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.

The Illinois Department of Information and Technology has partnered with the State of Telangana, India, to advance their smart state initiatives.

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.

Due to the many ways that attackers could affect the results from voting machines, those working on Election Day should have better training and retain “a pinch of paranoia,” according to Tony Cole, vice president and global government chief technology officer at FireEye.

The Federal Communications Commission should consult with tribal leaders and enact a tribal priority for spectrum allocation, according to Loris Taylor, president and chief executive officer of Native Public Media. Forty-one percent of Americans living on tribal lands lack access to broadband compared to 6 percent of total Americans, according to the FCC.

In order to educate law enforcement officials on how to deal with digital evidence and cyber-based crimes, the FBI has created the Cyber Investigator Certification Program, a project that, in partnership with Carnegie Mellon University, aims to address the concerns of the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) over a lack of affordable cyber training options for officers.

Seven weeks ago the Peoria (Ill.) Police Department and Peoria County Sheriff’s Office began testing the new Integrated Ballistics Identification Systems to help solve crime. The Federally funded IBIS equipment examines the unique characteristics of shell casings and compares the casings to others stored in the national database.

Later this month, the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society will open its new, interactive Cybersecurity Hub at the HIMSS Innovation Center, within the health IT floor of the Global Center for Health Innovation, in downtown Cleveland.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) awarded $5.5 million to four regional medical center groups being added to the national network of health care provider organizations implementing the Precision Medicine Initiative Cohort Program.