California establishes the Quake-Ready site
California, with many active faults running through it, has by far the highest earthquake risk of any state in the contiguous United States. With that in mind, state officials this year launched an earthquake preparedness program and designated April as California Earthquake Awareness Month.
Central child support collection systems elusive
States are struggling to establish statewide child support collection systems in response to a federal mandate, but overwhelming caseloads and technical problems are delaying payments and frustrating courts and human services departments.
Legislative IT workers join forces to create standard document markup language
Systems professionals from more than 20 state legislatures are helping develop the Legislative Document Markup Language, which would electronically standardize the reams of documents lawmakers generate.
PTI honors three for fostering IT in city and county government
Three local government officials received Public Technology Inc.'s 1999 Technology Leadership Award at PTI's annual meeting this month.
Firewalls
If your organization connects to the Internet, you should pay attention to your firewalls. You wouldn't leave your office door unlocked at night; neither should you leave your office's systems open to attack via the Internet.
MiTAC makes servers for maximum uptime
MiTAC Industrial Corp., a maker of industrial PCs, is entering the server market with a line of rugged, high-performance servers for applications that need maximum uptime.
Washington state's centralized system is rare success story
Washington's Support Information Management System stores data on 1.1 million cases'356,000 are active'and collects about $500 million annually.
INTERNAUT
Distributed service-denial attacks are a high-profile threat to Internet security. They can be the most difficult threat to fend off because new tools make it easy to attack from several locations using service pirated from other people's servers.
States move forward with ERP projects
Of the 48 contiguous states, 38 have embarked upon an enterprise resource planning project, according to a recent report on state ERP trends from PriceWaterhouseCoopers LLP of New York.
Texas legislators make jump from cable to Web
The Web sites of most state legislatures provide public access to legislative text. Broadcasting sessions over the Internet is the next up-and-comer.
Arizona primary draws thousands of Internet voters in spite of officials' security concerns
Maricopa County, Ariz., supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox cast the first binding Internet vote in an election for public office on Super Tuesday last month. Thousands of registered Democrats turned out for the March 7 Internet primary.
Florida tries to smooth welfare-to-work
When Florida decided to let private organizations oversee its welfare-to-work program, data sharing between state-run and private-sector computers complicated the program's implementation. Now the state is working to develop an integrated statewide system to alleviate the problems.
Telecommuters can get service for voice, data links in five cities
Agency telecommuters who wish they had high-speed voice and data connections such as digital subscriber lines might find an inexpensive alternative through Internet service providers in Chicago; Dayton, Ohio; Los Angeles; New York; and Thayer, Mo.
COUNTY LINES
Slow learner. Report card day used to mean thinking up inventive excuses: The cat ate my report card. My teacher has dyslexia and was thinking A-plus but wrote D by mistake. My teacher said grades are a hierarchical construct of an outworn paternalistic society.
State system professionals seek open standards to share law enforcement information nationally
Two recent state-federal partnerships indicate that the drive to share criminal justice data among all U.S. governments is gaining momentum.
Y2K results in vow of cooperation between feds, state IT officials
Officials of the National Association of State Information Resource Executives and the federal Chief Information Officers Council say they want to leverage relationships developed while working on year 2000 efforts.
States must standardize food stamps
A new federal law mandating interoperability among state systems that distribute food stamp credits will let recipients access the credits nationwide.
The 50 States
Lawmakers and their staffs rely on office computers for tasks such as communicating with constituents and drawing up draft legislation. And central staff members find systems indispensable for
Kansans seek IT that is practical and efficient
Don Heiman, chief information technology officer (CITO) of Kansas and director of the Information Systems and Communications Division (DISC), received a bachelor's degree in business from Rockhurst University in Kansas City, Mo., in 1969, a master's in business and a master's of public administration from the University of Kansas at Lawrence, and a master's in pastoral studies from Loyola University in New Orleans. He also has professional certifications as a government financial manager and an information systems controller.
This 17-inch LCD breaks new ground in size, price and view
LCD monitors have been improving for years, but except for the overpriced large-screen size, users have pretty much settled for 15-inch diagonals. Now Samsung Electronics Co. has come out with a true 17-inch LCD at a price to make the rest of the market blush.
Do Not Sell My Personal Information
When you visit our website, we store cookies on your browser to collect information. The information collected might relate to you, your preferences or your device, and is mostly used to make the site work as you expect it to and to provide a more personalized web experience. However, you can choose not to allow certain types of cookies, which may impact your experience of the site and the services we are able to offer. Click on the different category headings to find out more and change our default settings according to your preference. You cannot opt-out of our First Party Strictly Necessary Cookies as they are deployed in order to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting the cookie banner and remembering your settings, to log into your account, to redirect you when you log out, etc.). For more information about the First and Third Party Cookies used please follow this link.
Manage Consent Preferences
Strictly Necessary Cookies - Always Active
We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.
Sale of Personal Data, Targeting & Social Media Cookies
Under the California Consumer Privacy Act, you have the right to opt-out of the sale of your personal information to third parties. These cookies collect information for analytics and to personalize your experience with targeted ads. You may exercise your right to opt out of the sale of personal information by using this toggle switch. If you opt out we will not be able to offer you personalised ads and will not hand over your personal information to any third parties. Additionally, you may contact our legal department for further clarification about your rights as a California consumer by using this Exercise My Rights link
If you have enabled privacy controls on your browser (such as a plugin), we have to take that as a valid request to opt-out. Therefore we would not be able to track your activity through the web. This may affect our ability to personalize ads according to your preferences.
Targeting cookies may be set through our site by our advertising partners. They may be used by those companies to build a profile of your interests and show you relevant adverts on other sites. They do not store directly personal information, but are based on uniquely identifying your browser and internet device. If you do not allow these cookies, you will experience less targeted advertising.
Social media cookies are set by a range of social media services that we have added to the site to enable you to share our content with your friends and networks. They are capable of tracking your browser across other sites and building up a profile of your interests. This may impact the content and messages you see on other websites you visit. If you do not allow these cookies you may not be able to use or see these sharing tools.
If you want to opt out of all of our lead reports and lists, please submit a privacy request at our Do Not Sell page.
Cookie List
A cookie is a small piece of data (text file) that a website – when visited by a user – asks your browser to store on your device in order to remember information about you, such as your language preference or login information. Those cookies are set by us and called first-party cookies. We also use third-party cookies – which are cookies from a domain different than the domain of the website you are visiting – for our advertising and marketing efforts. More specifically, we use cookies and other tracking technologies for the following purposes:
Strictly Necessary Cookies
We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.
Functional Cookies
We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.
Performance Cookies
We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.
Sale of Personal Data
We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.
Social Media Cookies
We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.
Targeting Cookies
We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.