As a Vietnam veteran, Linda Schwartz saw firsthand the difficulties returning service members faced when re-entering civilian life.  As the commissioner of Connecticut’s Department of Veterans' Affairs, Schwartz had one goal with regard to veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: “I wanted to do better by the folks coming home today,” she said.  Thus was born the Oasis Centers in Connecticut, an East regional winner of The Council of State Governments’ 2012 Innovations Award.

The state of Washington issues more than 1 million tickets and more than 150,000 vehicle collision reports and other related forms each year.  All that work used to be completed by hand, but then Washington launched Statewide Electronic Collision & Ticket Online Records—or SECTOR—program, an electronic application for creating and routing tickets and accident reports.  The program is one of eight national winners of The Council of State Governments’ Innovations Awards.

Like many states, Colorado has made smart use of technology to deliver services more efficiently and affordably.  The Colorado Oil and Gas Commission’s eForm program is just one example. The program, one of eight national winners of The Council of State Governments’ Innovations Awards, has helped reduce the average time it takes to get a permit for drilling a well from 45 days to 30 days.

The average probation and parole officer in North Carolina manages a caseload of nearly 70 offenders. The officers have  to visit each offender at home, and make sure offenders are regularly tested for drugs, make court appearances and ensure they haven’t committed additional crimes. The sheer number of offenders in each caseload made that a daunting task. The Probation/Parole Officers Dashboard, one of this year’s Innovations Winners for the Southern region, has made that task a lot less daunting.

In 2008, two North Carolina college students from two the state’s flagship universities were murdered. The alleged murderers were no strangers to the criminal justice system. But because of the fragmentation of information in the state’s criminal justice system, it was hard to connect the dots on the alleged murderers. Department of Correction cases are identified by an identification number, the sex offender registry uses separate identification numbers and court cases have yet another number.  North Carolina made the best of a bad situation. The murders led legislators to order the creation of an integrated data system. The result was the Criminal Justice Law Enforcement Automated Data Services program—CJLEADS—an Innovations award winner for the Southern region.

In the past, Michigan’s state information technology department specialized in delivering the expensive “gold, silver and bronze” type of IT service projects, those that needed a lot of safeguards to prevent any downtime. What they were missing was a cheaper, faster service that falls more along the lines of aluminum or tin. That’s where MiCloud, one of this year’s Innovations Awards winners from the Midwestern region, comes in.

The Act defines a computer "zombie" as a ―computer that, without the knowledge and consent of the computer's owner or operator, has been compromised to give access or control to a program or person other than the computer's owner or operator. " It defines a "botnet" as a "collection of two or more zombies." The Act prohibits people from creating or using zombies and botnets to perform actions such as damaging other computers or collecting personal information about computer users.

This Act requires the state department of community, trade, and economic development to implement a strategic plan to enhance energy efficiency in and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from homes, buildings, districts, and neighborhoods. It directs the department and the state building code council to convene a work group to develop the plan. The Act requires the state energy code be designed to accelerate construction of energy efficient homes and buildings which help achieve a broad goal of building zero fossil-fuel greenhouse gas emission homes and buildings by the year 2031.