Army's Carroll honored with Franke award

RICHMOND, Va. -- Kevin Carroll started his career in government as a contracting officer and over the past 30 years rose in prominence to lead multibillion-dollar programs that supply the Army with much of its hardware and software needs.Carroll, the Army’s program executive officer in the Program Executive Office for Enterprise Information Systems, learned the value of communication, collaboration and keeping a strong sense of humor throughout his career. And for his efforts and overall impact on government, the American Council for Technology and the Industry Advisory Council last night honored Carroll with the 2007 John J. Franke award for public service. ACT/IAC handed out the award at the 27th annual Management of Change conference.“He is an outstanding leader working for our men and women in the armed forces,” said Dave Wennergren, Defense Department deputy CIO and 2006 Franke recipient. “He has had a positive impact on people throughout government. People said he leads by example, gives freedom to his people to manage and is a consensus-builder.”The John J. Franke Award has been given annually since 1999 to recognize outstanding leadership contributions to government. Winners are senior government officials with 15 to 20 years of service, who typically have been spokesmen for leading IT issues. The award is named after the late John J. Franke, who was director of the Federal Quality Institute at the Agriculture Department and a longtime president of ACT. Each year, the award recipient is selected by a committee of the previous awardees.Carroll, the co-chairman of the MOC conference, said he was surprised by the honor.“ACT/IAC has been like home for me,” he said. “This is the organization that I belong to that I’m proud to have a strong bond with. I am honored in front of all my friends and colleagues.”Wennergren said one example of Carroll’s management style came when Wennergren worked for the Navy.“We wanted to do an enterprise software deal and Kevin’s office lent the Navy money,” Wennergren said. “We took a little longer than expected to pay them back, but Kevin knew the importance of this and always kept a good sense of humor about it. He kept telling me the Navy’s bond rating was dropping.”During Carroll’s tenure, he brought $3 billion worth of programs into a cohesive information systems modernization plan.Carroll added several major mission-critical Army programs to PEO-EIS, which quadrupled the number of programs under his leadership.In addition the Franke award, IAC and ACT named new leadership boards.The new president of ACT will be Martha Dorris, the General Services Administration’s deputy associate administrator in the Office of Citizen Services and Communications.“As president, I hope to identify ACT’s role in the information technology community and work with IAC more closely,” she said. “We want to strengthen our leadership and government participation. We want to strengthen our government programs at all levels.”The new vice presidents at large include:Mike Carelton, General Services AdministrationLinda Cureton, NASAPrashant Gaur, Defense DepartmentMark Krzysko, DODJackie Patillo, Transportation DepartmentBill Vajda, Education DepartmentStephen Warren, Veterans Affairs DepartmentGary Wetterhall, ArmyJerry Williams, Agriculture DepartmentJim Williams, GSAACT also will start four new committees:• Outreach and programming• Strategic agenda planning• Speakers series• Future leadersIAC’s newest board members include:Executive vice presidentLeslie Steele, InterImageVice chairmen at largeBob Dix, Juniper NetworksMaria Horton, EmeSecAndy Robinson, ICF ConsultingPat Schambach, Nortel/PECSallie Turner, CGI