Two Pennsylvania state employees explain on this week’s Priorities Podcast how they’re accelerating the time it takes to hire new employees. Miranda Martin, director of talent management, and Harrison MacRae, director of emerging technologies, said that through a combination of process changes and technology, they’ve reduced time-to-hire from 90 days to 58 days. “Three months is just too long to compete for talent, so we got to work right away and looked at our processes and procedures and worked really hard to reduce that time,” Martin said. The state also used its ChatGPT Enterprise licenses to ensure that agencies were properly aligning their hiring needs with job classifications.

Top stories this week: 

Washington state’s technology bureau has partnered with the University of California, Berkeley to better understand how nonprofits in the state may be exposed to cybersecurity risks. Bill Kehoe, Washington’s chief information officer, said protecting nonprofits ensures that the public will get the best from their state and local governments.

Kentucky’s acting chief information officer, Jim Barnhart, has been promoted to lead the commonwealth’s Office of Technology as its statewide CIO. The promotion comes after Barnhart spent nearly two decades serving as the state’s deputy CIO.

And Maine lawmakers last week urged the Trump administration to unfreeze Digital Equity Act funds that they say are essential for the state’s future. Led by Republican Sen. Susan Collins, the group said that the rural state was depending on the $35 million it was set to receive to improve access to technology and skills training.

New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday.
For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Soundcloud or Spotify.

How Pennsylvania is hiring employees faster

Years into an effort to consolidate and modernize the New Jersey state government’s call centers, humans remain an important part of the process. On this week’s Priorities Podcast, Dave Cole, New Jersey chief’s innovation officer, and Joe DeLaTorre, product manager at the New Jersey Office of Innovation, say that even after improvements to the state’s digital presence, residents said they still want to talk to a live human when it comes to sensitive questions about taxes or unemployment benefits. The state’s “warm callback” algorithm predicts how many calls must be added to agents’ queues, reducing wait times and maximizing agent productivity. “A lot of these call centers are billed per minute, so whether you're talking to somebody or they're sitting on hold, your costs are the same,” Cole says. “The problem was people needed to have confidence in the system whether they were going to wait on the line or get a call back. They needed to know that somebody was actually going to follow through.”

This week’s top stories:

States are picking sides as competing election integrity efforts move ahead. New York and Virginia each recently joined competing election integrity efforts, highlighting the growing weight of politics in the nation’s elections process.

“I run at the speed of business, not at the speed of government,” Teena Piccione, North Carolina’s newly confirmed chief information officer, told StateScoop in a recent interview. Piccione became CIO last January and was confirmed last May.

As the Atlantic hurricane season begins, at least one emergency response expert is raising concerns that federal staffing cuts at the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration could hinder state and local government coordination and impede public warning systems during natural disasters.
New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday.
For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts,Soundcloud or Spotify.


Inside New Jersey’s AI-powered ‘warm callback’ system

On this week’s Priorities Podcast, Chad Marlow, senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, says that the broad use of facial recognition technology by New Orleans police extends even beyond endangering the city’s residents, but invites outside actors to take advantage of its surveillance environment. The police, which were recently revealed to have been using facial recognition against city policy, are now seeking broad approval to use the tech, in part as a response to a recent jailbreak. Marlow says the proposal is not only an overreaction to the rare jailbreak event, but potentially a support to the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation policies and anti-protestor actions. “This is the situation that the New Orleans City Council needs to realize,” he says. “If they set up this system in their city, they can not insulate it from these other bad actors.”

Top stories this week:

Lawmakers in New Orleans are set to consider a proposal at the end of the month from police that would allow broad use of facial recognition technology during investigations. The proposal comes after an investigation by The Washington Post last month that showed police have already been using the tech against current city policy.

Bill Kehoe, Washington’s chief information officer, said that when funding from the State and Local Cybersecurity Grant Program ends, state governments will have to collaborate more closely with their municipalities. The grant money, he said, has been key to efforts to bolster local cybersecurity.

After an extensive effort last year to examine her state’s technological shortcomings, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders issued an executive order that will rearrange the state’s IT efforts and place a greater emphasis on cybersecurity. The order requires the state's IT division to reform as the Department of Shared Administrative Services, Office of State Technology.

New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday.
For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts,Soundcloud or Spotify.

New Orleans' battle over facial recognition

On this week’s Priorities Podcast, the StateScoop team breaks down what the recent cancellation of the Digital Equity Act will mean for states and communities that were expecting the funding to improve connectivity, access to devices and digital skills training. Keely Quinlan explains that a recent letter — signed by 156 people representing the 140 organizations that serve communities across 39 states — asks for it to be reinstated. And StateScoop reporter Sophia Fox-Sowell offers a preview of her reporting on food banks and their use of state data. Data is important for their efforts, she explains, but access is uneven.

