This Week in Gov Tech

All right, TGIF everyone, and welcome back to another episode of In Case You Missed It, This Week in GovTech. Lots of happenings. It seems like every week there's a whole slew of market activity and other things, but we're gonna break down some of the key stories that stood out to us this week. And we'll start first with something that actually just came out of our research team, and that's around just next year's electoral cycle. So we know elections, you know, can be very disruptive to the CIO role and technology investment areas, and next year We are up for 36 gubernatorial elections, seats that are up, 20 Republican, 16 Democratic. Joe, what do you, what do you think of the potential here for next year's election cycle?

It's gonna be a busy time, right? I mean, every 2 years it seems like we see about somewhere between 25 to 30 of these elections where it really heats up. You got a few of them that are term-limited, but elections during the pandemic have proven to be Volatile, and that means that you could see a lot of turnover here depending on where we find ourselves come that election cycle. That means that you want to be looking at CIO turnover potentially and what that could mean to the relationships that you have, and then also begin to deepen your relationships into those agencies, into those non-politically appointed positions that will be there to survive this election cycle.

Yeah, just to riff a little bit more on the CIO point, Of course, this is all going to be dependent on the different governors that get elected. You know, government technology, we're always looking for the latest, you know, people taking over positions. And so another thing we try to do is look at, you know, when a new governor comes in, what kind of technology proposals or initiatives might the CIO have to deal with, you know, when the governor comes into office. The other thing that I think about when I look at this story is you have so many different elections, you know, disinformation has become such a big deal over the last few years. So it'll be interesting to see what role disinformation plays, you know, how well local election, state and local election officials deal with this issue. And then will some of this different disinformation affect some of the outcomes? That's something that will be Quite fascinating to watch.

Yeah, I think it's a really interesting point, especially around the priority side that you talked about. I mean, pay attention to those transition plans as these, you know, if there's a change in the incumbency, you know, pay attention to what the new priorities are for the new administration and make sure you're aligning yourself to that. And totally agree on the misinformation side. You know, we haven't seen anything yet. Now you got 36 seats that are up, so it's going to be wild. People aren't just focused on the federal elections anymore, but we're seeing a lot of that misinformation and disinformation creep down into state and even local elections to a certain extent, which questions, you know, the trust dynamic of that. And Joe, I know that was kind of one of the things that stood out to you this week was a new study. So talk a little bit about that.

Yeah, Deloitte released a study on trust in government. They surveyed over 6,000 people in the US that— and wanted to dig deep into trust in our institutions. Some interesting findings when you look at trust is you're seeing trust in state and local government be higher than that of the federal government. And if you were to peel that onion back a little bit further, their trust in local government is even higher than that of the state government. And some of the things that they found that were pretty fascinating, or at least stood out to me, was trust can be increased by the digital experience that one has with their government. That played a big role in those trust scores, if you will. And so it's all about having a secure, easy-to-use digital experience. When we look at our own CIO priority list, whether that's our digital states, cities, and counties surveys, that helps explain that prioritization on that government experience and digital experience that we're seeing. I think in the aggregate, it might be the top 3 priority overall. And then we all know that as the pandemic's impact on digital services and contactless government, but this goes to show you that in an era of distrust and misinformation, that having that digital government, that experience can be really key to not only keeping that trust but helping it grow. Some of the other pieces that are important to know from the survey, your trust scores were a little bit higher in the individual agencies. So where you had your interactions, where you had your highest amount of trust. So if you had a really positive experience in the DMV, then the DMV is actually going to score higher maybe than the overall state score, the overall local government. So proximity matters and digital matters in terms of government trust, and the rubber hits the road in local government.

Yeah, and as you said, as trust grows, so do the expectations that follow. So, you know, we saw that in response to the pandemic, you know, trust increased for a moment and people had greater expectations than ever on that government experience and the, you know, seamlessness of communication and information that was going to flow. And as that started to change, so did the behaviors that agencies had to meet that kind of followed that.

