Author Archives: Kerry Rea President of GovEvents

About Kerry Rea President of GovEvents

Twitter: @Kerry_Rea | LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/kerryrea/ I am a business and marketing professional with an extensive background in company start-ups. I have 20+ years direct experience in the information technology, government, franchise, and construction industries. Having a passion for business, I love brainstorming, collaborating and strategizing on the best ways to achieve our clients' and partners' business objectives.

Checking Up on Digital Health Solutions

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The health industry has always leaned into emerging technologies to help it become more efficient and effective in delivering patient care. Like a doctor's stethoscope or an X-ray machine, today's digital solutions are part of a continuing evolution of medical tools that enhance and inform provider care. Of course, this use of technology must be thoughtful and careful not to replace doctors or their decisions with computer-generated suggestions.

The government's role of oversight into healthcare delivery is a careful balancing act of encouraging innovation while ensuring patient safety. From medical devices to artificial intelligence (AI), regulations are evolving to ensure healthcare gains efficiencies and insights from digital solutions while maintaining patient protections. In fact, the Food and Drug Administration recently created a new Digital Health Advisory Committee to help support the development of digital health technologies and their regulation. This committee will examine a wide variety of technologies and issues, including AI, cyber security, and equity in healthcare delivery. Continue reading →

The Next Technology Horizon for Law Enforcement

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With rising crime rates and staffing challenges, law enforcement agencies are looking at new ways to utilize technology and data to become more efficient in protecting our communities. A recent report from Thomson Reuters found that 48 percent of law enforcement respondents said that staffing was their top issue of concern with two-thirds placing staffing within their top three areas of concern. Technology has been an answer to staffing and effectiveness concerns with tools like body-worn cameras, license-plate readers, and video surveillance being widely implemented in departments of all sizes. But to continue to meet efficiency and effectiveness goals, law enforcement agencies have to start looking beyond these traditional technologies to more cutting edge and IT-based solutions.

Drones

Drones are becoming a powerful tool for law enforcement agencies to extend the eyes and ears of their teams. Increasingly drones are being used as first responders to scan a situation to provide context and information back to responding officers before they get on the scene. This use extends from routine noise complaint calls to domestic disputes to large scale emergencies. In all of these situations, drones are able to get to a location faster than humans and provide exact location and situational awareness for officers to be more precise in their response. Continue reading →

DoD’s Efforts to Make Emerging Technology Established Technology

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The U.S. Department of Defense's (DoD) shift from a focus on counterterrorism to one of near-peer rivals has highlighted the need to incorporate emerging technologies into the DoD faster than ever before. To keep up with the technological advances of peer nations, it is critical that the DoD speed the time to the field of technologies that can give our troops an advantage in terms of intelligence, data sharing, and visibility. But in this need for speed, the security and the reliability of these solutions cannot be ignored.

DoD is successfully striking the balance of speed, innovation, and reliability with several recent implementations of emerging technology. Continue reading →

Department Spotlight: Veterans Affairs

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Beyond its important mission of "caring for those who have served in our nation's military and for their families, caregivers, and survivors," the work of today's U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is guided by a strategic plan that lays out agency goals to be achieved through 2028. The projects the VA initiates over the coming years will support the following goals:

  1. Consistently communicate with customers and partners to assess and maximize performance, evaluate needs, and build long-term relationships and trust
  2. Deliver timely, accessible, and high-quality benefits, care, and services
  3. Build and maintain trust through proven stewardship, transparency, and accountability
  4. Strive toward excellence in all business operations--including governance, systems, data, and management

Several recent programs illustrate the commitment that the VA has to meeting and exceeding these goals by 2028 and beyond. Continue reading →

Understanding the State of State-Level IT

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The National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) annual member survey aimed to get a picture of what is currently happening in IT implementation at the state level. It focused on how states are funding their IT work and how they are implementing key technologies.

Show Me the Money

The survey found that state CIO offices have a median budget of $132 million, with high levels of federal funding resulting from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act, the American Rescue Plan, and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. But with the level of modernization needed to meet citizen expectations of digital government, that frequently is not enough.

States are increasingly moving to a "chargeback" model where IT funding comes from the business unit where it is used. For example, the Human Resources Department would be responsible for paying for the licenses and development costs of their HR information system, rather than that being seen as an overhead expense funded out of IT. This model allows CIOs to use more of their budget for large-scale IT modernization projects that stretch over many years and impact multiple departments. Continue reading →