From: PublicCEO
Doing more with less is still the prevailing theme with local government public safety officials according to a recent survey conducted by Public Technology Institute (PTI). This survey included responses from public safety and IT officials on behalf of jurisdictions, large, medium and small across the country representing over 54 million people.
The short survey asked the officials to rank 16 public safety technology topics according to their internal priorities. Fifty-six percent (56%) of the respondents listed “just keeping up with technology changes, personnel changes and the general workload” as their most pressing issue and their top priority. This could be due to a majority of respondents still expecting budget decreases over the next fiscal year. Anecdotal evidence supports that staffing is less than pre-recession levels and yet more technology is being added with fewer staff to handle the workload.
As is the case with many other surveys conducted in early 2014, cybersecurity tops this survey as well. Forty-five percent (45%) of those official surveyed listed cyber security and network security as a top priority. Everyone agrees that cyber security should be an enterprise-wide endeavor and that every employee has a stake in making the jurisdiction a safe environment for business to be carried out and for information to be collected and exchanged. Something as simple as requiring employees to annually complete an on-line security-training questionnaire has proven helpful in many governments. Having policies to address access to file for exiting employees is also part of keeping a network secure. However, making security awareness a consistent message throughout the workplace is the best means of securing the network.
Leave a Reply