You know, one thing I think is really interesting about this is looking at how trust does differ when you go from federal to state to local. And it's like the smaller you go, the more trust that you have. And, you know, one way of looking at this is saying, well, you know, maybe local governments are doing a bit better job. But another way of looking at it is think about this. when you go up to state-level government, there's so many more responsibilities that the state government has. Same thing with the federal government. So it seems like when the government has more and more responsibilities, you know, that trust might waver because you're affecting so many more people. You know, a great example of this is thinking about the state unemployment systems.

Mm-hmm.

You know, if I were trying to get unemployment during the pandemic, I might not have very much trust in my state government if I'm having trouble getting online or if there's a delay in my payments and so on and so forth. So, you know, from that perspective, it'd be very, very easy to trust my local government more. And plus, a lot of times in elections, you know, we can feel like we have more power on the local side, whereas when you go all the way up to federal, you know, voting for a presidential election, I know several people, you know, don't even bother voting because they say, well, I live in a red state, so what's the point?

All right, and that brings us to your article for the week, which, uh, is around the downside to state and local privacy. So break down why this stood out to you, Jed.

So this article I found really interesting because if you talk to the common person, I think most people have an issue with the way that companies have been collecting our data and selling our data and storing it and so on and so forth. And so I think the common person wants something to be done about data privacy. And so you have, you know, several states that have already taken a stab at this. But this article is talking about, well, while this— while the intentions might be good, there could be a downside to this. And so the writer here talked to a couple of experts. One of the points is that, you know, if you have a different privacy law in every state, or if you even have different privacy laws on a local level, that can really make it difficult for businesses and organizations to keep up with everything. you know, certain products that might help people may not be available in certain areas because of a privacy regulation. Another point that was made by an expert was that different types of data need different types of rules. So in other words, you can't just do a uniform data privacy law and just let it affect everything. And there's this one great quote that I wanted to bring up here. It's by a source. The source says, an example I like to use is somebody that's been committed to a mental health institution for mental health needs, their data collection is very different from somebody buying a vacuum cleaner off Amazon. And so I think that example really does highlight the complexity of this. And also, when you're looking at this state, state and local level, you know, on the federal level, what's going to be done to maybe address some of these issues? And so Congress is going to have its hands full because they're going to have to look at all the different types of data and the different rules that might need to be associated to with that as they're trying to look at like, you know, maybe reducing this kind of patchwork, you know, phenomenon that might hold organizations and businesses back?

Yeah, I think it's a really interesting point, and that's something Joe and I have been talking at length about, you know, when it comes to is there going to be a US equivalent of GDPR? And we saw what GDPR did to the US privacy landscape. So, you know, this will be really interesting to see kind of longer term how all this shakes out. And, you know, it's been a fragmented landscape. I mean, if you're a company that's in the infrastructure business today, you've got so many different compliance levels to try to comply to. And, you know, if you're in California, you've got the, you know, California Act. If you're in Colorado, you've got that one, right? If you're, you know, in Texas, you, you don't have one, right? So there's so much variance there across the country. Uh, Joe, what are you seeing here?

Yeah, I was gonna essentially comment on that. I mean, pre-pandemic, there was an effort that was bubbling up to the federal government to standardize on this with the premise that data privacy shouldn't vary based on where you live. That was the premise that they were pushing up from the lobbyists to the legislators from the states. We didn't make a ton of traction on that, and if you actually start digging into those bills, like it sounds like Jed and the team have, you start to see that they use the common terms of like, you know, for cybersecurity or kind of a broad definition for what good is, but then the nuance is it varies, and it's different in California than Arizona and so on. And that's where the challenge comes in. And then you layer the localities on top of that who have their own rules. And we've seen local governments be very active in terms of AI and how AI can be used and how emerging technology should or shouldn't be embraced, and cybersecurity is no different. So absolutely, Jed, you're right. The, the states and the localities as well as the federal government are going to have some untangling to do. as it relates to data privacy. Well, that brings us to the end of this week's episode of In Case You Missed It. We hope you enjoyed it. We hope you have a wonderful weekend, and we'll see you on the next episode. Take care.