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Many of you know that the executive teleconferences under the "knowledge center" tab within Navigator is wealth of information. But it can also be easy to overlook--I will be posting some highlights of each teleconference as they happen along with a link to the full version.

So in case you missed it, below are highlights from October's executive teleconference with Brian Rawson, CIO of Texas (for the full version click here):

Texas
The State of Texas has approximately 23.5 million people, 1,500 cities, and 254 counties. The Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex has a population that exceeds the population of 31 states. Brewster County is large enough to fit the states of CT, DE, and RI within its borders.

There are 151 state agencies with 142,000 employees. In Austin alone, there are 45 state agency offices, totaling approximately 10 million square feet. The state population growth is projected to increase by 71 percent by 2040. Texas is home to 11 of the 25 fastest growing cities in the US. Job growth increased three times the national rate in 2007.

Information Communications Technology (ICT) in state government
Texas spend approximately $1.5 billion per year in IT across multiple contracting categories. There are approximately 700,000 desktops and 300,000 laptops in the both state government and higher education.

4 major statewide technology goals

1. Leverage the state's investment in shared technology infrastructure.


2. Protect and secure technology assets and information while safe-guarding citizen privacy; information security and privacy management are two very big issues.


3. Access to information - to simplify citizen, government, and business access to public services and information.


4. Promote the innovative use of technology that positively impacts the state's business as well as its economic development.

New Initiatives
Two long term, big project contracts will expire in the calendar year of 2009.

1. The first contract is for the Texan Services Statewide Communications Technology Backbone and Network (AT&T led).


2. The second is for Texasonline.com. DIR wants to continue providing the more than 800 services through its four sub-portals: government to citizen portal, government to business portal, government to employee (statewide intranet) portal, and a government to government portal.

How important is Green IT and increased energy efficiency to the state at this point?
It is important and is being addressed through managed services such as data center consolidation and infrastructure management. House Bill 66 will look at power saving utilities, such as servers and desktops. Although green IT has been lagging in Texas, it will be at the forefront of discussion during new legislative session in January.

The current economic downturn - how do you see it impacting your operation?
Texas is somewhat of an anomaly in that the comptroller is projecting a budget surplus in her biennial revenue estimate. From a technology standpoint there will still be challenges (which education has already began to feel). From a value proposition standpoint, DIR is about doing government cheaper, faster, and smarter by leveraging state investment through shared investments.

If journalism is still the first draft of history, it is understandable that President-elect Barack Obama dominates the post-election coverage.  The Spectator's blog on all things American has compiled a long list of potential cabinet picks for the Obama Administration -- it is as speculative as any other such list but it provides a clue as to how intently overseas observers are watching every move of the incoming administration.

But there were other personalities in play, including eleven governors.  Here is the briefest of summaries:

Delaware, where it is good to be first (constitutionally): Upstart Jack Markell (D) will replace a fellow Democrat Ruth Ann Minner who was prevented from running for re-election by term limits.  Markell's predecessor was quietly effective in making technologies work for the disproportionately older population of her small state.  It is a good foundation and thoughtful strategy on which to build.

Indiana: Mitch Daniels (R) won re-election in a landslide, an exception to his party's performance elsewhere in the country.  During his first term, Daniels increased infrastructure spending from $244 million in FY05 to more than $867 million in 2007.

Missouri: State Attorney General Jay Nixon (D) will succeed Gov. Matt Blunt, the 38 year old Republican incumbent who decided not to run for a second term earlier this year.  Nixon's campaign centered on what the New York Times called "a scathing critique of Republican control," making continuity through the transition unlikely.

Montana: The iconoclastic Brian Schweitzer (D), who gained national attention for his opposition to REAL ID as a reckless unfunded federal mandate, and who has worked to increase energy production (oil, wind and electricity) at home, won re-election by a wide margin.

New Hampshire: John Lynch (D) easily won re-election by landslide proportions, despite claims by his opponent that the state was losing its New England charm under Lynch's leadership.

