Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont confirmed that the U.S. Treasury Department has approved his administration’s plan to invest $70.9 million in Federal grant funding to upgrade network and cybersecurity infrastructure in the Connecticut Education Network (CEN), connect up to 170 community anchor organizations to CEN, and expand public Wi-Fi service.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced $5 million in additional funding for the Emergency Connectivity Program (ECP), which provides digital tools and services to support students across the country.

When I was appointed Massachusetts’ first CIO by Governor Bill Weld back in the early 1990s, coming directly from the private sector, few if any state IT leaders had similar backgrounds. Since that time, however, we see governors – especially newly elected ones – opting for the Weld paradigm, finding their CIO from outside the state workforce.

The City of Chicago is moving forward with launching the Chicago Taskforce on Innovation and Technology (CTIT), which will focus on creating new solutions and safety for government and connected infrastructure.

Following the passage of legislation last month, North Carolina public schools are now required to add computer science as part of the Standard Course of Study for all students entering high school in the 2026-27 school year.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has announced $6.8 million in funding for the nonprofit CYBER.ORG to carry out its K-12 cyber education mission.  

The state of Kansas is using $3 million in Federal funds to improve its Judicial Branch records. The funding comes from the Federal Bureau of Justice Statistics’ National Criminal History Improvement Program (NCHIP) Grant Program.

The Department of Defense (DoD) has awarded a total of $40 million to four major universities and minority-serving institutions to establish new research centers of excellence as part of its Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and Minority-serving Institutions (HBCU/MI) Research and Education Program.

As the Federal government is looking to recover and make sense of the rampant unemployment insurance (UI) fraud seen during the COVID-19 pandemic, experts today told members of Congress that the government is in dire need of a technology overhaul to keep up with fraudulent actors who are leveraging emerging technologies such as AI to steal taxpayer money.

With a new executive order (EO), New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy has created an Artificial Intelligence Task Force, which is tasked with studying emerging AI technologies. The governor’s office noted that the task force will be responsible for analyzing the potential impacts of AI on society as well as preparing recommendations to identify government actions encouraging the ethical use of AI technologies.