The National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) has shared a policy brief on state government use of unmanned aerial systems (UAS).
The paper, called ‘Unmanned Aerial Systems, Governance and State CIOs: On the Radar,’ focuses on the myriad ways UAS are deployed in state government and why state CIOs should be actively engaged in the governance and use of UAS.
“In NASCIO’s 2014 State CIO Survey, we asked state CIOs to characterize their role with respect to UAS in their state, and 63.5 percent said they were not on their radar,” says Doug Robinson, executive director of NASCIO. “We believe UAS should be on the radar of every state CIO – which is why we developed this policy brief.”
The paper encourages state CIOs to focus on data standardization, privacy, safety, communications infrastructure and security issues when developing a governance model for UAS. The paper also encourages state CIOs to play an active role in the governance process.
Stu Davis, Ohio CIO and president of NASCIO, adds, “UAS are already in use nationwide, and if state CIOs don’t take an active role in addressing these important policy issues sooner rather than later, they will likely be asked to deal with a host of complicated issues in the near future. We particularly need to address privacy, security, safety and data standardization as soon as possible to avoid a mess down the road.”
The full policy brief can be found here.
