IRMCO awards announced

The e-Payroll initiative team and Wesley Miller, the Army Budget Office's chief of management and control, took home this year's annual Interagency Resources Management Conference awards for information technology innovation in the federal workplace.

E-Payroll, one of 24 e-government initiatives, has integrated four new agencies and more than 90,000 new records into an electronic system, "achieving a virtually seamless, transparent conversion," said officials from the conference, which was sponsored by the General Services Administration in partnership with the CIO Council, Chief Financial Officers Council, Federal Acquisition Council and Chief Human Capital Officers Council.

In the individual category, Miller won for his contributions to supporting the U.S. effort in Iraq, including financing the Coalition Provisional Authority.

Each year individuals and teams are nominated by their peers for competition in separate categories. Finalists and winners are selected for exceptional leadership and demonstrable improvement in achieving results.

Individual finalists included two other military officers. Lt. Col. Joseph Schafer, assistant project manager for Kuwait Iraq Command, worked to extend next-generation secure voice and data services to dozens of coalition partner bases in the combat zone. National Guard Maj. Stephan Picard runs a distance-learning program and helps provide a link for people working aboard the International Space Station.

Also nominated for the teams category were the Defense Department's Enterprise Software Initiative team, which worked to commoditize services, and Firstgov, a GSA e-government initiative that provides the first gateway for public feedback to all departments and agencies in the three branches of government.