Top stories this week: 

State and local governments overseeing populations of at least 50,000 people have 10 months remaining to comply with new accessibility rules, to ensure that people with disabilities of all sorts can find information and use services. Code for America has developed an AI-powered tool that helps them get organized. So far it’s being used by Salt Lake City, Utah, and the State of Georgia.

A new report from the emergency tech firm Carbyne paints a troubling picture of the nation’s 911 system, highlighting a growing wave of outages and cyberattacks, along with an outdated infrastructure that threatens public safety. It shows that nearly 90% of emergency communication centers across the U.S. experienced at least one system outage in the past year caused by aging equipment or cyberattacks.

In a letter last week to Commerce Sec. Howard Lutnick and Adam Cassady, acting administrator of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, more than 140 state and local organizations asked for the Digital Equity Act to be reinstated. The letter claims the act’s cancellation could leave residents and some businesses behind on issues of economic opportunity, education, health care and online safety.

New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday.
For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts,Soundcloud or Spotify.


Inside report: Food bank data and the Digital Equity Act

Just in time for another hot California summer, the state’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment this year launched CalHeatScore, a data-powered tool that’s designed to help local governments and their constituencies better prepare for levels of heat that can become health hazards. On this week’s Priorities Podcast, Walker Wieland, manager of the office’s Extreme Heat Ranking System Development Section, says that heat affects everyone, but it especially affects groups like low-income populations, the elderly and people who live in cities, who must suffer the urban heat island effect. “Extreme heat really disproportionately impacts vulnerable populations throughout California,” Wieland says. “Some examples are the very young, older adults, those that work outside for a living, those with preexisting chronic health conditions. These are the people that are most commonly more sensitive to extreme heat and ultimately end up in the emergency room.” He explains how the tool can be used by members of the public to plan their summer schedules, but also by communities to guide policies, such as the opening of additional cooling or respite centers.

This week’s top stories:

The Senate voted Tuesday to remove from the federal budget bill a proposed moratorium on states enforcing their own artificial intelligence laws. The ban that was championed by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Tex., lost virtually all support before the vote. The defeat is being celebrated by states and advocacy groups as a win for state sovereignty.

The Supreme Court last week ruled to protect the Federal Communications Commission’s Universal Service Fund, which subsidizes phone and internet services in rural areas and schools through a number of programs, including the E-Rate program. The fund collects billions in fees from telecommunications services and users each year to support rural broadband networks, internet for health care centers and low-income households.

Taking a page from President Donald Trump, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott last week signed a bill establishing a $10 million store of cryptocurrencies that lawmakers said will position the state for economic prosperity. Two other states — Arizona and New Hampshire — have passed legislation to create their own crypto reserves, but Texas is the first to fund one with state dollars. One expert, though, told StateScoop the fund’s small size makes the move largely symbolic.

New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday.
For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts,Soundcloud or Spotify.

The tool helping vulnerable populations in California beat the heat

This week we’re joined by North Carolina Chief Information Officer Teena Piccione, and Bernice Russell-Bond, the state’s chief information security officer. They share details of an upcoming cybersecurity internship program hoped to create a pipeline of talent for the state government. Starting next August, 10 college students will get a chance to work for the state as part-time interns, learning on the job as they perform a broad range of cybersecurity tasks. Russell-Bond says the program will give students exposure to “all aspects of cyber,” while providing the state a reliable source of fresh talent.

This week’s top stories: 

A pilot project in Virginia is using agentic AI to slim down the commonwealth’s regulations. State agencies are being directed to use artificial intelligence to achieve a statewide goal of reducing regulations by 25%.

A new study from The Pew Charitable Trusts shows that federal broadband data used by states has several key shortcomings that should be remediated. Researchers found that broadband data is unreliable and inconsistent, making it difficult for states to plan their infrastructure buildouts.

A new report from the nonprofit Brennan Center for Justice found that 61% of local election officials are concerned about the cuts to election security services made this year by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Eighty-seven percent said they think state and local governments need to step up to fill the gap.

New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday.
For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts,Soundcloud or Spotify.


Inside North Carolina's cyber internship program

On this week's Priorities Podcast, we're joined by Center for Humane Technology's Pete Furlong and Transparency Coalition.ai's Rob Eleveld to discuss the impacts of AI companion chat bots. 
As AI companion chatbots become more sophisticated and accessible, so do the risks—especially for children. Hear this conversation covering what policymakers, parents, and the tech industry need to know now to protect vulnerable users. :studio_microphone:

Full episode at the link in our bio 
#AIethics #OnlineSafety #ChildProtection #TechPolicy #DigitalWellness #ResponsibleAI #AIforGood #CenterForHumaneTechnology #TransparencyCoalition #ArtificialIntelligence #TechRegulation

Center for Humane Technology's Pete Furlong and Transparency Coalition.ai's Rob Eleveld

This week’s Priorities Podcast is joined by Matthew Guariglia, a senior policy analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who explains why he’s concerned about an AI-powered tool being adopted by police departments. The tool is Axon's Draft One, which pulls audio from body cam footage to help officers draft police reports. Following a recent investigation into how the technology works, Guariglia claims it was designed without transparency and auditing safeguards that he says ought to be present. He said he’s especially concerned by the window of plausible deniability the technology opens, providing no way for the public to discern between text written by human officers and that generated by software.

