Aeronautical Center employees continue to impress and uphold our reputation as a Top Workplace. The proof is in the pudding, as they say, and Mike Monroney Aeronautical Center (MMAC) employees excelled in the 10th Annual AFN Awards Ceremony and the 54th Annual US Department of Transportation Awards Ceremony.
The 10th Annual AFN Awards Ceremony took place on Wednesday, June 8, 2022. Assistant Administrator Mark House and the AFN Leadership Team presented the awards. This year’s ceremony paid special tribute to AFN’s 10th Anniversary and acknowledged the outstanding contributions of all AFN colleagues.
Employee of the Year was awarded to Corey Black, Director of the Office of Facility Management (AMP), for his exceptional leadership in 2021 for ensuring the safe and efficient operations of the facilities at the MMAC. Corey’s dedication to the mission, focus on cost savings, and collaboration with all MMAC stakeholders continued to shine through 2021. As a result, the Aeronautical Center not only survived 2021, but it also thrived in the ever-changing environment, and this is in great part due to Corey’s leadership and efforts to ensure the Center maintained facilities that were safe, efficient, and operational.
The next MMAC members awarded with the Customer Focus Award were those of the Enterprise Services Center (ESC) Customer Focus Team. Steve Aube, Angela Lee, Tamala Barnes, Rodney Sloan, and Melissa Howze provided outstanding customer service in FY21. ESC has a 20+ year partnership with each of the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) Operating Modes and several non-DOT agency customers as a shared service provider. They deliver financial services, information systems security and technological solutions to their customers. In 2019, ESC began a journey for continued success and elevated customer service as a shared services provider. The strategy for the improvement is centered around an industry-accepted, 3-tiered Shared Services maturity model that increases the value of the services provided as ESC matures through the tiers. This strategy led to initiatives which were implemented in FY21, resulting in improved customer satisfaction. The Enterprise Services Center now ensures that not only customer-requested topics are covered, but they also bring other topics and materials to the meetings to ensure their customers are fully informed. These topics and meetings also prompt discussion and engagement with each customer, driving decisions, actions, and strategies to increase value for all customers. Customers are repeatedly commenting on the usefulness of the meetings and the usefulness of the discussions.
Next, The Enterprise Services Center’s Robotic Process Automation (RPA) Team received the Innovation Team Award. Steve Aube, Jo-Ann Napolitano, Rodney Sloan, Kyle Brimage, Linda Pahdoco, Joseph Smith, Misha Carlisle, Dedrian Parmer, Angela Sterling, Christopher Davis, Vincent Pham, Alan Thompson, Sean McIntyre, Derrick Rollins, Simon Moore, and Teresa Ryser embraced the momentum of government innovation initiatives in digital transformation using the latest agile software development processes, and new technologies such as Intelligent Automation. Embracing Intelligent Automation had a direct impact on employee engagement by advancing the exciting field of RPA across ESC operations. This team continues to build on their early successes and lessons learned. They have effectively created a standard, repeatable and secure RPA development process.
The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) Migration Team was awarded the Efficiency Team Award. In FY21, the team consisting of: Shahzad Ahmed, Kiera King, Kameswari Pullela, Mark Atkins, Tonia King, Melody Rucker, Alfred Bartraw, Evelyn LaTorre, Teresa Ryser, Daniel Bush, Angela Lee, Angela Sharp, Kathryn Chadwick, Jacob Lefko, Virginia Shaw, Shelly Chism, Jamie Lewis, Janet Shell, Lauren Crain, Karen Luong, Ronna Smelser, Rigo Driscoll, Jevon Mallett, Jennifer Smith, Cynthia Drummond, Angela Marten, Linda Solomon, Karen Feland, Barbara Martos, Michelle Storie, John Stover, Kim McCord, Steven Gregus, April Grisham, Steven Michalicka, Jill Thorpe, Alex Varghese, Brian Harmon, Holly Muck, Stephanie Wandick, Tammy Wiley-Karth, Dylan Nguyen, Seth Hoe, Sherry Hoffman, Toan Nguyen, Tod Williams, Richard Woods, Robert Woods, William Parker, Lana Null, Monica Ingerson, Sunny Jerrim, Julieanna Johnson, Tarun Patel, Leilani Pounders, and Norshamsila Johnson, completed a multi-year project to modernize OPM’s financial management and procurement system. This project migrated OPM’s legacy Consolidated Business Information System (CBIS) to the Enterprise Services Center’s financial system (Delphi) and ESC’s procurement system (ESC PRISM). Completion of this project offered assurance in the efficiency of shared services, represented collaboration across agencies while minimizing redundancies, and provided significant cost savings to the U.S. government from economies of scale. In total, their transition saved OPM millions of dollars, and ESC’s existing customer base received a price reduction. In close collaboration with ESC, OPM became one of the first agencies to complete the Quality Services Management Office (QSMO)/Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Investment process, a standard that adheres to the OMB approval process - requiring organizations to upgrade and modernize their financial systems. The completion of the migration project was a huge success with minimal help desk tickets required following the migrations. The success of this project paves the way for ESC to potentially on-board future customers, and achieve even greater cost savings for ESC’s existing customers and the U.S. Government.
