Leadership Is No Accident

Improving the Way the Federal Government Serves America

Remarks by
THE HON. DAN G. BLAIR
Acting Director
U.S. Office of Personnel Management

Delivered at the
GCN Management Leadership Conference & Awards Program

Washington DC
March 11, 2005

Thank you and congratulations once again to our ten award winners. Your families and friends and co-workers are very proud of you. You worked hard and richly deserve this honor.

Leadership is key to improving government management and performance and producing results for the American taxpayers. You have created a record of excellence in your agencies by providing leadership to those around you - in the form of ideas, ingenuity, and technical innovation.

You have also embraced a renewed appreciation of the fundamental role of government to protect us.

Every day, the war on terrorism is being waged against the backdrop of a million unheralded acts of patriotism by America's civil servants. We will never know how many terrorist acts have been prevented, or innocent lives saved, thanks to public servants such as yourselves.

And today's leaders often have just minutes or even seconds to make critical decisions. In our current threat environment, it is crucial they have timely access to the information they need to make those decisions.

Whether tracking potential biological attacks, intercepting satellite communications traffic, or ensuring the safety and security of our transportation infrastructure, our reliance on Information Technology could never be overstated.

The evolution of the systems that deliver our information is a great story in American history.

Just over fifty years ago, the first commercial transistor radio hit the consumer market, launching the world into the age of instant news, pop music and weather forecasts.

Forty years ago, the online transaction made its debut when IBM created the first passenger reservation system for American Airlines, delivering data on any flight in less than three seconds.

About thirty years ago, Paul Allen and Bill Gates read an article about the world's first microcomputer kit and both suddenly realized the home computer market was about to explode, and that someone would need to make software for the new machines.

Twenty years ago, author William Gibson coined the term "cyberspace, and Apple's Macintosh became the first computer to offer a graphical user interface and mouse as standard equipment.

Ten years ago, commercial sites were mushrooming on the World Wide Web and mass marketing campaigns were launched via email.
And up until about ten years ago, most people thought of spam as some kind of meat in a can. Today, it is a heavily-used word in the Internet vocabulary.

Today, the world is wired.

Today, baseball fans are just as likely to pull out their Blackberries during the seventh-inning stretch of a Washington National's game as they would head into the stadium to buy hotdogs and popcorn.

Today, you are just as likely to get your economic news from a blogger, as from Business Week.

One cannot help but wonder where all this is taking us. Who's to say what technology will be doing for us five.... ten.... twenty years from now?

The answer can be found here in this room.

Today, we celebrate the successes of ten people who used technology to provide a higher level of service to their customers, and ultimately, the American public. If you want to know what lies just over the IT horizon - talk to them.

Our honorees today are people our fellow citizens should know. But even more importantly, these are people our citizens should be inspired by - through their model service and inspiration.

Today, I am pleased and honored to help get the word out about 10 who have made a difference - about 10 who have met the expectations President Bush has for all of us.

If the Government Accountability Office is the government's financial watchdog, it's Tony Cicco's job to make sure its eyesight and hearing are in excellent condition.

He is responsible for the network used to analyze data on nearly every subject imaginable - ranging from supporting reviews of major weapons procurement systems to managing the risks of auditors working remotely in the field.

Under Tony's leadership, the IT function at the GAO has gone from being a weak link to one which is hyper-sensitive to customer satisfaction and results-oriented, and American taxpayers are the direct beneficiaries of his expertise and energy.

The U.S. Army has a lot of different logistics systems operating in Iraq and Afghanistan. Unfortunately, they don't communicate with each other due to different software baselines and dissimilar hardware platforms.

Colonel David Coker is responsible for updating and modernizing these systems into a single supply-chain structure, reducing a significant amount of duplication of effort and keeping programs on time, and on schedule.

The bottom line of leadership is results, and Colonel Coker has delivered. The benefits to America's taxpayers, and to those who guard our families, our freedoms, and our way of life during wartime, are very real, and could never be overstated.

Walton Fletcher is the person the U.S. Marine Corps depends on to keep pay and personnel systems running smoothly for nearly one half million active duty, reserve, and retired Marines.

In fact, Walton's division maintains the Defense Department's only integrated pay and personnel system for both active duty and reserve components. This has eliminated the need for dual data entry, and the potential for inconsistencies between the systems because there is no need to transfer information from one to another.

His leadership won a Top Five DOD Program Award for his team last year and he is richly deserving of the award he is receiving today.

