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As Code for America and Georgetown University’s Beeck Center for Social Impact and Innovation kick off their second annual FormFest on Wednesday, StateScoop checks in with Amanda Renteria, Code for America’s chief executive, to hear about this year’s event will be different. Renteria says the goal this year is to drive government agencies to action, making their forms digital and accessible. “How do we make this more actionable, so it’s not just a discussion but we’re really taking through different solutions from different governments, how they are solving some of these problems, how they are making it better for people,” she tells StateScoop’s Sophia Fox-Sowell. She points to a federal study that, several years ago, found that only 2% of federal forms had been digitized. She says the work states are doing now to improve their online services, though, are cutting down on the billions of hours Americans spend filling their information into forms.

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 kicks off second annual FormFest

This year’s presidential election was the most secure on record, according to John Cohen, executive director of a program for countering hybrid threats at the nonprofit Center for Internet Security. On StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast, Cohen explains that despite receiving more than 100 bomb threats, years of preparation for Election Day 2024 enabled local election officials and law enforcement to continue voting operations with minimal disruption. “We looked at potential for physical threats, cyber threats, we looked at efforts to undermine confidence in the election process or confuse voters by foreign intelligence services and non-state threat actors. And then we began looking at potential for disruptive events, the use of swatting, bomb threats, white powder envelope, suspicious devices that would be used to disrupt voting and vote tabulation,” he says. Joining him is Marci Andino, senior director of CIS’s Election Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center, who says that the threats election officials saw on Nov. 5 were precisely what they had been preparing for.

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.

Bomb threats and cyberattacks: How election officials prepared for the 2024 election

After the devastating Hurricane Helene struck North Carolina last September, Gary Thompson, the state’s deputy hazard mitigation officer, says on StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast that the state hopes to make its stream gauges and flood warning system more resilient before next year’s storm season. Thompson says North Carolina plans to upgrade those critical communication systems with ultrasonic radar sensors and satellites so they can continue to predict flood zones, issue evacuation warnings and deliver critical information to residents about incoming storms. “One of the advantages is all the equipment is out of the water, so if there's a lot of rain, a lot of velocity, if we have the equipment high enough and stable enough for it to survive during that event,” Thompson says. Joining him is Taylor Kerby, founder of Triangle UAS, an equipment vendor that helped design North Carolina’s modern stream gauges, and Pattiy Torno, a longtime resident of Asheville, North Carolina, which was hit particularly hard by Hurricane Helene.


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.


Hurricane Helene devastated communities, inspired tech upgrades

Massachusetts Chief Information Officer Jason Snyder joins the latest episode of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast to break down a new program designed to spur innovative AI solutions in the state. Snyder says the project, which started last January, connects university students with difficult challenges facing state agencies. But he says not only has the program yielded an unexpected number of productive solutions to government problems, but it’s also impressed officials into hiring eight of the first participants. “The students developed an AI that just in using human language: ‘I want to build a bridge.’ And it would come back and list all the policy associated with it and provide the actual links to that policy and references so they could click on it and access it,” Snyder says on the podcast. “The commissioner was blown away and actually hired the two students that worked on that project.”

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.

AI sandbox generates new solutions, talent pipeline in Massachusetts

Federal agencies would be required to track and report computer usage for teleworking employees under new legislation from a Senate Republican. The Requiring Effective Management and Oversight of Teleworking Employees (REMOTE) Act, from Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, would charge executive department heads with enacting policies that record the login activity and network traffic of teleworkers’ government computers.  Managers of teleworking staffers would be required to “periodically review” the traffic generated by those workers and collect a variety of relevant data, including average number of daily logins and average daily duration of the connection to the applicable computer network. Ernst said in a statement: “While DOGE stands ready to clean house, I will be leading the fight in the Senate to disrupt the business-as-usual bureaucrats who spent the last four years out of office.” 

Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks is poised to complete her tenure at the Pentagon under the Biden administration — and she’s been in direct contact with officials on President-elect Donald Trump’s Agency Review Team preparing for the upcoming transition, according to her top public affairs advisor Eric Pahon.  In responses to questions from DefenseScoop last week, Pahon discussed Hicks’ plans and priorities for her final days helping steer the Defense Department’s major technology programs. He shared that QUOTE “her priorities today remain the same as they have been since her first day in office: Foremost, in support of the secretary and president, she is maintaining her focus on ensuring that DOD can outpace strategic competitors like the [People’s Republic of China] by fielding more combat-credible capabilities at greater speed and scale, continually iterating on novel operational concepts, distributing and hardening our force posture, and leveraging our unparalleled ability to generate innovation with and through America’s private sector."

The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon.

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A Senate Republican wants to track computer usage of agency teleworkers

On the latest episode of StateScoop's Priorities Podcast, Duncan McKay, a corporal with the Kirkland, Washington, Police Department says his department is prioritizing patrol car safety and maintenance through the use of electronic inspection reporting. By using digital tags on each vehicle, Duncan says, the system enables real-time access to inspection data, allowing the department to address potential vehicle safety issues and ensure that critical emergency equipment is always available. By transitioning from paper logs to digital inspections, he says the department can perform pre-shift inspections in just minutes. By ensuring vehicles and equipment are accounted for, Duncan says, officers stay longer in communities where they're needed. "Not only do we want to make sure that our vehicles are in proper working order, obviously we need to get to wherever we're going, but we need to get there safely," he says.
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 an app is helping one police agency keep track of gear

On this week’s Priorities Podcast, Madeliene Dwyer, a policy analyst for the nonprofit Center for Democracy and Technology, breaks down the executive orders on artificial intelligence released by 13 states and Washington D.C. Dwyer says that although governors are generally being thoughtful about how they approach AI, some states are taking greater care to avoid “unintended consequences.” She points to potential pitfalls and best practices, such as Washington state’s explicit mention of civil rights in its order.

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.

Breaking down states' AI executive orders

On this week’s Priorities Podcast, Maryland Chief Technology Officer Eric Bathras explains his role in Maryland’s Digital Infrastructure Group, which Gov. Wes Moore created this month with an executive order. Bathras says he and Maryland Chief Information Officer Katie Savage presented the idea of the group to the state’s leadership last year. He says it was born from a need to get more state agencies involved in planning broadband expansion. Ahead of incoming federal broadband grant dollars, Bathras says DIG provides the best opportunity for collaboration across the state’s agencies to maximize resources. “We have this unique opportunity to be able to blend our fiber and our wireless assets together and really move the state forward in terms of broadband expansion across the state in the coming years,” he says.

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 Maryland’s new digital infrastructure group

A podcast covering the latest news & trends facing top government leaders on topics such as technology, management & workforce. Hosted by Billy Mitchell on FedScoop and released every Tuesday and Thursday afternoons.

A Senate Republican wants to track computer usage of agency teleworkers

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