SSA's Vince Pianalto lassos trail boss of the year award
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WILLIAMSBURG, Va.--The Social Security Administration's Vincent Pianalto last week received honors as trail boss of the year at the annual Trail Boss Roundup. But Pianalto, director of the Resource Management and Acquisition Division in SSA's Office of Telecommunications and Systems Operations, refused to take all the credit for improving systems buying at SSA.
WILLIAMSBURG, Va.--The Social Security Administration's Vincent Pianalto last week
received honors as trail boss of the year at the annual Trail Boss Roundup.
But Pianalto, director of the Resource Management and Acquisition Division in SSA's
Office of Telecommunications and Systems Operations, refused to take all the credit for
improving systems buying at SSA.
The award "is not mine and only mine," he said. "It has been a privilege
to have been associated with some of the best people in government."
Under Pianalto's leadership, his division successfully awarded more than 1,500 buys
worth $320 million using a streamlined procurement system that dramatically shortened the
buying cycle, Trail Boss Program officials said.
Pianalto, a long-time trail boss, worked with vendors to incorporate more than 1,000
recommendations into SSA requests for proposals, General Services Administration officials
said.
Pianalto is working on two major SSA initiatives: re-engineering the disability
benefits system and creating a paperless benefits and delivery system. His
responsibilities also include information technology planning, budgeting, acquisition,
contract and inventory management, and logistical support.
The GSA Trail Boss Program trains senior executives to deal with complex systems
management procurements. More than 1,200 people in 54 agencies have gone through the
program since it began in 1988.
Three other trail bosses won awards for special achievement: Lt. Col. Milo Fogle of the
Defense Information Systems Agency's Defense Information Technology Office; Keith Holman
of the IRS; and Lt. Col. James McTighe of the Air Force's Standard Systems Center.
Fogle consolidated the Defense Department's 59 information processing centers into five
megacenters.
Fogle, program manager for the DOD Defense Information Technology Contracting Office,
organized a team of contract specialists and technical personnel to develop acquisition
packages, and a team to implement the consolidations. Using existing acquisition vehicles,
the teams cut costs and streamlined the buying process.
Holman, manager of the Treasury Distributed Processing Infrastructure project, was
recognized for overseeing the TDPI blanket purchasing agreement.
The TDPI project is credited with reducing proposal costs for vendors, certifying
products as year 2000-ready and simplifying the administrative process.
McTighe, leader of the Standard System's Center's Integrated Systems and Maintenance
Contracting Division, was recognized for creating a buying team that included user and
vendor input. The result was a 60 percent reduction in the buying cycle.
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