Security, consolidation and cloud services top the list of priorities of chief information officers, according to a survey of state IT leaders released Nov. 5 by the National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO).
State CIOs ranked security at the top of the list, which included risk assessment, governance, data protection and insider threats.
"Cyber-attacks against state governments are growing in number and becoming increasingly sophisticated," NASCIO President and Mississippi CIO Craig Orgeron said in a press release. "Security has to be top priority for all sectors."
The survey results affirmed congressional testimony Orgeron delivered in October before the Committee on Homeland Security.
The Cyber Security Symposium held last October also expressed similar concerns, with both public and private sector representatives outlining the increasingly sophisticated threats and how to combat them.
The survey revealed that IT leaders also highly rated the issues of consolidation, using the cloud and project and portfolio management.
"The results of our top 10 voting correlate very closely with the results of our more in depth 2013 State CIO survey and report," Doug Robinson, NASCIO’s executive director, said in a press release. "We’ll clearly see more discipline and investment in managing portfolios at the enterprise level—pursuing the right projects with the right governance and oversight."
Robinson also announced his organization’s Enterprise Architecture and Governance Committee intended to publish reports and host webinars for state government leaders on best practices.
