The first CIO Council Executive Leadership Awards were held this year September 9th at IRMCO in Cambridge, Maryland. These awards are given to Federal employees in the information technology field for their dedication and commitment to advancing and substantially improving the way government does business. Recognition is given for electronic government and information technology advancements that have a major impact on the way government conducts business on a government-wide basis. Winners of this year’s awards are: Individual awards, Mr. Floyd Groce, Mr. Mark Luttner, and Ms. Sandra Smith and team award is CORE.GOV.

Mr. Floyd Groce won for his contributions as co-chair of DoD Enterprise Software Initiative (ESI) efforts. Under ESI, the DoD leverages its buying power to establish enterprise agreements with software vendors and resellers. As Co-Chair of the DoD ESI Working Group, Mr. Groce directed broad range of ESI activities across multiple DoD Components and Federal Agencies. As the designated DoD point of contact, he provides critical assistance to the SmartBUY initiative as a member of the SmartBUY Core Team. Mr. Groce jointly directed efforts of the DoD ESI Working Group in completing a customer survey in support of SmartBUY. The survey was issued by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) through the Federal CIO Council and will be used to establish SmartBUY enterprise agreements for high demand COTS software. Mr. Groce also directs ESI Team participation on the cross-agency teams to develop an approach for government-wide licensing and sharing ESI tools and best practices. He positioned ESI as an effective, vital initiative to focus efforts toward implementing SmartBUY within the DoD as Federal-wide agreements are put in place. In addition, he coordinated DoD policy to implement SmartBUY Department-wide through the ESI in direct support of the President’s Management Agenda (PMA) related to agency use of SmartBUY agreements.

Mr. Mark Lutner won for his leadership in establishing electronic government and, in particular, for making the Environmental Information Exchange Network a reality. Since 1998, Mr. Luttner has played a key role in planning, developing and implementing the State/EPA Exchange Network (Network) -- an Internet-based approach to improving the quality, timeliness and accessibility of environmental information while cutting the cost and burden of sharing it. The Network uses e-commerce technologies, data standards, and web services to help EPA and its partners securely package and share their environmental data in real time. Within the past year, the Network has gone “live” in large measure because of the careful management attention Mr. Luttner provided to building out the Network infrastructure and the strategic personal and institutional “networking” he did with EPA’s programs and Regions, the States, and our technology contractors.

Ms. Sandra Smith won for her overall contribution to the work of the Federal CIO Council Workforce and Human Capital for IT Committee and particularly for her role as Technical Lead for Information Technology. As Project Lead for the IT Workforce Development Roadmap Project, Ms. Smith led the team who developed this tool which, for the first time, presented a unique opportunity for the Federal IT workforce to assess competencies, identify skill gaps, and develop actionable plans for developing career goals.

Over the past year, Ms. Smith has been instrumental in the development and implementation of the Council’s IT Workforce Assessment Survey. As a result of her technical and subject matter expertise, combined with her excellent analytical and managerial skills, the IT Workforce Assessment Survey is poised to provide valuable data on the federal IT workforce for the human capital and IT workforce strategists and planners throughout Government. Throughout the life of the project, Ms. Smith has been known for addressing obstacles as they arose and for consistently delivering positive results. Ms. Smith was the “technical brains” behind this survey in 2003 and has continued this invaluable role in 2004.

The winner of the Team Award is CORE.GOV. Team members are Marion A. Royal, Lee A. Ellis and Annie L. Barr. As a team they have demonstrated advancements in conducting business government wide while successfully accomplishing the goals of the CORE project – to establish a registry and increase the adoption of common business processes and/or key components that enable those processes.

The Component Organization and Registration Environment (CORE) project facilitates life-cycle management of the design, development and publishing of reusable business process components necessary to accomplish the goals and objectives of the Federal Enterprise Architecture (FEA). The CORE project is a result of strategy developed and approved by the OMB FEA Program Management Office and coordinated with the Architecture and Infrastructure Committee of the CIO Council in FY2003 for implementation in FY2004. The interface to the CORE project resides at https://www.core.gov.

One of the primary objectives of the FEA is to find ways to identify and share resources across department and agency boundaries. To do this, an efficient and effective means of bringing these communities of interest together in a way that they can discover and leverage the use and reuse of existing business processes and architecture components was needed, as well as a neutral collaborative environment in which to develop new capabilities and facilitate continual improvement of the E-Gov initiatives. With the successful implementation of CORE.gov, these capabilities have been provided, and total life-cycle management of components under development and in use across Federal Agencies has been promoted.