Mike Frazer is a champion swimmer and Los Angeles County lifeguard who has rescued more than 500 people since 1980. When an administrative opportunity opened in the IT side of the business, he traded in his swimsuit for a business suit and walked off the beach.

But he didn't walk away from saving lives.

On the contrary, Mike has used technology as a life saving tool. Under his leadership, a high-tech network all along the county's 72-mile coastline allows lifeguard captains today to more effectively deploy resources when and where needed.

By lessening the administrative burdens for those on the beach, he has given lifeguards an opportunity to focus more on their true mission of guarding life. Today, as LA County's chief lifeguard, we recognize Mike Frazer as a citizen who has made a difference.

During her 25-year career at the State Department Mary Stone Holland has seen cybersecurity transition from a relatively obscure function to a top departmental concern. A sharp increase in cyberthreats in recent years may have raised her profile, but it has not changed the approach she takes to her job.

She would probably say the key to effective leadership is to take advantage of the team of experts you have around you.

She followed her own advice and today she manages a worldwide IT security program that is responsible for maintaining the integrity of systems at the State Department's 260 working locations.

Last winter, Glen Johnson led a State Department effort to track and report on U.S. and Iraqi progress in reconstructing post-invasion Iraq.

Under his leadership, a secure communications system was created for all American government programs and the Iraq Coalition Provisional Authority. Despite being in a war zone, Glen's group helped create a secure Internet-based system and trained personnel in its use and maintenance.

Closer to home, he has directed the modernization of systems that review export license applications and ensure that U.S. companies export only approved arms and arms-related products to approved countries in approved ways - a critically important function.

When Patrick McCreary retired from the Indiana State Police after 21 years, he didn't retire from law enforcement and it's a good thing for all of us he didn't.

In his new role as a senior policy advisor at the Justice Department, Patrick took on one of the biggest challenges of his career.

He convinced a wide range of law enforcement organizations with multiple legacy systems to share information with each other on criminal suspects.

He wasn't able to offer much in the way of financial assistance so he had to rely on his powers of persuasion and diplomatic skills to convince agencies to modify their systems and get on board his information sharing project.

Today, he counts more than 200 local and federal law enforcement agencies, as well as the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department, as his customers.

When Chris Niedermayer became associate CIO at the Department of Agriculture, its 29 agencies owned some 12 million separate pages requiring hundreds of people to manage.

Not unlike many other organizations, this loose confederation produced needless duplication of effort and huge differences in the appearance of the department's web presence.

Besides making a move towards a portal with a more common look and feel, Chris has been instrumental in developing the USDA's e-government Strategic Plan, an important development since the USDA is involved in 21 of the 25 e-government programs.

Colonel Jill Phillips had drive and persistence and the support of some very strong technical experts to turn a healthy concept at Walter Reed Army Medical Center into a working reality - to the benefit of patients with chronic conditions such as diabetes and heart disease and asthma.

Jill, an Army nurse practitioner for nearly three decades, spearheaded HealtheForces, a Web information system that lets patients and physicians provide input and feedback online, creating a comprehensive electronic medical record.

The system is a great example of President Bush's plan for a nationwide health IT infrastructure that would help improve quality and lower costs in health care and reduce medical errors. Colonel Jill Phillips - we salute you!

Last year, Linda Travers was appointed as deputy CIO at the Environmental Protection Agency, the highest-ranking career position in the agency.

An employee of EPA since its creation in 1970, Linda has had plenty of offers over the years to go elsewhere, but she stayed, and her work has taken her through various EPA offices where she has been instrumental in shaping key agency IT and information management programs.

Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Linda was instrumental in the design and development of EPA's state-of-the-art Emergency Operations Center which went from an idea to reality in just six months under her leadership.

Linda, you are a credit to your agency and to the Federal Government.

Each of you has been described as unsung heroes of government IT management - working your way through the system and toiling behind the scenes.

That's part of what today is about - getting your stories out. America needs to know who you are and what you've done because you serve as models of service and inspiration and hope for future generations.

There are eight words from President Bush that I think would make a good screen saver on any government computer:

"Good beginnings are not the measure of success."

Let me give you the entire quote:

"Government likes to begin things - to declare grand new programs and causes. But good beginnings are not the measure of success. What matters in the end is completion. Performance. Results. Not just making promises, but making good on promises."

Today we honor performance and results, and I want to once again congratulate our awardees on their splendid achievements.

Each challenge you have faced, you have seen as an opportunity. We commend you and honor you and thank you for being part of the team.

In my mind, there can be no finer calling than to drive change and results for our Nation - and you are doing just that.

Thank you for the opportunity to be with you today.

# # #

Current Speeches