On this week’s Priorities Podcast, Kern County, California, Deputy Fire Chief Zachary Wells and Ryan Lanclos, director of national government and public safety solutions at Esri,​ say ALERTCalifornia's new map layer  strengthens emergency management and improves community safety. The wildfire-monitoring program from University of California San Diego​ provides instant access to live camera feeds across ​California, aiding in early fire detection and speeding up emergency response. Wells said the new map layer, which displays each camera’s location and image feed, is helping to shift firefighting from reactive to proactive​. "The state of California is extremely large. Each county is big, and we only have so many firefighters​, engines, hand crews, helicopters ​and air tankers.​ So adopting tools like ​ALERTCalifornia gives you that confidence that you have the resources​ strategically placed," Wells says.

Top stories this week:

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott last week signed legislation making his state the latest to launch an agency modeled after the federal Department of Government Efficiency. The new law created the Texas Regulatory Efficiency Office, which will receive $22.8 million in funding over the next five years.

A new study from the University of Michigan found that law enforcement agencies are wary of using AI tools in policing. Of 1,800 local governments surveyed, 55% said they were unsure if automated assessments were as accurate as ones made by humans.

The startup company behind Jobright.ai last week launched a new jobs website designed to help experienced public servants quickly find new positions. The website, GovJobs.fyi, includes more than 11,000 job listings across all levels of government, nonprofits and private companies.


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 mapping tech makes firefighting more proactive

The Long Island Sound sector of the U.S. Coast Guard last month announced Aqua Alert, a new pilot program to notify the public about maritime emergencies and provide real-time information to aid search and rescue efforts on the water. Joshua Smarzo, a Coast Guard lieutenant and command center sector chief, tells the Priorities Podcast the new program will help meet the challenges of managing search and rescue operations, especially during the summer boating season. Smarzo says it will be critical to test the system to avoid unnecessary alerts and ensure effective communication with 911 centers.

Top stories this week:

Gov. Greg Abbott on Saturday issued a disaster declaration for Marlin, Texas, in response to a failure of the city’s water treatment system.

Maryland’s technology department on Monday announced it’s hired James Saunders, a former federal technology official, to serve as its new chief information security officer.

Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs on Friday vetoed legislation that would have placed as much as 10% of the state’s funds in cryptocurrency. In a letter Friday to Warren Petersen, the Republican president of the Arizona Senate, Hobbs dismissed the idea.
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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 Aqua Alert, a new maritime emergency alert system

Code For America CEO Amanda Renteria joins StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast this week to offer a preview of the organization’s 2025 Summit, scheduled for May 29-30 in Washington, D.C. Renteria says the event will include talks on human-centered design, the latest uses of artificial intelligence in state and local government and how agencies are driving efficiency under a new U.S. president. “When did technology really change in government? It’s happening right now. The conversations that are going to happen at Summit are really putting those seeds in place for what technology in government is going to look like a generation from now.”

Top stories this week: 

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is asking governors to build sensitive compartmented information facilities and carry satellite phones when they travel. The recommendation baffled cybersecurity and national security experts contacted by StateScop.

Business is booming for Civic Match, a service that launched last November, to connect outgoing federal employees with jobs in state and local government. The program announced it’s expanding by creating new partnerships and adding features after its early success.

And a letter signed by a group of 40 state attorneys general on Friday asked Congress to reject a federal measure that would bar states from enforcing their own AI laws for the next 10 years.

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.

Code For America's 2025 Summit will highlight an IT sea change, says CEO

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.
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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

Jump back into the Pure Report as we welcome back Jim Weaver, Pure Storage Strategic Advisor for the Public Sector, to explore how federal policy changes and budget uncertainties are reshaping state and local government IT strategies. Drawing from his extensive experience as a former state CIO, Jim provides insider insights into navigating federal impacts while discussing the shift from CAPEX to OPEX models as agencies seek operational flexibility in turbulent times. The conversation dives deep into Pure Storage's new Public Safety campaign, examining the technology behind video surveillance, body cameras, forensics data collection, and next-generation 911 systems that are transforming how government agencies serve and protect their communities. Don't miss this essential discussion on the intersection of politics, budgets, and cutting-edge technology in the public sector.

Inside Public Sector IT: Federal Impacts, Budget Realities, and Public Safety Innovation

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

Elizabeth Dunn, a faculty member at the University of South Florida's College of Public Health, joins the Priorities Podcast to share her expertise on the technology and psychology behind hurricane evacuation orders. She says that storms are becoming stronger and developing more quickly, elevating the importance of governments issuing clear messages. And many people who receive evacuation orders inland or who think only high-category storms are worth avoiding, she says, frequently find themselves in dangerous situations. 

