Shawn Nailor has been named as secretary and chief information officer (CIO) of the Agency of Digital Services (ADS), and Denise Reilly-Hughes as the Agency’s deputy secretary.
Nailor, a 34-year state employee, led the team at Agency of Transportation that developed and maintained the crisis reporting map during the response and recovery from Tropical Storm Irene. This map provided first responders, and the public, with current information on open roads in the state.
Nailor was promoted to IT Director at AOT just prior to the creation of ADS by Governor Scott and has been serving as the deputy secretary of the Agency since August 2017. He was named interim secretary in September of 2022. Nailor was also a member of the Governor’s team that was assigned to the Department of Labor during the early days of the pandemic, assisting leadership with responding to the unprecedented requests for unemployment.
Reilly-Hughes comes to ADS with over 20 years of technology experience in the private sector. Her background includes licensing contracts, technology strategy, customer success, and executive leadership. Reilly-Hughes has a decade of experience working with the New England states. She was a key partner with Vermont as it transitioned its modern workplace environment to the cloud.
Sec State will create school civics curriculum – Secretary of State Sarah Copeland Hanzas has created a new position for the agency, Education & Civic Engagement Coordinator.
“We need to recognize that sometimes people don’t vote because they don’t know how to vote, or they don’t know the candidates, or they are skeptical about whether their vote will make a difference,” said Copeland Hanzas. “That’s why the next phase of defending our democracy needs to be in education, awareness, and engagement.”
The new coordinator will work with the secretary and her team to create a civics curriculum for schoolteachers, will engage with Vermonters on civics in their communities, and will build a voter guide for the 2024 General Election.
Ryegate biomass plant has enough $$ for decommissioning – Although the future of the Ryegate biomass plant remains murky, the Vermont Public Service Department has completed an assessment of funds available to take the plant offline in the event that it ceases operations, the Journal-Opinion reports.
The report (pdf) filed in compliance with a state law enacted last year found $869,351 in the fund as of Nov. 1, 2022. This puts it within the range of the $725,000-$1.2 million anticipated decomissioning cost.
The PSD has recommended an independent study be conducted to assess the “site specific decommissioning costs.”
Categories: SHORTS
The schools do a crappy job of teaching math, reading, and just about everything else. So now they’ll do a crappy job teaching civics. Great work Sarah! How to make good use of our taxes, time and energies!!!!!
Huh. One might have assumed that newly-anointed SoS copeland-hanzas would know that Vermont is a Constitutional Republic, not a democracy- at least as founded. I can only assume the level of bias in any curriculum provided by ‘the state’
will be enormous. Vermont was founded on Christian values and morality, as written in Chapter 1 of our Vermont Constitution. Current day politicians and their supporters may disagree, but it’s there. The Vermont and US Constitutions are rules restricting government, not the individual. Somehow I cannot see Chapter 1 Article 18 being effectively taught or interpreted by contemporary state-directed curriculum.
(That’s why the next phase of defending our democracy needs to be in education, awareness, and engagement) which should actually read Re-education and indoctrination. Remember it is all about who gets to define mis-information.
ADS needs to put an immediate hold on new IT projects to determine compliance with state contracting rules