Management

NACo 2017: Counties Keep Pace with Tech Innovation

Experts at the National Association of Counties' annual conference will share advice on how public tech innovations and advances can add value to residents.

Juliet Van Wagenen

Juliet is the senior web editor for StateTech and HealthTech magazines. In her six years as a journalist she has covered everything from aerospace to indie music reviews — but she is unfailingly partial to covering technology.

Smart cities might get all the hype, but as Snohomish County, Wash., demonstrates in its endeavor to become the first smart county, these regions are proving to be equally as innovative. Not to mention, they’re often looking for ways to tackle the issues that come with managing a larger geographic area. For example, with Snohomish County’s endeavor to equip the region with new Internet of Things devices and broadband technology, the most pressing challenge will be balancing the needs of rural and urban residents.

But the struggle to find equilibrium when addressing differing resident IT needs is an issue often encountered by county officials, and one that will certainly take center stage at the upcoming 2017 National Association of Counties Conference and Exhibition in Franklin County, Ohio.

The conference, which will run July 21-24, seeks to bring together county leaders from all backgrounds for four days of education around the best way to improve government efficiency and residents’ lives. And, more now than ever, technology is proving to be a large part of those initiatives.

To address this changing landscape around using technology in resident engagement, the conference will feature a Tech Town Hall that will explore the growing role of social media in county government, how counties can use technology to empower citizen engagement, and how a county can enable a technology mobile workforce.

Moreover, in addressing the changing needs of county IT, the town hall will also look to tackle moving a county to the cloud, protecting resident information and public-safety technology.

Further, with several local government websites recently experiencing hacking incidents, cybersecurity is proving to be more important than ever for counties. To protect communities and help key public entities stay ahead of evolving cyberthreats, the conference will feature a session on preparing these entities for cyber risks, such as ransomware, hacktivists and phishing attacks.

With counties playing an ever-increasing role in bolstering public health, the conference will also hold two July 23 sessions on using technology to build healthier communities. The first will facilitate a discussion with county leaders and experts about how counties can use technology to better meet the current healthcare needs of their residents and provide a variety of healthcare services. The second will address how counties can use tech to obtain more robust health data to increase care.

StateTech will be on hand to cover these sessions and more. Follow all of our coverage on the NACo 2017 event page.

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