NASCIO's Doug Robinson On The State Of State Government

During your presentation at XChange, you mentioned it is tough for states to get employees in cyber security with the necessary skills. Why is that?

There are several challenges. One is clearly compensation. They can't attract the talent they need because compensation is a major showstopper. States need to be innovative and realize that in the past they were able to do that through benefits, and that's waning as well. The benefit packages that states used to present as an attractive incentive, that worked years ago, but doesn’t work anymore because most of this talent is not going to hang around. States need to be innovative. Cyber security is No. 1 in terms of the gap we have today by a wide margin. There is a negative unemployment rate in the country with cyber security professionals. States have to be really innovative in terms of what they can do in that space.