| NASCIO’s New Normal State chief information officers gathered this week for the NASCIO midyear conference, though it happened this time in cyberspace. Well-attended virtual sessions had CIOs sharing their struggles in getting telework off the ground, the tech that helped them get there and what they feel some of the lasting impacts will be. Breaking Down Cybersilos And in the NASCIO panel that veered most sharply away from the current crisis, state and local leaders in North Carolina talked about how they partner up to present a more unified front against cyberthreats. Also in the cyberarena, the National Governors Association announced that seven states had been chosen to collaborate on best practices in cybersecurity. Each state will focus on a particular area, which include things like workforce, partnerships and critical infrastructure. States Tackle Unemployment Woes The surge in online applications and calls to unemployment offices have forged some expeditious new partnerships in recent weeks. And in some cases, states are finding it easiest to grow relationships with vendors they’re already working with in other areas. Oklahoma, for one, stood up a new portal for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) over the course of a weekend, using a “logic tool” from Granicus. User testing helped the state fine tune the tool, which it estimates will help disburse more than $2 billion in benefits. And a new GT data piece paints a broader picture of unemployment by sector, plotting data from the U.S. Department of Labor showing which sectors of the economy have been hardest hit by the pandemic. The data is likely to significantly change as reports to date only reflect numbers through early March. | 