Top stories this week: 

Texas has created a “hostile foreign adversaries unit” designed to stop the growing influence of the Chinese Communist Party on U.S. soil. The unit was created by SB 2514, a new law that joins more than a dozen other new laws and executive orders created over the past year targeting Chinese influence in Texas.

Less than one month before the State and Local Cybersecurity Grant Program is set to expire, several industry groups on Tuesday signed a letter addressed to congressional leaders requesting that the program be revived, but this time with more money. Led by the Alliance for Digital Innovation, the groups are asking homeland security and appropriations committee leaders to expand the program to the tune of $4.5 billion over two years.

Delaware’s technology department on Tuesday announced that it’s named Aashish Patel, who’s been serving as the state’s interim chief security officer, to serve in the position long term.

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.

Why some people don’t evacuate before hurricanes

On this episode of the Priorities podcast, Colorado Representative Brianna Titone reflects on the state legislature’s decision to delay implementing the Colorado AI Act, the state’s high-risk artificial intelligence legislation, until the end of June 2026. She expresses disappointment with the watered-down bill and the pressure from big tech companies, like Microsoft, Oracle and Salesforce, to oppose it. Titone encouraged lawmakers to take a proactive approach to AI regulation and aim for uniform policy across states due to federal inaction.

Top stories this week: 

California’s artificial intelligence bill, which would address the use of automated decision systems failed to advance in the state assembly during the final hours of the 2025 legislative session. AB 1018 would have required companies and government agencies to notify individuals when automated decision systems were used for “consequential decisions,” such as employment, housing, health care, and financial services. 

Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo said the state has faced a 300% increase in cyberattack attempts on its websites since a ransomware attack in August knocked several state websites offline and downed digital services. Lombardo said the state’s firewall systems experienced roughly 150 million attempts in the 72 hours following the press conference discussing the attack.

Last week Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin signed an executive order to boost the state’s election security. The order directs the Department of Elections and several other agencies to update safeguards that protect voter data, voting machines, and election systems from cyber threats. 

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 cost of delaying Colorado's AI Act

On this episode of the Priorities podcast, James Barros, administrator of the Emergency Management Agency in Hawaii, joins us to discuss the results of the September tests. He said the tests showed the need for clearer evacuation messaging in emergency alerts, tailored to each person’s physical location. Details, such as whether residents are in buildings, on the beach or at high elevation, that each require a different response. 

Top stories this week: 

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has confirmed it will end its long-standing cooperative agreement with the Center for Internet Security, which runs the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center. The shift could change how state and local governments access the monitoring services they rely on for cyber defense.

Governor Gavin Newsom has signed California’s SB 53, which imposes new transparency rules on major AI developers, requiring them to disclose how they assess safety risks, publish safety protocols, and report major incidents. The new law, which takes effect in January, positions California as a leader in AI oversight as federal regulation remains in flux.

New York City has extended its Big Apple Connect program for another three years, continuing to offer free internet and cable service to residents in public housing. Since its launch in 2022, the program has already connected more than 150,000 households.

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.

Why geography matters in emergency messaging

Star Wars and disco were hip when Kansas built its previous unemployment insurance system and it was “sufficient,” Kansas Labor Secretary Amber Shultz says. But on the latest episode of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast, Shultz describes how, over the course of two years, the state transformed that system into a modern one, with a modern user interface. A system that had to be taken offline constantly — “a house of cards” — has been replaced by one that has nearly perfect uptime, she says. “Our contact center representatives, they couldn’t use a mouse, and they had to memorize all these hundreds of weird shortcodes for abbreviation back in those days, and then the code was not documented,” she says. Today, the state heralds a different story, one in which call centers see 60% fewer calls and processing time has been reduced by 80%.

Top stories this week:

New York City this week announced a new pilot program that integrates a new emergency alert system with the city’s public schools. The system, which leaders claim is the first of its kind in the United States, provides an automated method of contacting 911 in the event of active shooter scenarios or other threats.

As the federal government shutdown stretches on, state agencies are grappling with technical, financial and policy adjustments following a federal directive to pause processing of SNAP benefits next month. 

Nearly all states and territories have submitted their final proposals to the federal government detailing how they plan to spend their allotments of the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program. Given recent adjustments to how the program is administered, though, the current proposals could leave roughly half of the program’s $42 billion unspent.

