Following a high-profile pick for a new chief information officer at the Defense Department earlier this week, DoD officials named this year’s winners of the DoD Chief Information Officer awards.
At a Pentagon ceremony Oct. 28, Deputy Chief Management Officer David Wennergren, who works in the office of the deputy secretary of defense, said the spotlight on positive CIO experiences was a nice change of pace.
Often, CIOs are only in the spotlight when things go wrong, he said.
“But every day, good things are happening and you don’t get so much attention,†Wennergren continued. “We don’t often get time to pause and reflect upon what great accomplishments we’re achieving every day.â€
Team awards were presented to: the Project Director Team, Defense Communications Systems-Southwest Asia; the Collaboration Support and Information Division Ronna Team at U.S. Joint Forces Command; the Joint Staff CIO Team; the DoD Visitor Team, Defense Information Systems Agency; and the Apps for the Army Challenge Team, U.S. Army.
Individual first-place winners were: Navy Lt. Cmdr. James Gateau of U.S. European Command in Stuttgart, Germany, and Jack Summers, command information officer for Naval Air Systems Command, Patuxent River, Md.
James Lee, the Army’s team chief for Radio Frequency-In Transit Visibility, took second place in the individual category.
The finalists were selected among 70 nominations of civilian and military CIOs and teams in from around the world. Those nominated were evaluated based on outstanding achievement in areas such as acquisition, identity and information assurance, cyber operations and information sharing.
The awards recognize outstanding achievement in Pentagon information management under the purview of Title 40 of the U.S. Code, known as the Clinger-Cohen Act, and the strategy, goals and vision of the DoD’s CIO.
