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Federal worker wins $50,000 innovation prize

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MeriTalk Awards honored government IT innovations

By Alex Salta Sep 16 2011

MeriTalk
has announced that the winner of the group's $50,000 grand prize in the 2011 Merit Awards is Aung Gye of the Federal Highway Administration. The award was presented at "The Fabric of the Future - Supporting the Federal Data Center Revolution" summit this week.

Gye's submission won honors for both "Best Overall" and the "Back Office Operations" award for his project which proposes a nationwide, interactive database of government resources "from conference space to office equipment and automobiles, to ensure full utilization."

"Many departments/agencies have assets such as automobiles, vans, buses, airplanes, boats, office equipment, office space, meeting rooms, conference facilities, parking spaces, etc. that are not utilized at all times," Gye's proposal (PDF) says.

"The idea is to share the use of these unused assets by developing a centralized nationwide database to see what assets are available during which time frames by department/agency and by location, to match the need of the requestor," Gye said.

Gye beat out four other finalists for the top prize. Other submissions included a plan by Dan Kestranek of Penn State University to "create a secure U.S. passport mobile application that allows citizens to sign in temporarily and download passport data via near-field communications," presented in the Citizen Engagement category.

The Department of Defense's Ben Sottile took top honors in the Emergency Response category for his plan to "develop mobile and other disaster alert applications as an early warning system for natural disasters, using consolidated data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Weather Service, Federal Emergency Management Agency, etc."

Roy Roebuck of One World Information System won the Results Achievement award for a plan that would standardize classification processes, including a standard taxonomy model to build, govern, and share processes. And finally the North Carolina Department of Revenue's Dave Schnell won in the Waste category for a plan to "modify the IT acquisition process to diminish the impact that current or past relationships play in awarding contracts."

The Merit Awards were formed to reward those who seek to use information technology in an effort to improve the performance of government. A panel of judges selected the best programs in each category, culminating with the awarding of a $50,000 grand prize. MeriTalk bills itself as "the government IT network" and facilitates information sharing and networking among government IT professionals at all levels.



Winner Aung Gye (center) with MeriTalk founder Steve O'Keeffe (l.) and OMB First Administrator for E-Government and IT Mark Forman (r.)

www.ohmygov.com

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Comments

  1. PessOptimist's Avatar
    A few questions.

    Who or what is Meritalk? Their web site doesn't really say though they do state they are donating a percentage of their profits to agencies. Their site is www.meritalk.com so they are not a government agency. There is no "about us" link. The FYI link on the site takes you to ads for restaurants and bars.

    Who pays the $50k prize and who is going to pay for the billions of dollars it will cost to roll out a "centralized nationwide database to see what assets are available during which time frames by department/agency and by location, to match the need of the requestor"? Hope it works better and costs less than OPM's new software.
  2. tsptalk's Avatar
    PO -

    You will probably be better off going to their (ohmygov.com) website to get a response from the author. There are some comments on that page:

    http://ohmygov.com/blogs/general_new...ion-prize.aspx

    Otherwise, if it is just a general question for us folks... anyone...?

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