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 Kansas lost the 'weird shortcodes' and modernized its UI system

A learning program for notaries in Indiana was not getting good reviews. Robert Fulk, the chief information officer for the Indiana Secretary of State’s office said people thought it was outdated, long, repetitive and clunky. And it was, until his office redesigned it from top to bottom using AI. Artificial intelligence is now infused into every aspect of the program, from its instructional content to its audio and video assets. “It’s really engaging for the learners,” Fulk says on the latest Priorities Podcast.

Also joining this episode is Patrick Carter, vice president of state practice at Results for America, who says that more states than ever are using evidence-based decisionmaking in their budgets. It’s catching on in other areas, too, he says, but it’s still a relatively unused practice. Budget downturns and declining state revenues could turn that around, though. That, and the practice’s increased body of knowledge and winning examples. “We’ve learned lots of lessons from governments over the last 10-20 years about what works,” Carter says.

Top stories this week: 

The Rockefeller Foundation and the nonprofit Center for Civic Futures on Tuesday unveiled a new effort, called the AI Readiness Project, aimed at preparing state governments to use artificial intelligence tools to improve how they administer services to the public.

The Beeck Center for Social Impact and Innovation at Georgetown University is also ramping up its efforts to support AI work in state and local governments. Andrew Merluzzi, who’s serving as its new AI innovation and incubation fellow, said he thinks the recent years of groundwork are finally beginning to bear fruit.

The Federal Communications Commission last week voted to approve an order that will roll back caps on phone and video calls to and from prisons and jails. Some rates are expected to double.
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.


Redesigning a ‘repetitive and clunky’ learning program with AI

The extended government shutdown has begun to strain state and local governments usually dependent on reimbursement checks for major projects and support from officials who haven’t been in their offices, according to Justin Marlowe, a research professor at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy. Marlowe tells the Priorities Podcast that the shutdown is causing project delays, and has been especially damaging for IT operations. “If you see a delay in the approval of any of that project planning process, it ripples through the entire project, throws off the entire timeline and ultimately costs a lot more,” he says. Being forced to rely less on the federal government, he says, accelerates a national trend that’s been underway since the 1950s. “[It’s] forcing a lot of states and localities to fundamentally rethink their partnership with the federal government,” Marlowe says.

This week’s top stories:

Alex Pettit, who has served as the chief information officer of Oregon and Oklahoma, announced last week that he’s returning to Oregon to serve as its digital transformation officer. Pettit, who most recently served as Colorado’s chief technology officer, wrote online that he’s excited to “bring hard-won experience from the field and apply it to familiar soil.”

A new guide published by the nonprofit Open Contracting Partnership aims to provide government officials with a resource containing the best practices for procuring AI technologies. “AI adoption and AI procurement are diverging,” said one of the group’s program managers. The guide is hoped to bring those back into alignment.

Following a recent decision by a federal judge in Wisconsin to send a whistleblower case from 2008 to trial, an AT&T subsidiary could be forced to repay millions it received in federal broadband subsidies. Central to the case is a debate over whether money dispersed through the FCC’s E-Rate program counts as federal funds under the False Claims Act.

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 shutdown led states to ‘fundamentally rethink’ their relationships with the federal government

Quite a few states have innovation programs, mechanisms for jumpstarting new and interesting ways to improve government, but Nicholas Stowe, Washington state's outgoing chief technology officer, shares on this week’s Priorities Podcast why he thinks his state’s innovation and modernization program has enjoyed an especially favorable success rate. “We really tried to maximize reusing existing governance processes,” he says. Also on this episode is Wendy Wickstrom, web and user experience manager at Washington Technology Solutions, who shares how flipping a procurement process upside-down helped the state create what officials say is a new model for reducing risk and fostering a more connected government. “We knew we wanted agency participation, but we didn’t want to dictate every deliverable that they gave us,” she says.

This week’s top stories:

After receiving letters from the Department of Justice requesting access to state voter data, 10 Democratic secretaries of state on Tuesday drafted their own letter, citing “immense concern” with how that data might have been shared across the federal government. The secretaries write that in recent meetings with DOJ and Department of Homeland Security officials they received “misleading and at times contradictory information” on the topic of their unredacted statewide voter rolls.

The House of Representatives passed a bill by voice vote Monday evening that would reauthorize the State and Local Cybersecurity Grant Program. Enjoying bipartisan support, the Protecting Information by Local Leaders for Agency Resilience, or PILLAR, Act is now open to be considered by the Senate.

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration on Tuesday announced it’s issued approvals to 18 states on their final proposals for the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program.

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.

Inside Washington state’s award-winning procurement and innovation programs

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.

Bringing you direct access to Pure Storage thought leaders, technology experts, alliance partners, customer insights, and our latest product news.

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