In this year’s Annual Report, you will find news of a broad scope of CTG projects to improve government, ranging from deploying mobile technology to protect children at risk, to preserving eastern hardwood forests, to guarding our telecommunications infrastructure, to advising governments on IT development as near as Albany County, NY and as far away as China and Turkey.

There are four in-depth articles on subjects of particular importance for the current and future development of government information resources. Each article provides a review of our overall results, in addition to more in depth links to related project reports.

The five articles in our annual report this year exemplify the range of perspectives, theories, and approaches in digital government research and are drawn from our own diverse projects. They provide a frame of reference for learning more about interdisciplinary research aimed at producing successful information-intensive innovation within government.

• The mobile technology article explores how New York State deployed laptops and other mobile devices for child protective service workers. The lessons from our assessment studies point to better ways of integrating new technologies in complex human services environments.
• A related article reviews the issues in performance measurement that emerged from our work on public return on investment analysis and performance management projects. We discuss both the promise of performance measurement to improve government and the limitations of current methods and models.
• In another area of concern for performance, the article on regional coordination explores how improvements in emergency response can result from better information sharing and coordination structures across state boundaries.
• How to improve information sharing capability, as well as capability for other demanding government actions, is the focus of the fourth article. It reports on the new frameworks for understanding and enhancing specific capabilities developed in recent CTG projects.

CTG also had the chance this past year to conduct a self-study of all our work since its founding in 1993. That review started in the fall of 2007. The self-study report was completed in January 2008 and is available on the CTG Web site. Preparing the report was a valuable opportunity to review and reflect upon CTG’s outstanding record of accomplishment and to set the stage for continued success.

We thank the many government professionals, corporate partners, and academic researchers who have contributed to our 2007 accomplishments. As we work with government on all levels in the U.S. and expand our efforts internationally, we will continue to share results in ways we hope will benefit those who face the daily challenges, risks, and unknowns of investments in information driven innovation.