States honored for IT, innovation successes
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NASCIO’s State IT Recognition Awards turned the spotlight on pandemic-era and accessibility initiatives.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Several states were honored for their IT and innovation initiatives by the National Association of State Chief Information Officers, with many COVID-era efforts also getting recognition.
To mark the conclusion of its annual conference, NASCIO unveiled the winners of its State IT Recognition Awards along with its State Technology Innovator Awards and its State Cybersecurity Leadership Award for individual leaders.
North Carolina took home two prizes, one in the Business Process Innovations category for its Critical Resource Tracker that monitored inventory of available hospital beds, equipment and trained clinicians across health care facilities and helped them comply with federal and state reporting requirements during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The state also was honored in the Information Communications Technology Initiatives category for a project that expedited the implementation of telehealth for prisoners in its state correctional facilities.
Tennessee also took home two prizes: one in the Data Management, Analytics and Visualization category for its system to simplify efforts to connect its residents with available COVID-19 vaccines and eliminate the need for paper and manual processing. Its other award was in the Enterprise IT Management Initiatives category for moving its state Medicaid program, TennCare, to the cloud.
Two states were honored for improving customer service through digital assistants and chatbots: Texas received the prize in the Digital Services: Government to Citizen category for its digital assistant initiative that allows residents to manage their government issued licenses through a single secure account. Ohio took home the prize in the Emerging and Innovative Technologies section for a “virtual family of bots” that support benefits recipients and alleviate the burden of repetitive, mundane tasks on its social services workforce.
Elsewhere, Illinois received the State CIO Office Special Recognition award for making its online websites and services more accessible to disabled people, while Arizona won in the Digital Services: Government to Business category for digitizing its underground storage tank reporting and compliance processes.
Michigan won the Cybersecurity category for its MILogin digital identity program that creates a single online identity for public, business and internal users and employs multi-factor authentication while complying with privacy and security laws. And Nebraska won in the Cross-Boundary Collaboration and Partnerships category for its effort to allow law enforcement to submit reports and citations electronically and share information between Nebraska State Troopers and other agencies.
Among the individual leaders honored, Sean Hughes, the Massachusetts assistant secretary for technology, security and operations and chief operating officer; Ashley Laymon, Maryland’s chief experience officer; and Luke Charde, New York’s head of user experience design and web content management, were honorees in NASCIO’s State Technology Innovator Awards.
These innovator awards honor “outstanding state government employees who have made contributions to advance state technology policy through the promotion of best practices, adoption of new technologies and advancements in service delivery,” NASCIO officials said.
Vitaliy Panych, California’s chief information security officer, received NASCIO’s State Cybersecurity Leadership Award.
The association said it honored Panych for his “instrumental” leadership in helping develop the state’s Cal-Secure, its multiyear information security roadmap, and for creating the Information Security Leadership Academy, which integrates core government leadership, business risk management, cybersecurity knowledge, skills and abilities training for a comprehensive curriculum.