U.S. General Services Administration Wins IRMCO Award

GSA # 10232

April 26, 2006
Contact:  Viki Reath (202) 501-1231
viki.reath@gsa.gov

Washington, DC -- Teresa Sorrenti, Director, Office of Acquisition Systems, U.S. General Services Administration (GSA)  today received the 2006 Interagency Resources Management Conference (IRMCO) Award for creating the Integrated Acquisition Environment (IAE), a cross-agency team of procurement, finance and IT experts from civilian and defense agencies, GSA announced.

The IAE restructured systems and  integrated information across the diverse civilian and military federal acquisition community to eliminate redundancy and save taxpayers time and money.

Finalists for the Individual Award were:

• Lieutenant Colonel D. Stephen Wood, U.S. Air Force, for exemplary leadership and organization skills in managing interagency teams composed of  Air Force and Army Corps of Engineers personnel in combat-related missions.
• Colonel Stephen “Scotty” Fairbairn, Air Force, for leadership in creating innovative solutions that have contributed to the quality of operational tests and warfighter tools.

Winner of the IRMCO Team Award was the Military Service Expedited Claims Process Team, representing a cross-section of employees from the Social Security Administration (SSA) and the Department of Defense (DOD). During the early stages of Operation IRAQI Freedom, the team established the SSA Military Service Expedited Claims Process.

Accepting the IRMCO Team Award were:

• Patricia Ferraro, Chief, Operations Support Branch, Mid-Atlantic Program Service Center, SSA, Philadelphia Region.
• Robert McBride, Operations Manager, Mid-Atlantic Program Service Center, SSA, Philadelphia Region.
• Mark Ward, Senior Policy Advisor, Office of Family Policy, Office of the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense (Military Community and Family Policy).

Two IRMCO Team Award finalists were:

• Federal Technical Data Solutions Program Team(FedTeDS), a collaborative effort between the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security and GSA, which implemented an improved procurement process across federal boundaries, which strengthens national security, streamlines distribution of acquisition data and reduces federal agency costs.
• Social Security Administration (SSA), Region 6 Facilities Team, for its swift and effective plan to reorganize as a disaster recovery and relief team and to act as a clearinghouse and emergency planning group to reestablish SSA facilities, supplies, and logistics services to the devastated areas of southern Louisiana and East Texas, when critical and essential operations of SSA were disrupted by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

The IRMCO award is given annually to those who have demonstrated exceptional ability to operate across organizational boundaries to improve the government’s services to its citizens.  This year’s awards were presented at the 45th annual IRMCO conference  in Williamsburg, Virginia. For further information about IRMCO, please visit www.irmco.gov.

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GSA is a centralized, federal procurement, property management, policy development and information provision agency, created by Congress to improve government efficiency and help federal agencies better serve the public.  In this role, GSA acquires products and services on behalf of federal agencies; plays a key role in developing and implementing government-\wide policies; provides services and solutions for the office operations of more than one million federal workers; and encourages a citizen-centric relationship with government by providing a single "point of entry" to the information and services citizens need in a timeframe they can appreciate.  This allows citizens to receive accurate, timely and consistent answers and information, and helps federal agencies better respond to citizen inquiries.