The National Association of State Chief Information Officers, the group that represents states’ top technology officials, on Tuesday revealed a new set of policies it will prioritize as it petitions Washington on behalf of its membership this year.
The group’s annual list of “federal advocacy priorities,” changes only little from year to year, and this year still favors a federal AI policy that respects state autonomy, reauthorization of the State and Local Cybersecurity Grant Program, support for broader adoption of the .gov top-level domain on government websites and a streamlining of the many redundant or conflicting federal cybersecurity standards that states must follow.
The biggest change this year is that NASCIO swapped out advocacy for policies that would bolster states’ cybersecurity workforces, for a call to reauthorize FirstNet, the government public safety communications network operated by AT&T. Alex Whitaker, NASCIO’s director of government affairs, said workforce is, of course, still important to state IT offices, but that reauthorizing FirstNet was judged to be a more “pressing priority” this year.
The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation has a hearing scheduled Wednesday to “examine the front lines of connectivity, focusing on FirstNet’s role in public safety.” The First Responder Network Authority, the independent authority that manages the network, would see its authorization expire Feb. 22. A survey last November found that 93% of first responders supported reauthorizing FirstNet.
Congress created FirstNet in 2012 as an answer to interoperability issues faced by first responders on Sept. 11, 2001. According to NASCIO, state CIOs also depend on the network during times of crisis, “to ensure their state’s first responders have the technological recourse they need to assist in disaster response and recovery.”
NASCIO is also continuing to advocate for “states leading the way” on matters of artificial intelligence policy, a diversion from efforts out of the White House, and Congress, to preempt states from enforcing their own laws on artificial intelligence. Outside of some industry support, President Donald Trump’s executive order last December and numerous efforts by Congress last year to ram through such AI legislation have been unpopular. NASCIO, noting it was “deeply concerned,” was among the many groups to have signed off on public letters condemning the effort to undermine state autonomy.
Whitaker noted that “states have not had the luxury of waiting around on the federal government to develop an implementation and use policy,” and so they have enacted, and continue to introduce, hundreds of their own AI laws for purposes ranging from protecting children from being deepfaked to ensuring that employees aren’t unfairly monitored at work. “They’ve put in a lot of best practices, they’ve done a lot of really good and innovative work,” Whitaker said of the states, and admitted that he understands the tech industry’s desire for a more uniform regulatory landscape — “But just putting in a blanket moratorium saying that states can’t enact their own laws is just a nonstarter for us.”
Congressional appropriators last week announced funding legislation that would renew numerous programs at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and extend the State and Local Cybersecurity Grant Program.
The grant program, bigly popular among state and local technology officials, could also be renewed by legislation in the House or Senate, though the bills differ considerably, Whitaker said. The House last November passed the PILLAR Act, which would reauthorize the program until 2033. After absorbing $1 billion for the first four years of the program, a new funding amount hasn’t been settled, but Whitaker said state CIOs are chiefly interested in not seeing the program disappear: “We want stability in both the timeline and the funding levels and amounts, because it’s hard for states to plan without that. Are we happy with the current funding level? No, because the need is always increasing. It’s never going down.”
