Security Is the Focus for State CIOs

The national organization representing state chief information officers is refocusing its research and collaborative efforts on security and infrastructure issues in response to the terrorist attack on the United States. As part of this effort, the National Association of State Chief Information Officers of Lexington, Ky., plans to sponsor an upcoming forum on security and infrastructure protection. A time and place for the event has not been determined, the association said in a Sept. 21 announcement.NASCIO President Aldona Valicente said the association's security and reliability team, a small group of 10 to 15 persons, will "accelerate its work" with the National Governors Association and the Partnership for Critical Infrastructure Protection, both of Washington. The groups are studying a number of security issues, including the critical role of state information systems in the nation's infrastructure, she said."[This] means advocating policies and protocols that provide greater assurance for state IT systems and work with fellow security and architecture experts to develop an interstate information sharing center, as well as early warning and response resources," Valicente said.PCIS, a nonprofit organization, coordinates public and private efforts to promote and assure provision of critical infrastructure services in response to economic and national security threats. NASCIO is an ad-hoc member of PCIS.In related news, the NASCIO executive board voted unanimously to cancel the association's annual conference and not reschedule it. The next meeting will be the midyear conference scheduled for April 7-9, 2002, in Denver."Although it was a difficult decision to defer the discussion of the general concerns and progress of the membership to our spring meeting, we are resolved to strengthen our efforts in these targeted areas and put our experience to work to meet these challenges that have been so dramatically highlighted in the past weeks," Valicente said.