This week’s top stories:
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz on Tuesday activated the state National Guard to help respond to a cyberattack on the state’s capital city. According to an announcement by Walz’s office, the National Guard’s help was needed because an ongoing cyberattack against St. Paul was larger and more complex than city staff were able to handle. St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter called the attack a "deliberate, coordinated digital attack carried out by a sophisticated external actor."

Two local governments in Kansas and Nebraska are using GIS, artificial intelligence and lidar to fix accessibility issues with their curb ramps and sidewalks. The technology, which is helping the cities find and fix infrastructure that might not be compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act, helped save over 1,000 hours of manual labor. 

Delaware’s Department of Technology and Information adopted a policy this month that outlines how and when state employees can use generative artificial intelligence tools, and permits them to use many public and enterprise AI models, but not ones considered to be potentially malicious, like DeepSeek.
New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday.
For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts,Soundcloud or Spotify.


Cop or AI? This tech makes it hard to tell

A new directory and mapping tool is helping nonprofits, governments and members of the public better understand which benefits programs are being offered around the country. Jennifer Phillips, with the Digital Benefits Network at the Beeck Center for Social Impact and Innovation, joins StateScoop's Priorities Podcast to explain why the new tools are such a helpful component of the group's work. "Our theory of change at the Beeck Center and Digital Benefits Network is to take collective, collaborative action, it's really critical to know where are the organizations, what are they doing, which sectors are doing what," Phillips says. "And having that line of sight across the ecosystem is really critical to improving public benefits access delivery."

This week’s top stories:

The network that hosts services for the office of Pennsylvania Attorney General Dave Sunday went offline after a recent “cyber incident,” according to a notice Sunday posted to his official X account on Monday. Sunday called the situation “frustrating” and said officials were working to understand what happened.

Numerous state and local officials shared with StateScoop a belief that they will need to be more self-reliant in the years ahead, as keystone cyber programs are abandoned or scaled back, and as they receive fewer communications from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Of particular concern for many state and local technology officials are recent federal cuts to the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center, a group that for more than 20 years has shared critical cybersecurity intelligence across state lines and provided threat monitoring services and other resources at free or heavily discounted rates.

A recent investigation by the National Association of State Chief Information Officers reveals a landscape of complicated procurement laws that are challenging vendors. The report concludes by making several recommendations, including that private companies educate themselves on the procurement processes of the states where they bid and to deploy legal teams that are specialized in public sector dealings.

New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday.
For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts,Soundcloud or Spotify.

Mapping digital benefits delivery

Jennifer Hickerson, a senior manager who specializes in telecommunications at the professional services firm Baker Tilly, joins the Priorities Podcast this week to explain how changes to the BEAD program are affecting the outcomes in states. Final proposal submissions from states are due next week. Each state has been a different approach to how it seeks vendors and the types of technologies it pursues. Hickerson says states that have been advertising to vendors an emphasis on lowest cost have seen more responses from satellite and fixed wireless vendors. “That message really seems to have an impact on applicants,” she says. “Those who really needed to drive down those costs in a way that was no longer sustainable started to question whether it was worth it to apply for this program. It also gave the message that some technologies might fare better in applying for the BEAD program.”

Top stories this week:

In a letter addressed to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Arielle Roth, administrator of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, 10 Democrats from the House of Representatives are asking for clarification on how states can use “nondeployment” funds they are set to soon receive through the federal Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program. The letter asks for clarification on how states can use their BEAD funding for projects not directly related to building out new fiber networks or installing wireless towers.

Two cybersecurity incidents disabled state services over the weekend. A service in Maryland that provides transportation to people with disabilities is unable to take new reservations. And a number of Nevada’s websites, services and phone lines, including those for the Nevada Highway Patrol and Nevada State Police, faced outages.

The Texas legislature has passed several pieces of legislation aimed at strengthening protections for young campers after devastating floods last month left more than two dozen campers and counselors dead at Camp Mystic. The legislation would create new rules pertaining to alerts, emergency plans and where camps are allowed to operate.
New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday.
For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud or Spotify.

How vague BEAD guidance could lead to broadband disparities

Each Wednesday, StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast explores the latest in state and local government technology news and analysis. Listen to in-depth conversations with government and industry’s top executives, and learn about trending stories affecting state and local IT leaders ranging from modernization and digital accessibility to the latest advances in generative artificial intelligence.

New tracks tagged #Statescoop