North Carolina: Beverly Perdue (D) will build on a sixteen year run during which Democrats have held the governors office.  North Carolina's leadership in the process of becoming digital has ebbed and flowed over the years, perhaps the reflection of strong personalities that pioneered the move into the Internet era and enterprise architecture.  Those initiatives helped earn NC a Top 10 finish in 2004, a full 12 positions higher than where the state has been in both the 2006 and 2008 Digital States rankings -- 22.

North Dakota, which made a six position upward move to 17th place in the 2008 Digital States survey: John Hoeven (R) told reporters that re-election would bring with it a continued emphasis on economic development, particularly through the state's "Centers of Excellence program, an initiative that ties the state's universities to the private sector in order to create higher-paying jobs and new business opportunities for North Dakotans."

Utah, which earned the top ranking in the 2008 Digital States survey: In another counter trend Republican landslide, Jon Huntsman (R) won re-election by a large margin.  Known for his pragmatic approach, Huntsman pioneered an energy-saving four day work week for state employees and where, by design, online self service ensures no loss in public service.

West Virginia: Joe Manchin (D) easily won re-election to a second term, running a track record of infrastructure investments, cutting the size of state government employment two years in a row, and saving as much as $350 million in government reform and streamlining initiatives.

Washington, which placed fifth in the 2008 Digital States rankings: Christine Gregoire (D) has apparently defeated former state senator Dino Rossi (R) in a rematch of a contentious and almost-too-close-to-call election in 2004.  The incumbent governor made an acceptance speech based on declarations by the AP and other media organizations but without benefit of a concession speech by her challenger.  The Rossi campaign says it will make a statement on the race on Wednesday afternoon.  The margins in key counties are wider for Gregoire this time around, making the multiple recounts and court challenge that delayed a final judgement in 2004 unlikely.

What remains unchanged is what Digital Communities blogger Bill Schrier forecasts as "an agonizing election week [ahead] as King County (Seattle) slowly and painfully counts its ballots." Schrier says a little technology could go a long way toward shortening the count, and making it more accurate.  And while he says there is plenty of blame to be assigned to King County itself, the Luddite-like disposition of a little known federal agency is not helping.

With a rough and tumble campaign behind her, Gregoire promised progress on creating a sustainable economy in the self described evergreen state, "It will be green, clean and the envy of the world."

UPDATE AT 11:43 AM: Saying "we just couldn't make up the gap," Republican challenger Dino Rossi conceded the governor's race to the incumbent.

Vermont: Jim Douglas (R) won re-election to his fourth term as governor.  Douglas ran, in part, on the state's "e-State Initiative [which] is already helping to achieve my goal of creating a universal network of high speed wireless phone and internet services that reaches every corner of our state by the end of 2010."

The CIO of California, Teri Takai was recently interviewed by Steve Swatt, host of the local television show, Comcast Newsmakers. Takai fielded several questions including one regarding the current state of California's IT infrastructure:

Swatt: "Technology as you know changes very rapidly, next week it could be a little different than it is this week--where does California really stand in terms of it's technology infrastructure right now?"

Takai: "California has done a fabulous job in all areas of government, ensuring that technology is being used wisely and also to deliver the greatest services. In fact, this year we are absolutely excited--there is a survey which is called the Digital States Survey where all 50 states compete and this year California has moved up in the ranks to be number five... In addition to that, our website was named the third best website in the country, so we are really moving ahead, we are really making a lot of progress and it's really attributed to the great IT organizations in the state."

Swatt: "Correct me if I'm wrong but just a few years ago, didn't we rank far below--on the bottom half or bottom third?"

Takai: "Yes. We have been really making steady progress over time. We were ranked quite low and have been continually moving up and we are [now] in the top five in both of those categories and its just a great success story."

Aside from shameless self-promotion (the Digital States Survey and the Best of the Web are run by the Center for Digital Government), these surveys and awards have successfully created a competitive environment in which states can gauge their progress--raising the awareness and importance of information technology throughout the country. The interview can be seen in it's entirety here.

