Innovative IT projects from 10 agencies win recognition
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Ten federal projects received awards at the Post Newsweek Government Awards gala last night in Washington for their innovative, effective use of IT.
Ten federal projects received awards at the Post Newsweek Government Awards gala last night in Washington for their innovative, effective use of IT.
Winners of the Government IT Agency Awards were:
The Defense Logistics Information Service for its Support Magic Call Management System, which improved service to nearly 200,000 government and private-sector customers. Using a three-tier call escalation system, DLIS quickly refers a call to the person most qualified to handle it. The system has reduced the agency's abandoned-call rate from more than 50 percent to less than 1 percent.
The Technology and Programs Division of the National Communications System for its Government Emergency Telecommunications Office. The office has added special features to the public switched telephone network to recognize calls made by national security or emergency preparedness personnel during times of crisis. Such calls can go through even when the phone network is severely overloaded or suffering outages.
The Naval Air Systems Command and the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command for their Integrated Data Environment. The project switched a host-and-terminal mainframe system managing 4,000 aircraft in 325 squadrons to a client-server environment using long-haul Defense Department networks. Navy and Marine Corps logistics units worldwide can query a central repository by browser to extract reports.
The Defense Department's Medical Directorate for its Defense Medical Logistics Standard Support, which uses electronic commerce for 80 percent of DOD's medical supply transactions. The directorate has reduced the stock in its medical depot system by 80 percent and has cut supply request response time from 71 days to 15 days.
The Energy Department's Sandia National Laboratories for its Video Content Management, which lets personnel quickly search digitized video archives. The lab has videotaped thousands of hours of interviews with nuclear weapons engineers to preserve their knowledge for younger workers. Remote users can access Sandia's videotape library and pinpoint information on a given subject on seconds.
The Navy Fleet Technical Support Center Pacific for its PASS for Landing Signal Officers. PASS forms software lets the officers record their reports about aircraft carrier landings using handheld computers, eliminating the problems of paper reports on windy flight decks, often at night. Rekeying errors have decreased, and processing time has dropped by half.
The Patent and Trademark Office's Finance Office for its Revenue Accounting and Management System, which improves fee collection, tracks prepaid accounts and monitors issued patents. The agency developed the system to improve security and decentralize processing at the Finance Office, which collects about $1 billion in fees annually. Customers also can conduct business with PTO via a Web interface.
The Census Bureau for its Data Capture System 2000, which collected information from nearly 150 million census forms with an accuracy rate better than 99 percent. The capture system, the largest and most accurate imaging system ever, used optical character recognition and optical mark recognition.
The Rural Development Division of the Agriculture Department for its Mapping Analysis Program. The agency used legacy-to-Web tools and a data warehouse to process information from disparate sources and stovepipe systems into a program that can track rural development investments and provide timely, accurate reports to Congress.
The Justice Department's Office of Justice Programs for its Grants Management Program. The IRM Division developed an online system that lets applicants preregister for a variety of grants, download applications, submit them and check on their status. The system saves thousand of hours of work for the programs office, which hands out $4 billion in grants for justice partnerships each year.
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