One of the biggest challenges for IT professionals is changing the culture of the workplace with new cloud applications, according to Greg Urban, chief operating officer for the state of Maryland.

Collaboration and a willingness to learn new practices are the best ways to address cybersecurity concerns surrounding cloud computing, according to IT leaders from across the country. Greg Urban, chief operations officer of Maryland, said that a strong core of talent makes a big difference when exploring cloud capabilities.

HHS’ Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology announced the Phase 2 winners for the Consumer Health Data Aggregator Challenge and the Provider User Experience Challenge. Winners had to develop a market-ready application that would allow consumers and providers to aggregate health data from different sources into one, secure area.

CenturyLink has been awarded a NASPO Value Point Cloud Solutions Master Agreement, a contract that will enable the company to sell its cloud solutions to state and local governments as well as authorized political subdivisions, such as school districts, counties, and cities.

The California secretary of state has improved access to more than 5.3 million records related to corporations, limited liability companies, and limited partnerships through the creation of a new Business Search Tool, which allows citizens to have online access to data that was previously available only through in-person or mail requests.

Though many state and local governments are increasing their cloud computing budgets for 2017, most are leery of the risks of moving to a public cloud, according to a recently released MeriTalk survey.

Recent cloud adoptions have enabled government agencies, both on the Federal and state and local levels, to process data much faster than before, and those cloud services are becoming easier to get, according to panelists at the Microsoft Government Cloud Forum.

As part of NASPO ValuePoint’s Cloud Solutions cooperative procurement, Utah has awarded collab9, a Unified Communications-as-a-Service provider, a Cloud Solutions contract, which enables any of NASPO’s 50 member states, territories, and local governments and public education institutions to purchase the service.

The Federal government, state and local governments, and higher education institutions are seeing the appeal of adopting cloud offerings in areas such as increased speed and cost savings, according to a recent MeriTalk survey titled “Destination Cloud: the Federal and SLED Cloud Journey.”

Cloud adopters are stepping on the gas – from police stations and state colleges to our nation’s capital. But how do these agencies and institutions determine the best route? And, which applications do they take along for the ride?