The National Governor's Association's State Alliance for e-Health recently published a report on health information technology titled, "Accelerating Progress: Using Health Information Technology and Electronic Health Information Exchange to Improve Care." The report makes some interesting recommendations that illustrate the current state and direction of health IT--ideas that any vendor looking to play in the space should know and use to their advantage.

Recommendations and Strategies:

1. Provide leadership and support for e-health efforts in each state
1. Designate a single authority for state government interagency coordination and collaboration with statewide public-private efforts.
2. Establish a roadmap articulating vision and strategy for electronic HIE development
3. Issue executive orders and legislation furthering e-health activities.
4. Utilize state goals of health system transformation, transparency, and quality improvement to drive HIT and electronic HIE.
5. Make a patient-centered, interoperable, and portable EHR available for every child by 2014.
   
2. Address privacy and security
1. Consolidate and update relevant privacy and security laws to better respond to consumer protection needs in an electronic exchange environment.
2. Educate leaders and support efforts to reduce variation of state privacy requirements while ensuring appropriate consumer protections.
3. Promote the use of standards-based, interoperable technology
1. Promote the acquisition of certified systems.
2. Participate in national certification and standards setting processes.
3. Ensure bi-directional exchange of data between clinical care and public health.
4. Require public program health information systems to conform to recognized HITSP standards or other standards-setting bodies recognized by the Secretary of HHS.
5. Align policies and laws, as appropriate, to support intra- and interstate data exchange among public programs.
6. Develop and implement incentive programs or reimbursement policies that support HIT adoption and electronic HIE.
4. Streamline the licensure process to enable cross-state e-health
1. Direct each state health professional board to develop or adopt common care licensure applications.
2. Direct each state health professional board to implement and promote the use of online licensure applications.
3. Direct each state health professional board to work with its counterparts in other states to develop a nationwide core set of credentialing parameters.
4. Direct each health professional board to utilize a single, centrally coordinated credential verification organization (CVO) to conduct primary source verifications.
5. Direct each state health professional board to require state and federal criminal background checks from all applicants seeking state license.
6. Direct the state medical and pharmacy boards to individually participate in a collaborative effort with their respective state board counterparts to establish a process that ensures licensure recognition by other states.
7. Direct the state nursing board to participate in the Nurse Licensure Compact
8. State should pursue standardization of the regulatory framework for each filed of advanced practice nursing.
   
5. Engage consumers to use HIT in managing their health and health care
1. Direct public programs to develop consumer engagement tools.
2. Provide publicly funded health programs with resources to develop cultural and linguistic competency.
3. Direct the Medicaid and state employee health plan programs to implement standards-based personal health records (PHRs).
6. Develop workforce capacity to support electronic HIE efforts
1. Support publicly funded health programs in their efforts to secure executive leadership who are trained in and understand the complexities involved with HIT and electronic HIE projects.
2. Provide Medicaid with technical assistance resources.
3. Provide public Health agencies with resources necessary to train and hire workforce to support public health system modernization efforts.
4. Establish flexible financing mechanisms to maximize public program, cross-agency investments.

What do these recommendations and strategies mean to vendors?--to maximize benefits, states need to avoid the mistakes of the past (data that is siloed and limited in interoperablility) and create an intelligent, interoperable nationwide network from the top down. This report outlines the immensity of the effort needed to establish the proper groundwork and coordinate with the various disparate entities, both public and private. Vendors who want to work in this space need to understand these ideas in order speak the same language as and relate to those who are making the big picture decisions.

The New York State Department of Health has issued a Request for Proposal (RFP) to support the development of a centralized statewide enrollment center that will process applications and renewals for a portion of those eligible for the state's public health insurance programs. The objectives of this RFP are to:

• Operating a statewide toll-free Call center for Medicaid, Family Health Plus and Child Health Plus

• Developing and operating a statewide telephone and mail-in renewal system for Medicaid, Family health Plus an Child Health Plus;
• Administering the Premium Assistance Program;
• Administering the Family Health Plus Employer buy-in Program
• Managing the web-based renewal;
• Augmenting marketing and outreach materials developed by the New York State Department of Health; and
• Processing new applications and other renewals.

