NASCIO's Doug Robinson On The State Of State Government

Does the holdup that you're referring to have to do with switching to a subscription-based model?

It's basically that the state model has been this fixed cost acquisition. They are buying and then they own, and every five years they go through the refresh cycle. This really confronts the status quo of that, so that is really a challenge… This is new. You're buying a service, subscription based, and flexible, agile, that can be turned on and turned off. That's different. Think about auditors. Auditors are called into audit systems and environments… now that environment may be in another state. Then you've got lawyers. The legal community will ask about jurisdictional issues. What about terms and conditions? Where's my state data? Well, it's in northern Virginia. What about evidentiary material that's in digital form? You're telling me that all of my email is in a Microsoft data center in San Antonio. These things create lots of complexities and states are going to have to work through those.