State CIOs Eye Consolidation, Cloud, Mobility

14 Most Popular Government Mobile Apps

Resource consolidation, cloud computing, and mobility are among some of the top IT areas of focus for state CIOs, who are still grappling with tight budgets that drive their technology agendas, according to an annual survey released Wednesday.

Even as CIOs continue to feel pressure to cut costs--something they believe consolidation and cloud initiatives will help them do--they still believe there's an opportunity to take advantage of the ubiquity of mobile devices, according to the 2011 State CIO Survey sponsored by National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO), TechAmerica, and Grant Thornton.

However, the new costs that may come with building and deploying mobile applications may be difficult to manage. Only 16% of those surveyed cited introducing technology as a priority, versus the 67% who endorsed centralizing state IT services, and the 55% who believe a focus on controlling IT costs are more important, according to the survey.

Moreover, 71% cited an inadequate budget as their top barrier to increasing their effectiveness as states still continue to recover from the fallout of the 2008 financial crisis, according to the survey. This sentiment is similar to one expressed in the same survey last year, in which CIOs eyed consolidating applications and data centers as one way to deal with budgets they expect to shrink through 2013.

[The feds have outlined cloud computing guidelines for agencies. See NIST Releases Federal Cloud Roadmap, Architecture.]

To deal with budget woes, at least 90% of those surveyed identified seven from a list of 12 services as ones they are considering for consolidation. Those seven are: telecom, email, data centers, security, and backup and disaster recovery, servers, and storage, according to the survey. Other services being eyed for consolidation include content management, desktop support, business applications, staff, and imaging.

Deploying the cloud as a way to consolidate or share services has risen in status among state CIOs since last year, with 14% saying their state is "highly invested" in cloud computing versus 5% giving the same response last year, and 4% saying they have not invested at all versus 8% last year.

Moreover, 75% of respondents said that cloud computing changes their role in a positive way, giving them a higher profile to create opportunities for change rather than just playing a supporting role, according to the survey.

Even as they aim to consolidate and share more services via the cloud to cut costs, CIOs still want to make room to expand the mobility applications services they offer, according to the survey.

Over half--58%--of respondents rated mobile devices and apps as "essential or high" priority, while 33% said they are of "medium" priority. Only 8% characterized them as "low" or "no" priority.

Mobile applications states have deployed so far include one from Indiana that allows school bus inspectors to complete and transmit inspection forms on a smartphone, and another by Minnesota that mashes up geolocation capabilities with agency data to direct boaters in the state's more than 11,000 lakes toward the nearest accessible boat landing.

CIOs, deputy CIOs, or the equivalent from 48 states, the District of Columbia, and two U.S. territories responded to the survey online this past summer to produce the results.