Estimated Value: The department of Health has estimated that they will award the vendor, subject to the availability of funds a $34 million dollar contract.

Due Date:  Responses to the proposal are due February 17, 2009. There is also a non-mandatory bidders conference on December 8, 2008.

More information can be found here: Enrollment Center RFP Opportunity
 

California's Office of the Chief Information Officer announced yesterday that the Information Technology Council meeting's (the next one is scheduled for Oct. 17) format will change--no longer will the public or business community be able to attend. Instead it is restricted to Agency Information Officers (AIOs), departmental CIOs and state government staff. The stated reasons for this change are "to maximize participation, facilitate meaningful discussion and keep departments and agencies updated with the most complete and current information". 

This seems to be additional evidence in support of a trend that we are seeing--IT organizations (mostly at the local level), although creating up-to-date strategic IT Plans, are not making these plans publicly available via their websites. The common reason cited is security.

Understanding that this is a bit of a letdown for those of us who enjoyed attending ITC meetings in the past (via live webcast in my case) and looked forward to Friday's, the OCIO is "developing a new forum for vendors and Information Technology (IT) staff to maintain open dialogue and interface in a time-efficient manner while preserving the highest possible standards for state IT-related procurement and services." The OCIO's office indicated that the forum will likely be in the form of a meeting but was unable to provide an approximate date.

 

Vivek Kundra, Chief Technology Officer of Washington, D.C. continues to demonstrate why he is the "The Entrepreneur" as appropriately named by Public CIO magazine. Kundra continues to embrace innovative technologies  when he signed a contract with Google enabling city workers to use Google's web-based e-mail, spreadsheet and word-processing programs. This recent deal with Google demonstrates a move to a low-cost solution to improve government operations and citizen-service delivery. It will be interesting to see if other public sector jurisdictions deploy similar web-based applications.

Google Docs is a free web-based tool that allows people to work, collaborate and share word processing documents, spreadsheets and presentations.

Today the National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) elected Gopal Khanna, CIO for the state of Minnesota, president of the organization for its 2008-2009 year. Khanna will replace Iowa COO John Gillespie, who was president for the 2007-2008 program year. 

Recently Montgomery County, MD was awarded the National Association of Counties' Best of Category Achievement Award in the County Administration and Management category because an innovative budget saving partnership between two county departments. It seems that the Department of Permitting Services' (DPS) efforts to digitize its construction documents resulted in running over budgets due to a large temporary staff it utilized for the activity. Instead of slowing production it was decided that collaborating with the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation might be a better option--and it was. In return for imaging documents, Montgomery County Corrections Facility inmates get job training on modern computers while the county provides fast, valuable service to the community. Here is a list of some of the benefits:

• up-to-date job skills for the inmate population
• improved likelihood for their success upon departure from the Montgomery County Corrections Facility
  
• provided income for inmates
• heightened personal esteem for participants
• improved service to DPS customers and staff
• faster response to customer requests for information & documents
• reduced DPS operating costs & storage needs
• secure access to documents by users
• easy document reproduction by all DPS staff  

Montgomery County addressed several objectives at once--improve customer service, lower recidivism, reduce paper waste and lower program costs. As the need to do more with less grows stronger, programs such as this will be more appealing to local and state governments alike.

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts has released a draft document of their Strategic IT plan. Uniquely enough, this draft document was developed through the mass collaboration of Commonwealth's IT leaders. The draft document outlines key initiatives and an IT vision for the Commonwealth through FY 2011.

The commonwealth is looking to modernize their IT to meet the business needs of the government allowing them to "pave the way for future innovation".  The strategic plan outlines Massachusetts IT vision is as follows:

•     Efficient and easily accessible services for all constituents

•     Open and transparent engagement with citizens of the Commonwealth

•     Accurate and timely data for policy making, service deliver and results evaluation.

In addition, here are Massachusetts 7 key IT initiatives:

•     Secretariat consolidation

•     Shared Service Orientated Architecture (SOA)

•     Network Architecture

•     Enterprise security plan

•     Civic Engagement plan

•     Identify Management

•     Enhanced Security Processes