobile access. None of this will be simple—let alone solved completely in the year ahead—but we see great opportunities for progress.
Stay tuned for more on other advocacy priorities!