Priorities Podcast StateScoop

John Toney, Vermont's new chief information security officer, starts his day with threat intelligence briefs — reading, watching or listening to the latest cybersecurity news.

Toney, a former Secret Service special agent, joined Vermont's Agency of Digital Services last month, at a time when more sophisticated cyberattacks against state and local governments across the United States are on the rise, especially from foreign cybercriminals targeting critical infrastructure in rural communities, such as water facilities.

This week, Toney spoke with StateScoop reporter Sophia Fox-Sowell about some of the projects he's working on, including compliance and procurement. He also emphasized the importance of staying up to date with threat intelligence news and the need for proactive measures to address these growing cyber threats, including identifying vulnerabilities with regular scans, improving security protocols, and reducing operational redundancies through automation.

On this week's Priorities Podcast, we're joined by Rhode Island Gov. Dan McKee and former Congressman Jim Langevin to discuss the state's new artificial intelligence task force, which was created by an executive order signed in March and chaired by Langevin. "There's two sides of this coin — there is a really positive side of the AI, and there's a potentially damaging side of AI. So we have to get ahead of it on security reasons," McKee says.

The governor also discusses the traits he hopes the state's new chief data officer will have, a role that was also created by the executive order, and what he hopes the new task force will accomplish in the next six months.

On this week’s Priorities podcast, StateScoop’s editorial staff share what they’ve learned in recent weeks while reporting on data privacy, broadband and other state government IT news. A South Carolina Senate finance subcommittee issued a report claiming that the state’s treasurer, Curtis Loftis, risked a cyberattack by claiming that he would post detailed information about the state’s finances online. StateScoop’s Skylar Rispens joins to break down that story and the current status of federal broadband funding. Several new generative AI laws activate in Utah next week, including one closing a loophole for using AI to commit crimes. StateScoop’s Keely Quinlan joins to review the American Privacy Rights Act and a new report from the Open Technology Institute critiquing states’ online age verification laws.

Earlier this month, the North Carolina 911 Board, a division of the N.C. Department of Information Technology, announced the state has completed a yearslong effort to modernize its aging emergency response system to a next-generation 911 platform.

​​Next-generation 911 provides a faster, more resilient system that allows digital information — including voice, photos, videos and text messages — to flow from the public to first responders.

North Carolina’s project to upgrade to next-generation 911 started nearly a decade ago, when a proof of concept in 2015 outlined the transition away from the state’s decades-old copper-wire system. 

Pokey Harris, executive director of the North Carolina 911 Board spoke to StateScoop about how North Carolina’s 124 emergency call centers that receive funding from the state board are now part of the state’s next-generation 911 network.

Abdullah Hammoud at Google Cloud Next '24

On this week’s Priorities podcast, Christia Hallquist, director of the Vermont Community Broadband Board, and Heryn Herzog, the board’s communications and outreach manager, talk about the creation of the documentary “Connected: Vermont’s Grassroots Effort for Rural Broadband.” 

The documentary, which was released in March, explores the parallels between Vermont’s grassroot-effort to connect homes with electricity decades ago and how that spirit is still alive and well today when it comes to making fiber optic internet available to all Vermonters. Throughout the documentary, viewers hear from a wide range of residents who all rely on an internet connection at home to grow their businesses, access healthcare and education.