2007 Rising Star award winners, Pr-W

: SRA’s Touchstone Consulting Group : Senior professional staff : Prusinowski is part of a team that supports the Office of Management and Budget’s Office of E-Government and Information Technology. She works with OMB managers, agency chief information officers, e-government program managers and OMB portfolio managers to perform a variety of tasks related to strategic support and program management. : She has been in her current position for about two years and in the government IT community for almost five years. : She has managed, improved and institutionalized the E-Gov Implementation Plan by identifying several major improvements in e-government reporting, including the types of data agencies submit, the schedule for submission and the organizational components involved. OMB officials said she remained true to the principles of transparency and accountability by viewing the plan not as administrative overhead but as a tool for the objective communication and evaluation of critical project information. : Government Accountability Office : Senior cost analyst : Richey provides costs analysis support for a variety of audits conducted by GAO’s Center for Technology and Engineering, including audits of defense systems, information technology projects and management systems. : She has been in her current job for six years and in the government IT community for 11 years. : She led a project to create GAO’s first “Cost Assessment Guide: Best Practices for Estimating and Managing Program Costs,” for which she consulted experts and reviewed 400 policy and legislative documents. The massive undertaking often required her to work nights, weekends and holidays. In commending her work, GAO officials said the guide provides an invaluable foundation to help agencies make better auditing, program planning and budget decisions — all of which will lead to greater government accountability. : Labor Department : Information technology project manager : Rider is project manager for the Departmental E-Budgeting System (DEBS) at the Labor Department, where he is responsible for all aspects of development, operation and maintenance of the department’s new automated budget formulation application. : He has been in his current job for two and a half years and in the government IT community for five years. : He successfully led the effort to deploy DEBS departmentwide. Now, for the first time, all 12 Labor agencies have successfully prepared automated budget submissions for the fiscal 2009 internal budget process and fi scal 2009 budget submission. Officials also expect to use DEBS to produce Labor’s fiscal 2009 congressional budget justifications. Automating the budget formulatio n process has not fared well in the federal environment, but Rider’s IT skills are formidable, and his interpersonal skills enabled him to win over skeptical budget analysts, senior agency leaders said. He learned the business process and was able to speak knowledgeably with budget analysts about the tasks they were seeking to accomplish. : GTSI : Enterprise solutions manager : Smith manages a team of enterprise solutions consultants who provide agencies with products and services that include data center build-outs, network design and implementation services. : He has been in his current job for three years and in the government IT community for eight years. : He plays a major role in GTSI’s evolution as a services and solutions company, and he is recognized by many of his customers as a valuable technical resource. He designed a new Microsoft Active Directory and Exchange environment for the Customs and Border Protection agency that has enabled CBP to consolidate and operate in a secure e-mail environment. He also was the lead technical adviser to the FBI for an e-mail archiving project that will enable the agency to comply with records retention mandates, locate specific e-mail messages on request and increase productivity. Colleagues said Smith has an ability to bring people together across organizational boundaries and inspire them to work hard to support a common goal. : Small Business Administration : Program manager : Sternberg is program manager for the Business Gateway Initiative, which has four major components: the Business Gateway Portal, the Federal Forms Catalog, compliance assistance resources and data harmonization. As part of that initiative, the Small Business Administration, in partnership with 21 other federal agencies, is working to deliver information and services more efficiently to the business community. : She has been in her current job 16 months and in the government IT community for 15 years. : She coordinated collaboration among 22 federal agencies to produce a single access point, www.business.gov, for businesses to easily find government information, including forms and compliance assistance resources and tools. The site pulls together more than 30,000 compliance links from about 100 federal Web sites. Business owners surveyed reported time savings of about 2.6 million hours thus far in fiscal 2007 from using the site. Senior federal IT leaders praised Sternberg’s motivation to constantly improve the site so that visitors are satisfied and return frequently for more assistance and information. : Army : Chief of network operations : Wells is the senior information technology specialist providing computer systems and network infrastructure support for the Army’s Network Enterprise Technology Command Headquarters, subordinate organizations and other Army customers. : He has been in his current job and the government IT community for two years. : When Wells accepted the job, the commandant’s office was struggling to maintain network services. Because of Wells’ skill at performing a variety of complex software and hardware engineering, integration, implementation and operations tasks, the network operations team has been able to achieve and maintain services and infrastructure at 99.999 percent availability. In the short time he has been on the job, his supervisors said, Wells has brought a much-needed forward-thinking attitude into the network operations culture.