North Carolina is considering a bill that would keep municipalities from operating their own broadband networks. The bill in its original form was recently challenged by Salisbury, a municipality in North Carolina that currently runs its own broadband network – Fibrant. After the bill’s sponsors met with Salisbury Mayor Susan Kluttz they agreed to pull [...]
In an announcement last week, Baltimore County Executive Kevin Kamenetz highlighted twenty-three technology initiatives that his administration will implement within the next six to eighteen months. The nearly two dozen projects include citizen-facing solutions, such as a constituent service portal, and internal tools that will help modernize the county’s business processes.
Every day, users from all over the world log on to ArcGIS Online and contribute mapping data to the worldwide base map. This base map serves as one of the largest authoritative base maps available. However, for users with sensitive data, building on and contributing to a public map may not be possible. Recently, at [...]
Last week, President Obama traveled to Marquette County, Michigan to unveil a nationwide, high-speed wireless plan. The initiative received applause from a handful of governors who said the expansion would benefit their local economies and benefit efforts to build out the National Public Safety Broadband Network for first responders.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is revamping how rural Americans will gain access to broadband. On February 8, the commission set up an official rulemaking proceeding to overhaul the Universal Service Fund to try and make rural broadband more affordable. According to an announcement on Tuesday, the FCC identified 39 states that have areas without [...]
Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton announced that the Chief Operating Officer for Information Technology Services for the Minnesota System of Colleges and Universities (MnSCU), Carolyn Parnell, will be the states new Chief Information Officer. In her capacity atop the Office of Enterprise Technology (OET), Ms. Parnell will guide the state’s IT strategy and manage internal and [...]
In a survey announced this week, the National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) said that continued declines in the states’ IT workforce will challenge service delivery and productivity in the coming years. Although respondents indicated that the weak economy has kept many workers at their jobs, an “inevitable tsunami of turnover,” should be [...]
In this, the first of two pieces on the federal debt and its relationship to state and local governments, Accenture’s David Wilson outlines how the debt crisis should lead to a fundamental reexamination of the way money transfers from federal to state coffers. He also argues for a government processes “Marshall Plan” that looks into [...]
A new study out yesterday by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that three-quarters of Americans participate in some kind of voluntary group or organization. Moreover, the study found the lines between online and offline participation in group activity is blurring.
According to new rules published last week by the Treasury Department’s Financial Management Service, Social Security recipients can expect to receive their checks through electronic funds transfer (EFT) beginning May 1, 2011. Officials believe the move to direct deposit could save upwards of $1 billion over the next 10 years.
