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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Accenture/MIT names Gary Grippo Agent of Change in Digital Government

• Also see: 2003 Accenture and MIT Digital Government Award Recipients

Gary Grippo, Chief Architect of Electronic-Commerce at Treasury's Financial Management Service, received the Accenture/MIT Digital Government Award for Agent of Change at today's awards luncheon at the E-GOV Conference held in Washington, DC.

To receive the Agent of Change Award, an individual must be employed by a federal, state or local government or a higher education institution. The individual must develop and implement technology-based services that demonstrate creativity and initiative in the development or implementation of technology-based services. The Agent of Change is an individual who inspires and motivates others in the transformation of services in government or higher education.

"Gary drives FMS' efforts to apply and exceed best commercial practices for financial operations. His innovative use of new payment and collection technologies using the Internet, cards, and authentication techniques has paved the way for government to move to a citizen-centric, all-electronic focus," said Bettsy Lane, FMS' Assistant Commissioner for Federal Finance.

Gary has engineered e-commerce programs, such as electronic checks, point-of-sale check truncations, and Internet credit card collection, helping federal agencies modernize their payment and collection activities. Gary's major contributions include: PAY.GOV, a government collections portal that provides a single platform for e-government services, including a state-of-the-art knowledge-based authentication engine; Paper Check Conversion, which converts tens of millions of paper checks federal agencies receive into electronic collections; the Stored Value Card Program, which provides the convenience and ease of living cash-free to armed forces personnel on military bases and Navy ships; and developing the security requirements for the Electronic Federal Tax Payment System-Online, a Web-based tax payment system.

According to Ken Papaj, Deputy Commissioner for FMS, "Federal agencies have shown tremendous interest in these programs, which are by far the most state-of-the-art, innovative collection processes developed at FMS in the past several decades."