Cloud, The Name Of Revolution, In Public Sector

Ed Toner, Chief Information Officer of State of Nebraska

Ed Toner, Chief Information Officer of State of Nebraska

Ed Toner was appointed as the Chief Information Officer for the State of Nebraska on June 9, 2015, by Governor Pete Ricketts. Since then, he effectively implemented a full consolidation of IT systems, resources and services, which have positioned Nebraska to provide quality support at lower costs. He executed state-wide consolidation in less than eighteen months, transforming the state from a decentralized to a centralized infrastructure model. This saved more than $30 million in recurring annual savings via staff reductions, eliminating hardware and software duplications, server virtualization and migration to a single state network.

As the CIO for the State of Nebraska, what are some latest technology trends you are witnessing in the public sector domain?

Initially, in the first few years in Nebraska, we were cautious about moving into the cloud, but then we modernized our legacy systems through cloud offerings. I think our biggest cloud offering already initiated is a unified portal for our customers in a vision for zero wrong doors. The clients would enjoy a standardized, unified portal with a similar look and feel for every corner of the state for service. We are starting with Health and Human Service (HHS), with our customers and others lined up to join. We are focusing on B2C offerings and also utilizing B2B cloud offerings. Our goal at HHS is to provide residents of Nebraska with a simple process of applying to each service. For instance, when citizens look for services from HHS, they don’t need to fill separate applications for each offering. We save the information in a specific application instead of repeatedly asking for the same information for other offerings. Then we take that information to pre-populate into another form so that the same questions would not be asked repeatedly. The process is called IServe, and its primary motive is to have a nice uniform look with a better experience. It would also save both our’s and the clients’ time as they won’t have to re-input all this information every time while interacting with the state. We are trying hard to make it better with advanced technology.

In a world where modern citizens expect the same level of simplicity, speed, and ease of use from public sector services, what challenges does the public sector face in addressing those requirements?

My biggest challenge would be the consolidation of our state, which means all the cabinet or governor agencies, board’s, commissions and other agencies that fall under our support as we manage their data infrastructure and IT needs. So we have a lower bar of entry for this. On the contrary, if we were in a federated environment where every agency would have its IT infrastructure, website and network, the experience wouldn’t have been the same. It is going to be difficult for all the agencies to decide what the solution would be. As we are using one B2C solution, every customer across the state would use that with a similar experience. That’s the biggest impediment to the federated nature of most states that will not allow those silos to have the same feel and experience as the private sector. In the private sector, we might have ten different verticals within our company, but the differences remain unnoticed. It would be seamless because of the frictionless environment. The silos that are present in many of the federated states are not going to allow that frictionless environment to exist.

“I think our biggest cloud offering already initiated is a unified portal for our customers in a vision for zero wrong doors”

How does technology come into the picture when meeting the requirements of the citizens?

At HHS, we eliminate the lengthy and manual process of storing and exchanging information of the customers. We’re helping to create a single door for all the data stored for every offering or agency. If a customer changes their address, they won’t have to roam around every agency in the state to change that particular information. With the help of advanced technology, we are also keeping track of fraud detection that takes place in most financial institutions. So as we are creating a single door where all the customers’ data are stored, we also create single fraud detection software that ensures the money is going to the right person at the right time. Through ‘IServe,’ we are trying to eliminate all sorts of manual entry by using several technological strategies to make things simpler and convenient for our clients.  

Fraud

Financial

virtualization

IT Infrastructure