Ohio Governor John Kasich recently received the 2015 Technology Champion award from the National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) for his leadership in IT policy, initiatives, and practices.
“Technology’s been an integral part of what we’re doing in Ohio. We need to be able to serve Ohioans, and to do that we need to constantly innovate, upgrade and streamline our technologies,” said Kasich in recorded acceptance remarks since he wasn’t able to attend the conference. “First thing we did was expand the capacity of Ohio’s Academic Resources Network to increase capacity for medical research, higher education, manufacturing, and Ohio’s medical corridor.
“It’s the crucial link between creating new businesses and next-generation innovation,” he continued. “Job creators were not going to move their businesses to Ohio if we couldn’t provide them the tools to successfully run their businesses.”
In 2012, Ohio invested $13.1 million in upgrades to increase OARnet’s network capacity tenfold to an impressive 100 Gigabits per second (Gbps) – 50,000 times faster than average smartphone wireless speeds. The enhanced network provides Ohio connections to 10 major cities, 90 colleges and universities, numerous data centers and application service providers that serve education, research and government, and Internet2’s international research and education network.
In addition to the statewide 100 Gbps backbone and a $12 million supercomputer system, to be deployed this summer at the Ohio Supercomputer Center, Kasich has reached a number of key technology milestones during his tenure as governor. The state’s IT Optimization program has recorded $130 million in cost savings over the past two fiscal years. These savings were achieved through infrastructure consolidation and agency adoption of Ohio’s private cloud, related service delivery and management, including network, storage, server and data center facilities. A Technology Board also was established to enhance enterprise IT alignment and ensure that agency interests are represented within the IT governance process.
“NASCIO is pleased to present Governor Kasich with the 2015 NTC award,” said Stu Davis, NASCIO president and CIO for the State of Ohio. “The governor’s contributions to the state demonstrate his understanding of the importance of IT in enabling citizen service and effective government operations.”
The association presented the award April 28, at the 2015 NASCIO Midyear Conference in Alexandria, Virginia. In 2013, IDG’s Computerworld also recognized OARnet for its vision in building the 100 Gig network to meet the growing economic and research opportunities offered by “Big Data.”
