NASCIO's Doug Robinson On The State Of State Government

Are states going to have to bump up their budgets for IT?

I'm a big believer that the funding is already there, it just might be allocated ineffectively. I would say the same thing with security.  A lot of the security resources are being allocated ineffectively towards fragmented solutions as opposed to enterprise solutions. If they were able to capture that spend and focus it more strategically, they'd be better off. I'd say the same thing around data. States have a tremendous amount of data on their customers, but they have very little insight, and that's a problem. Large companies have a tremendous amount of data on their customers, and they also have a lot of insight because they have all these buying patterns. They mine that. They use analytics. If you think of any major retailer that has consumers, insurance companies, banks, they go through a lot of data. They are constantly mining and analyzing that data. They're focusing on what you're' going to buy next. States don’t do that. They don’t have the capability for the most part. That's a fascinating future of evidence based decision making in government.