Air Force's Kirkland named 'Trail Boss of the Year'

The 900-member Trail Boss Interagency Committee on Tuesday named Air Force

tech officer Susan Kirkland its 2000 Trail Boss of the Year for her work

building the Air Force's Cargo Movement Operations System.

Kirkland demonstrated "exemplary expertise" in building CMOS, said Dennis

Szymanksi, chairman of the committee's management council, which picked

the winner. The award was given out at the General Services Administration's

Trail Boss summer "Roundup" in Williamsburg, Va., this week.

CMOS, a system for streamlining shipment processing, helped the Air

Foce meet its goals of expanding combat support information systems throughout

the Air Force and Defense Department, Szymanski said. With CMOS, Air Force

vendors are paid within seven days instead of the usual 30- to 90-day payment

lag.

The Trail Boss Interagency Committee also handed out three special achievement

awards last night. They went to:

* The Coast Guard's Sandra Borden for her leadership in delivering the

Ports and Waterways Safety System, said to be the largest information technology

project in Coast Guard history. Szymanski noted PAWSS was the first entirely

electronic procurement ever completed by the Transportation Department.

* DOD's Jim Densberg for his "skill in applying Trail Boss principles

to the Defense Civilian Personnel Data System and its re-engineering." DCPDS

serves about 750,000 employees, making it one of the largest human resources

management systems in the world. Densberg was able to negotiate with vendors

to ensure "Defense business practices [would] be built into a [commercial

off-the-shelf] solution at no additional cost to the government," Szymanski

said.

* The Internal Revenue Service's Timothy LaMoy for his efforts in deploying

a dedicated mainframe test suite to support IRS' end-to-end testing for

the Year 2000 problem. The project "ensured the IRS' tax administration

applications would make a smooth and uneventful transition into and beyond

January 2000," Szymanski said. LaMoy used resources in increments, phasing in processors for the job as necessary. In this way, he was able to avoid "a significant portion"

of the $7.5 million software license upgrade costs.

Emory Miller, director of the IT Professional Development Division at

the General Services Administration, called the winners the "best of the

best" — Trail Bosses are already considered the "best in what they do in

managing and acquiring IT."