IRMCO awards

I actually really like awards. I'm not sure there are enough opportunities to recognize people doing good work. Of course, there are more than enough ways to highlight problems.

So last week at IRMCO, the CIO Council handed out its awards. But there were also the IRMCO awards themselves. Here is the information that GSA put out:

Teresa Sorrenti, Director, Office of Acquisition Systems, U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) today received the 2006 Interagency Resources Management Conference (IRMCO) Award for her ability to form and establish the Integrated Acquisition Environment (IAE), a cross-agency team of procurement, finance and IT experts from both civilian and defense agencies, GSA announced.

The IAE has restructured systems and data used across a widely diverse federal acquisition community, which has successfully integrated information, eliminated redundancy, and created an improved process that saves taxpayers time and money.

The IRMCO Award team winner was Military Service Expedited Claims Process Team, representing a cross-section of employees from the Social Security Administration (SSA) and the Department of Defense (DOD). During the early stages of Operation IRAQI Freedom, the team:
•Established the SSA Military Service Expedited Claims Process.
•Developed a shared understanding of the policies, processes, and practices in place in both organizations to provide service to the surviving members of the military service.
•Mobilized all entities rapidly
•Implemented emergency procedures.
•Within days, accepted and processed most payment claims in one day, not two weeks, which also includes the death of active-duty military personnel for any reason and in any location, foreign or domestic under, the Expedited Process, now a permanent SSA procedure.
Accepting the award for the team award were:
•Patricia Ferraro, Chief, Operations Support Branch, Mid-Atlantic Program Service Center, SSA, Philadelphia Region.
•Robert McBride, Operations Manager, Mid-Atlantic Program Service Center, SSA, Philadelphia Region.
•Mark Ward, Senior Policy Advisor, Office of Family Policy, Office of the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense (Military Community and Family Policy).

Finalists for the individual award were:
•Lieutenant Colonel D. Stephen Wood, U.S. Air Force, for exemplary leadership and organization skills in managing interagency teams composed of Air Force and Army Corps of Engineers personnel in combat-related missions.
•Colonel Stephen "Scotty" Fairbairn, Air Force, for leadership in creating innovative solutions that have contributed to the quality of operational tests and warfighter tools.

Two team finalists were:
•Federal Technical Data Solutions Program Team(FedTeDS), a collaborative effort between the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security and GSA, which implemented an improved procurement process across federal boundaries, which strengthens national security, streamlines distribution of acquisition data and reduces federal agency costs.
•Social Security Administration (SSA), Region 6 Facilities Team, for its swift and effective plan to reorganize as a disaster recovery and relief team and to act as a clearinghouse and emergency planning group to reestablish SSA facilities, supplies, and logistics services to the devastated areas of southern Louisiana and East Texas, when critical and essential operations of SSA were disrupted by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

The IRMCO award is given annually to those who have demonstrated exceptional ability to operate across organizational boundaries to improve the government's services to its citizens. This year's awards were presented at the 45th annual IRMCO conference at the Kingsmill Resort, in Williamsburg, Va., at closing ceremonies on Wednesday, April 26, 2006.