Several Democratic senators voiced concern today over impacts of T-Mobile’s $26 billion agreement to acquire rival wireless service provider Sprint, and requested a hearing on the merger. At the same time, rural wireless carriers expressed their opposition to the deal.

With new governors taking office across the country after the 2018 midterm elections, state IT departments are seeing new and familiar faces take the helm.

A Georgia state election commission voted on Thursday to replace the state’s current electronic voting systems with a computerized system that prints paper ballot receipts.

Through collaboration, conversations, and expertise, the West Virginia Broadband Enhancement Council has helped to bring faster internet connectivity to the state through both traditional and nontraditional internet providers, as members of the council discussed on November 14 at Bloomberg’s Next.2018 event.

The National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) today released its ninth annual state CIO survey. Since the survey comes just ahead of an election cycle that will likely cause significant turnover among states’ most senior technology officials, NASCIO–in partnership with Grant Thornton and CompTIA–approached the survey in a new way. NASCIO explained that it used this year’s survey as a “means for the current cadre of state CIOs to offer advice to a new generation of technology leaders that may soon be taking office.”

When it comes to cybersecurity, local governments can rely on established partnerships and a security culture that values improvement over punitive measures, said a panel of local IT officials and experts during an event hosted by the National Association of Counties (NACo) and the Public Technology Institute on Monday.

To help create a smart city, local governments need to think creatively about how to acquire new technology through new financing models and partnerships, said public and private sector participants during a panel at the Smart Cities Week conference.

California’s Democratic Governor Jerry Brown on Sunday signed S.B. 822 , which restores in the state Obama-era Federal net neutrality laws that were gutted by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) earlier this year.

The National Association of State Technology Directors (NASTD) is bringing on new leadership. Late last week, the organization announced that John Hoffman, CTO for the Texas Department of Information Resources (DIR), will take over as NASTD president. At DIR, Hoffman is tasked with providing comprehensive strategic planning for the agency. He also has 25 years of experience in the wired and wireless communications fields and has held positions in network operations and integration, field operations, and program management.