Team wins award for State Dept. project

Nine federal employees have been named Outstanding Federal Employees by the Seattle Executive Board. The employees, called the Gettysburg 9, represent six departments and eight agencies, according to an announcement of the award, bestowed May 5.

The team earned the award by carrying out a State Department Passport Agency Adjudication study, which they developed and performed while in the Graduate School’s Executive Potential Program. The Graduate School, based in Washington D.C., is an independent institution that provides continuing education, with a particular emphasis on federal, state and local government personnel. The Executive Potential Program, open only to federal employees at GS-13 and above, graduates about 16 teams annually.

The project lasted a year, and during that time the team assessed the current State Department passport adjudication process and made recommendatons to strengthen it. The State Department has evaluated the recommendations and is beginning to incorporate some of them into its strategic and operational planning process.

Florence Fultz, managing director for State's passport issuance operations, sponsored the Gettysburg 9 team for the award. "The members who came from throughout the country and represented many different agencies looked at our process with a fresh perspective, which generated some ideas we hadn't before considered,”she said.  

The Gettysburg 9 team includes:

• 
  Ed Calderon, Federal Aviation Administration
• Samantha Deshommes, Immigration and Customs Enforcement
• Jean Chaney, Federal Emergency Management Agency
• Martha Medina, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services
• Debra Fisher, General Services Administration
• Keith Reimer, U.S. Marine Corps
• Rodney Barnes, Department of Energy
• Chuck Kilgore, Department of Energy
• Brian Clark, Department of State