Government Computer News announced the names of the 10 individuals who will receive this year’s GCN Technology Leadership Awards at a ceremony held May 15 in Washington. “These are individuals who have demonstrated the talent to innovate, a willingness to take risks and the ability to inspire their co-workers toward higher achievement,” said Wyatt Kash, GCN editor-in-chief.

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“And they have earned the respect and admiration of their government colleagues — and in many cases, their superiors — for tackling significant [information technology] initiatives over the past year,” he added This year’s winners, spanning a wide range of agencies and projects, were selected from dozens of candidates who were nominated by their professional colleagues. The 2008 GCN Technology Leadership Award winners are:

HSPD-12 Gets a fair deal
Mike Butler draws on ID card experience
Mike Butler of the General Services Administration credits good fortune for a lot of the success he has had in federal technology. “I have always been lucky,” he said. Rather than relying on blind luck, Butler’s career exemplifies the adage that luck favors the well-prepared. [more]

Better Web pages in sight
Sheila Campbell leads agency Webmasters toward better online services
One night, Sheila Campbell was meeting at the Library of Congress with about 20 members of the Web Managers Advisory Council. Campbell, co-chairwoman of the council and team leader of USA.gov and Web Best Practices at the General Services Administration, got into a deep discussion with council member Kate Donohue, a Web content specialist at the Treasury Department’s Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. [more]

USPTO does its homework
Deborah Diaz helps give agency’s teleworkers the tools to collaborate
When Deborah Diaz took over the job of deputy chief information officer at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office a little more than a year ago, she was faced with providing information technology services to a far-flung workforce that was growing by leaps and bounds. [more]

Raising the bar at USPS
John Edgar guides delivery of inventory, vehicle tracking systems
As manager of the U.S. Postal Service’s Network Operations Business Solutions portfolio, John Edgar is responsible for delivering all information technology services to USPS’ vast domestic and international transportation, logistics and mail processing groups. This includes developing applications; deploying infrastructure; and coordinating computer operations, user support and customer interaction for more than 60 production systems and development projects. Not bad for someone who didn’t start in IT. [more]

Supercomputing's pied piper
Holland helps lead high-performance systems back to the front of the pack
Few people have had more influence on the direction of government high-performance computing — and computing overall — than Charles Holland. Before others in the military or even industry, he realized how dangerously far behind the United States was falling in supercomputing prowess. Holland stressed how important keeping pace would be to national security. [more]

Bringing ITIL to DOD
Drew Jaehnig applies best-practices approach to Joint Staff Support Center
After 15 years as a civilian information technology specialist at the Defense Department, Drew Jaehnig doesn’t become infatuated with the technologies at his disposal. He sees them as means to an end, and he has developed a knack for finding the best way to structure an IT services organization to direct the productivity derived from IT tools to achieving the organization’s mission.[more]

The Navy's ERP navigator
Susan Keen’s technical expertise helps keep the service’s massive program on course
Enterprise resource planning systems can greatly improve operational efficiency, but putting them in place isn’t always an efficient process. ERP projects are notorious for substantially missing budget, deployment and performance targets. When the Navy decided to implement the world’s largest government ERP system, it gave the job of handling the technical requirements to Susan Keen. And Navy officials are glad they did. [more]

Putting Web 2.0 to work
Nancy Sternberg’s use of new technology tools gives Business.gov an edge
At its launch in 2004, Business.gov was a forms-pushing federal compliance site,indistinguishable from many other government sites. However, in late 2007, it was redesigned for easy access to more than 9,000 resources throughout government. Since then, the government’s one-stop Web portal for business, which the Small Business Administration manages in partnership with 21 agencies, has been steadily growing in popularity. [more]

A secure SOA for DOD
Vera sets the requirements for protecting enterprise services
In some ways, the Defense Department’s task of keeping the country secure starts with keeping its own information technology systems secure. The job is never easy, and it gets more complicated with the shift from a systems-based approach to a service-oriented architecture. So as DOD implemented its SOA-based Net-Centric Enterprise Services (NCES) platform during the past year, its managers had to find a new way to secure services.[more]