State IT Chiefs Reveal 2009 Priorities
The National Association of State Chief Information Officers recently released its top policy and technology priorities for 2009, ranking consolidation and virtualization as the most important initiatives.
NASCIO’s survey of state IT leaders shows consolidation tops the list of strategies. To aid in consolidation initiatives, respondents chose virtualization of storage, computing and the data center as the most important technology for next year.
Other technologies that state CIOs list include:
- Document, content and e-mail management, including respository, archiving and digital preservation
- Legacy application modernization and upgrades
- Networking, voice and data communication, and unified communication
- Web 2.0
- Green IT technologies and solutions
- Identity and access management
- Geospatial analysis and geographic information systems
- Business intelligence and analytics applications
- Mobile workforce enablement
The survey ranks strategies, management processes and solutions. After consolidation, the ranking is as follows:
- Shared services (business models, sharing resources, services, infrastructure)
- Budget and cost control (managing budget reduction, strategies for savings, reducing or avoiding costs, activity-based costing)
- Security (security safeguards, enterprise policies, data protection, insider threats)
- Electronic records management/digital preservation/e-discovery (strategies, policies, legal issues, opportunities for shared services, emergency preparedness)
- Enterprise resource planning strategy (acquisition, implementation, expansion, upgrade)
- Green IT (policies, energy efficiency, power management, green procurement, e-waste)
- Transparency (open government, performance measures and data, accountability)
- Health IT (assessment, partnering, implementation)
- Governance (improving governance, data governance)
"Every year we take the pulse of the state CIOs to ensure we understand their policy and technology priorities,” says Gopal Khanna, NASCIO president and Minnesota CIO. “This exercise also brings about collaborative initiatives and guides our tactical plans for the year. Consolidation, shared services, budget/cost control and security are clearly at the top of the list of policy priorities."
