Priorities Podcast

On this week’s Priorities Podcast, the StateScoop team breaks down what the recent cancellation of the Digital Equity Act will mean for states and communities that were expecting the funding to improve connectivity, access to devices and digital skills training. Keely Quinlan explains that a recent letter — signed by 156 people representing the 140 organizations that serve communities across 39 st...

On this week’s Priorities Podcast, Chad Marlow, senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, says that the broad use of facial recognition technology by New Orleans police extends even beyond endangering the city’s residents, but invites outside actors to take advantage of its surveillance environment. The police, which were recently revealed to have been using facial recognition a...

Years into an effort to consolidate and modernize the New Jersey state government’s call centers, humans remain an important part of the process. On this week’s Priorities Podcast, Dave Cole, New Jersey chief’s innovation officer, and Joe DeLaTorre, product manager at the New Jersey Office of Innovation, say that even after improvements to the state’s digital presence, residents said they still wa...

For Stephen Dawe, the chief information officer for Opelika, Alabama, work life took an unexpected turn during the COVID-19 pandemic. He was tasked with building an IT system that could detect when detergent had been dumped into a city fountain, a recurring and costly prank kids had been pulling. Dawe says it took a lot of work, including recruiting the fire department to help his team set up an e...

Two Pennsylvania state employees explain on this week’s Priorities Podcast how they’re accelerating the time it takes to hire new employees. Miranda Martin, director of talent management, and Harrison MacRae, director of emerging technologies, said that through a combination of process changes and technology, they’ve reduced time-to-hire from 90 days to 58 days. “Three months is just too long to c...

Code For America CEO Amanda Renteria joins StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast this week to offer a preview of the organization’s 2025 Summit, scheduled for May 29-30 in Washington, D.C. Renteria says the event will include talks on human-centered design, the latest uses of artificial intelligence in state and local government and how agencies are driving efficiency under a new U.S. president. “When d...

This week’s Priorities Podcast is joined by Talita Elizeu, director of partnerships at Govern for America, and Cara Eckholm, the nonprofit’s research director. Elizeu and Eckholm say that a recent report published by the group provides valuable tips for states still early in their adoption of artificial intelligence policies. The report, which includes insights gathered from technology workers in...

The Long Island Sound sector of the U.S. Coast Guard last month announced Aqua Alert, a new pilot program to notify the public about maritime emergencies and provide real-time information to aid search and rescue efforts on the water. Joshua Smarzo, a Coast Guard lieutenant and command center sector chief, tells the Priorities Podcast the new program will help meet the challenges of managing searc...

On this week’s Priorities Podcast, Kern County, California, Deputy Fire Chief Zachary Wells and Ryan Lanclos, director of national government and public safety solutions at Esri,​ say ALERTCalifornia's new map layer strengthens emergency management and improves community safety. The wildfire-monitoring program from University of California San Diego​ provides instant access to live camera feeds ac...

Connecticut Attorney General William Tong recently recommended that the state’s lawmakers strengthen a statewide privacy law enacted two years ago, including by sending “warning letters” to violators and investigating consumer complaints. Kara Williams, law fellow at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, joins the Priorities Podcast to share why she thinks Connecticut’s law is weak in some re...

On this week’s Priorities Podcast, we’re joined by Mark Lindeman, the policy and strategy director of election nonprofit group Verified Voting, to discuss the final passage of a piece of legislation in Maryland that would require the state to conduct a post-election, risk-limiting audit process after each statewide election. The legislation also allows for the audits, which Lindeman’s organization...

Carlos Kizzee, the senior vice president of MS-ISAC strategy and plans at Center for Internet Security, joins the Priorities Podcast to share how the group’s recent funding cuts are affecting operations and how it might affect the group’s future. Kizzee says the claims that the MS-ISAC’s services are duplicated by those offered by federal agencies are “not necessarily true.” He also points to a re...

On this week’s Priorities Podcast, we’re joined by Robert Fulk, chief information officer of the Indiana Secretary of State’s Office, to talk about the work behind “Captain Record,” the state’s newest generative artificial intelligence tool. It allows users to search more than 100 years’ worth of state documents, and by intelligently indexing over 20 million unstructured records, including some th...

On this week’s Priorities Podcast, Ohio State Police Captain Justin Cromer shares how airborne microwave downlink technology is helping law enforcement gain better intelligence during incidents. This week’s top stories: Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro has shared preliminary results from the state’s ChatGPT pilot program, noting that the generative artificial intelligence tool was a “job enhancer” f...

Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, is convening experts to develop interventions that could decrease the number of motor vehicle deaths and address disparities in where collisions occur. Dr. Ben Weston, chief health policy adviser for Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, joins the Priorities Podcast to explain how a recent public safety project is pitting data against a fatal challenge. After publishing a data...

It’s been two years since New York City Chief Privacy Officer Michael Fitzpatrick joined the Priorities Podcast to discuss how an updated citywide privacy policy could foster better collaboration between cybersecurity and data privacy teams. This week, Fitzpatrick returns to share what has happened in the two years since. He explains how artificial intelligence fits into the relationship between c...

Recent research by the nonprofit U.S. Digital Response and the National Association of State Chief Information Officers examined what vendors don’t like about states’ request for proposal documents. The work was dead simple, as was the solution they proposed: Just put a cover sheet on your RFPs. Waldo Jaquith, a government delivery manager with USDR, joins StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast to explai...

On this week’s Priorities Podcast, a director at the Advanced Communications Law & Policy Institute at New York Law School shares ways the administration of President Donald Trump can accelerate funding to states through the $42.45 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program. Michael Santorelli says BEAD can be made more effective by rolling back unnecessary requirements, addressing r...

John Cohen, executive director of the countering hybrid threats program at the Center for Internet Security, says state and local law enforcement agencies can better work together to address evolving, multi-dimensional threats. Cohen tells StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast that the cybersecurity, physical and information operations by foreign and domestic threat actors present in the 2024 election d...

This week, the Priorities Podcast is joined by Amanda Renteria, CEO of the civic tech nonprofit Code for America, and Robert Gordon, a former Joe Biden White House adviser who spent the past three decades working across state, local and federal government. Both Renteria and Gordon, who’ve centered their careers on making government function more efficiently and effectively, share why they think th...

After more than one year on the job, New York State Chief Information Officer Dru Rai says he’s concerned about several emerging IT trends, including shared services, procurement and the potential high cost of artificial intelligence. On StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast, Rai also says it’s important for state government technology officials to consider their processes in tandem with their IT consol...

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 agen...

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 poin...

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 pot...

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 prod...