Dear DAS Colleagues,
I hope you had a wonderful holiday season and had the opportunity to relax and come back refreshed. As our first post-holiday week draws to a close, I wanted to take a moment to thank each of you for your efforts to make our agency – and by extension the executive branch – succeed, and to provide you with a look ahead to 2024.
As you may know, in September we launched the application for the second round of funding under the HVAC Indoor Air Quality Grants for Public Schools program. December 31 marked the deadline for districts to submit their applications, and our Office of Grants Administration team is working diligently to review the submissions. We expect to announce grant awards early in the second quarter of the year. I want to applaud the team in the commissioner’s office and OGA for taking a proactive approach in our outreach efforts, conducting multiple webinars, open office hours, and direct communications to ensure any district that wanted to apply had the opportunity to do so.
On the Real Estate and Construction Services front, we have seen substantial progress on major projects including DEEP’s new Western District Headquarters at Black Rock State Park, the first phase of projects brought about by the state’s energy audits, and the Connecticut’s Army National Guard Readiness Center in Putnam, as well as the major door and window replacement project at the Osborn Correctional Institute. I look forward to these projects and more – including a number of solar installations – coming online in the coming months.
2024 will be a transformational year in our efforts to electrify the state’s fleet. We will continue to work to build out our network of charging infrastructure while ramping up efforts to acquire additional electric vehicles for use on state business. As you can see, our combined efforts seek to build a more sustainable future for the state.
Under BITS, and in close collaboration with the commissioner’s office team, we are continuing the state’s web optimization process. After months of research, the team has begun the process of developing the updated DAS website to ensure the availability, accessibility, and usability of content to meet the needs of our employees and the public at large. DAS is one of the first agencies to go through this process, and other executive branch agencies will follow in the coming months. We expect to roll out the updated website in the second quarter of 2024.
The Commission for Educational Technology, which is part of DAS, launched the draft Digital Equity Plan in December and is accepting public comment through January 20, 2024. The commission will consider all feedback and make revisions to the plan before finalizing it by the end of March. The draft plan complements broader state, regional, and local strategic plans and coordinates with other broadband efforts, such as the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program overseen by the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection.
The Digital Services team has also been hard at work creating the state’s new jobs portal, jobs.ct.gov, which soft-launched this week and is expected to be formally released this quarter. The portal is the latest development in the state’s journey toward an all-digital state government and is aimed at being a one-stop-shop for job searching, training and education, and more.
Under Statewide Human Resources Management, we will continue to mature and strengthen our shared services business model. We will do this through the combination of process improvements on a range of services, enhancements to technology tools to increase the availably of self-service and other functionality to improve the overall experience of job applicants, employees and management, and the continued development of the HR team to further build expertise and deliver value to customers. We will also continue our workforce development efforts. We will also continue building relationships with external partners and other state agencies to increase apprenticeship and internship offerings, expand professional development opportunities, and build workforce pipelines for future employees with a steadfast commitment of ensuring a diverse and competitive workforce.
Finally, in its effort to make the state of Connecticut a true customer of choice, our procurement team is emphasizing business development in the new year, rolling out a series of training and outreach to ensure that our agency is as responsive and helpful as possible to the needs of vendors. I am confident that these efforts will build upon the quality service of our employees.
I know that this is far from an exhaustive list and that our employees in every business area, from fiscal, business office and audit operations, to print, mail and courier services, and everything in between, come to work every day and provide excellent services to the agencies, non-profits, businesses, municipalities, and residents we serve. I look forward to highlighting and recognizing your good work in the year to come.
Best wishes for a happy and healthy new year,
Michelle Gilman
Commissioner, DAS