Finally for the AFN Awards, Neshmayda Thurman, IT Specialist in the Systems Administration Services Section (AMK-221), was awarded the Quality with Speed Individual Award. Thurman consistently delivered high quality, timely support that satisfied and often exceeded customer expectations. She provided exceptional cyber-security expertise by performing essential research and required testing in order to deploy patches across multiple windows server bases (2012, 2016, 2019), and implemented security fixes using appropriate patch and registry key settings. For example, she developed PowerShell scripts to automate custom processes, which included administrative actions that save time and improve outcomes. She worked to ensure deadlines were met even when faced with very short deadlines, acting swiftly to ensure critical operational needs continued to be met. In addition to timely completion of numerous tasks during FY21 (ensuring all processes and testing protocols were followed to mitigate risks and ensuring that the deployment of apps and scripts did not cause any issues) Thurman was also instrumental in providing responses to many data requests during ESC SOC1 audit interviews. Her detailed responses explained ESC practices and satisfied auditor concerns.
MMAC employees were also recognized at the US Department of Transportation Awards. More than 200 AFN employees were honored on March 31, 2022, with 11 awards at the 54th Annual DOT Awards Ceremony. These employees were awarded for their efforts in saving money, automating tasks, quickly responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, protecting the FAA from cyberattacks and providing financial expertise for major initiatives.
The Meritorious Achievement Award was received by Kimberley Sheppard for her efforts as Chief of Staff for the MMAC and the leader of the Center’s Quality Systems and Business Resources Group. She monitored the Center’s Business Management System certification under the ISO 9001:2015 standards. She also planted the seeds for process improvement and efficiencies across the Center’s organizations, helping to identify over $23M in savings and cost avoidance by the end of 2020 for the Center’s customers, including the FAA, DOT and other government agencies.
Toan Nguyen won the Meritorious Achievement Award for her efforts on the Enterprise Services Center Visioning Team. Under Nguyen’s leadership, ESC made significant strides in implementing various intelligence automation tools. She also established contracts with all major wireless companies that not only provided the devices at zero cost to the agency, but also provided lower negotiated telecommunication rates through shared data plans, generating an estimated $3 million cost savings/avoidance per year.
David Gordon, Security Assessor, won the DOT Excellence Award for his efforts creating, maintaining, and enhancing the automated tools for the Enterprise Services Center’s (ESC) Cybersecurity Assessment Group. He used his assessment knowledge and technical expertise to implement automated functionality that greatly streamlines workflows and day-to-day activities within the group. In addition, Gordon developed the Assessor’s Toolbox, which aggregates and automatically generates the Assessment Group’s standardized, ISO-tracked, stand-alone forms.
Shelly Fuller, Lead Facility Information Specialist (ARCHIBUS) (AMP-100), received the Creativity & Innovation Award for managing the MMAC ARCHIBUS Facility Management System. Her leadership of the ARCHIBUS system implementation – at MMAC, DOT Headquarters and at FAA facilities across the country – allowed the FAA to track COVID-19 cases so that cleanings could be scheduled quickly.
The Office of Personnel Management Migration Team won the Partnering for Excellence Award for their efforts to modernize the Office of Personnel Management’s Financial and Procurement systems, saving millions in taxpayer dollars. This transition was the culmination of 10 years of effort to modernize OPM’s financial management. The partnership between the DOT, OPM and ESC illustrated the cost benefits of the shared services business model. As a result, all of ESC’s 19 customers received a cost reduction in FY22.
The FAA Academy’s Home Run Training Transition Team (which included members from AVS) were recognized for their leadership in expanding virtual training possibilities in response to the global COVID-19 pandemic. Their enterprise-level effort increased the number of courses available online from a handful before the pandemic to 76 by October 2020. In addition to these training workshops, the team leveraged the existing Virtual Instructor Training course already offered by the FAA Academy, which provided foundational skills for teaching in a live, on-line environment. This effort allowed 140 students to be trained over a six-month period, increasing the number of students trained by 47 percent without diminishing any of the course content.
The Enterprise Services Center’s Visioning Team won the Outstanding Achievement Gold Medal Team Award for evaluating every aspect of the Enterprise Services Center (ESC) organization and devising ways to drive down costs through automation tools, by consolidating and renegotiating contracts, and by reorganizing functions to reduce overhead. Additionally, they analyzed internal processes to determine areas for streamlining by using Robotic Process Automation, which achieved an annual savings of $1.8M to date from intelligent automation tools. These tools will be used to augment and expand existing products, allowing for an even greater savings in the years to come.
The Information Security & Privacy (IS&P) Program & Policy Collaboration Team won the Creativity and Innovation Team Award for their efforts to strengthen the cybersecurity posture of the FAA and DOT. They enabled AIT’s Information Security and Privacy Service (AIS) to produce documents in consultation with subject matter experts and legal advisors to reflect best business practices. They ensured policy adjustments addressed concerns regarding incompatibility between existing Federal Standards and FAA requirements. They also created a mapping document that accompanied the final order, which created more value for security and privacy practitioners by providing specific references in the larger document to common security issues.
Congratulations to all of the Mike Monroney Aeronautical Center employees who have once again gone above and beyond expectations!
