The US Department of Defense (DoD) is giving states funds to support the Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment (MOVE) Act. The act builds on existing voting rights for individuals in the military or American citizens living abroad, by ensuring that they are still allowed to vote in their local US elections and have those votes [...]
Some Georgia lawmakers are taking a page from North Carolina’s playbook in order to limit municipal broadband projects in the state. Georgia Senate Majority Leader Chip Rogers is sponsoring a bill that he says is designed to keep government from unfairly competing against incumbent broadband providers. The bill makes the same kinds of arguments included [...]
Rochester, Minnesota and Las Vegas, Nevada are teaming up with IBM on using predicitive analytics for law enforcement. The efforts are part of IBM’s broader Smarter Cities initiative which uses analytics and other tools to provide big data to officials about how their cities and states look and operate. CivSource spoke with Mark Cleverley, Director, [...]
Congress may be moving forward on the public safety broadband network, but some Governors say that there isn’t enough involvement from state officials – the primary users of the proposed network. Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) and Wyoming Gov. Matthew Mead (R), co-chairmen of the homeland security committee of the National Governors Association (NGA), have [...]
Maryland is trying to give local business owners more incentive to grow the economy with a series of measures. They’ve launched an online database of all financial incentives available for job creation, and economic development. The database will support a variety of other online tools for business owners, designed to help them while also increasing [...]
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) will expand health coverage in the United States by more than 35 million people. This expansion requires states to take a fresh look at eligibility and customer service operations, and develop new business processes for interacting with stakeholders. Existing IT systems are outdated, and under-resourced state agencies are challenged by [...]
Rural broadband networks are moving forward in South Dakota and Alaska. Last week, South Dakota asked rural residents to complete usage surveys about how they use the internet and what services they would like to see. General Communications Inc. just finished an expansion in Southwest Alaska that would bring internet access to the region for [...]
California’s most recent government technology effort is running into some hurdles. The Financial Information System for California (FISCal), was supposed to streamline IT costs and staffing but seems to be hitting snags for exactly those reasons.
Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin set an ambitious goal for his state – 100% broadband coverage by 2013. The state is close to meeting that goal with over 90% wired for access. Now, officials are allocating capital and resources to improve mobile and wireless access points statewide.
Maine and Massachusetts are moving forward on broadband. Minnesota’s broadband task for released its first report last week which shows that co-ops are helping the state expand rural broadband. Massachusetts Broadband Institute (MBI), a division of the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, has selected Lightower to provide a diverse network solution as part of its MassBroadband 123 [...]
