Federal support for some flavor of broadband service expansion to underserved areas of the United States is an idea whose time has come into fuller flower after many years of being an issue mostly in the wheelhouses of local planning boards, telecom company lobbying shops, and communications policy wonks. It’s another example of a big […]

Before the pandemic, 16.9 million kids fell into what was dubbed the “homework gap.” Essentially, these students had access to the internet and the educational resources it affords while in class but not when at home. Many were forced to use Wi-Fi at fast-food restaurants or rely on the library to do their schoolwork. In […]

Sens. Gary Peters D-Mich., and John Thune, R-S.D., have introduced legislation that would strengthen the Federal workforce through attracting experts in the AI field to public service.

A handful of Democratic legislators have sent a letter to the Department of Justice (DoJ) seeking answers to what steps the agency takes to ensure predictive policing technology is effective, and whether it tests for bias and requires transparency in algorithms used in the technology.

The COVID-19 pandemic has spawned historic levels of fraud in state government unemployment insurance (UI) programs – enabled through combined failures of policy, procedure, management, leadership, and technology. The pandemic fraud-wave has resulted in perhaps the greatest financial debacle in state governance history – wasting as much as $30 billion in California alone. Nationwide on […]

It had to be good news for IT-challenged states when President Biden last week signed the $1.9 trillion COVID stimulus bill that includes a somewhat surprising $2 billion funding award to the Department of Labor (DoL) to help with state unemployment insurance (UI) program improvement. The plan’s UI package was first reported by MeriTalk on […]

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) announced that it has awarded the Center for Infrastructure Assurance and Security (CIAS) at The University of Texas at San Antonio a $1.2 million grant to launch a pilot program to help state, local, tribal, and territorial governments identify high value assets (HVA) in order to prioritize resources and planning.

With many states admitting to substantial fraudulent payments due to poor management and problematic unemployment insurance (UI) application systems, what are they doing about fraud in other state programs that collectively make up another giant elephant in the room? While California alone has admitted to processing over $11 billion in fraudulent UI claims in the […]

Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., are introducing legislation that will provide up to $15 billion in matching grants to increase access to broadband services in areas of the United States that are unserved by broadband meeting the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) minimum definition of that service.

(Editor’s note: John Thomas Flynn was California state CIO from 1995-99.) If you live in California, you probably already know the story of the state government unemployment insurance (UI) system’s performance debacle over the past year. And if you live elsewhere – and the story got lost in the avalanche of pandemic-driven bad news over […]