Top 10 CIO Priorities
Published January 8, 2015 11:00 AM
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Updated May 19, 2015 6:21 PM
1 Min Read
While corporate CIOs are pushing hard into Big Data and other applications to improve the customer experience, State CIOs are balancing customer engagements with continued budget and government policy challenges.Heres a closer look at the Top 10 State CIO Priorities for 2015.Source: NASCIO. Image: iStock
10. Customer Relationship Management
Through proper CRM strategies, state governments hope to build customer confidence in specific agencies. While ranked No. 10 as a priority here, this is typically the top CIO priority within corporations many of which are striving to embrace the age of the customer. Source: NASCIO. Image: iStock
9. Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity
Big once in a lifetime events like Hurricane Sandy knocked a lot of towns and cities offline back in 2012. But the once in a lifetime disasters are seemingly more commonplace these days. As a result, governments are drawing up disaster recovery plans that allow employees to work anywhere during the recovery process. The plans lean heavily on cloud services, wireless and remote access, and more. Source: NASCIO. Image: iStock
8. Mobility
This spans devices, applications, policy issues, wireless infrastructure and the ongoing BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) wave. Recent Gartner research suggests that its less expensive for IT departments to support tablets that employees own, rather than buying tablets outright for employees. That said, IT leaders must have firm but reasonable mobile use policies in place. Source: NASCIO. Image: iStock
7. Strategic IT Planning
Much like the alignment of business and IT, government organizations must align IT with the governors policy agenda. Sometimes, government goals are in conflict with one another. For instance, governments are striving to launch self-service portals for citizens, but at the same time the IT departments must ensure security for increasingly open networks and applications. Source: NASCIO. Image: iStock
6. Talent Management
In addition to attracting, developing and retaining IT personnel, state governments have to deal with a stark reality: Thousands of aging IT pros are set to retire in the coming years, taking considerable knowledge with them out the door. States must somehow capture and retain that knowledge even as employees retire. Source: NASCIO. Image: iStock
5. Budget and Cost Control
Tight IT budgets are nothing new at the state level. A range of steps (data center consolidation, cloud and mobile services) could help to drive costs down. Open standards like Linux also help. As do aggressive vendor competition, including Microsoft Office 365 vs. Google Apps for government users. Source: NASCIO. Image: iStock
4. Broadband, Wireless Connectivity
This involves strengthening statewide connectivity beyond schools and public facilities. WiFi has increasingly become a base-level utility or infrastructure expectation, similar to reliable roads and highways. Source: NASCIO. Image: iStock
3. Consolidation, Optimization
At a base level, servers, storage and networking are coming together in converged data center systems. Some more aggressive states may evaluate software defined data centers (SDDC), where virtualization stretches from servers to networks and storage. But its early in the SDDC game. Source: NASCIO. Image: iStock
2. Cloud Services
This stretches from cloud strategy to proper selection of service and deployment models. State governments are weighing security, privacy and data ownership as they navigate public cloud, private cloud and on-premises options. Source: NASCIO. Image: iStock
1. Security
This covers everything from risk assessment and governance to security frameworks, data protection, training and awareness, and mitigating insider threats. Also, state governments are trying to determine what constitutes due care or reasonable efforts on security. Source: NASCIO. Image: iStock
Thank you to the NASCIO for the top 10 list. This slideshow has been reprinted with permission from Information Management. Image: iStock