Mi-GMIS - 2026 Awards

Celebrating the people and projects transforming Michigan's public sector

Individual Awards

IT Professional of the Year

Awarded to: Pat Pool - City of Coldwater

Pat Pool was nominated as the Professional of the Year for his outstanding leadership, technical expertise, and unwavering commitment to public service. Throughout his career, Pat has transformed information technology for the City of Coldwater and the Coldwater Board of Public Utilities, creating an IT organization that serves as a model for municipalities of all sizes. Pat began his career with the City of Coldwater in 2003 as the organization's only dedicated IT professional. Over the past two decades, he has successfully built and led the department into a highly skilled team of seven professionals, supporting the City's and Board of Public Utilities' growing technology needs while maintaining exceptional reliability, security, and service. This growth reflects not only the increasing demands placed on municipal technology but also Pat's vision, strategic planning, and ability to develop talented professionals. The systems, processes, security practices, and operational maturity established under Pat's leadership frequently exceed what is found in organizations many times larger with substantially greater resources. What distinguishes Pat is not simply his technical knowledge but his ability to align technology with organizational goals. He understands that technology is ultimately about enabling people to serve their community more effectively. Through thoughtful planning, prudent investment, and a commitment to continuous improvement, Pat has modernized critical infrastructure, strengthened cybersecurity, improved system reliability, and positioned the City to meet future challenges with confidence. Pat also exemplifies the qualities of an exceptional leader. He has fostered a collaborative, knowledgeable, and service-oriented team while earning the trust and respect of City leadership, employees, and community stakeholders. His willingness to mentor others, solve complex problems, and remain calm under pressure has made him an invaluable resource throughout the organization.

The success of the City of Coldwater's technology program is no accident—it is the direct result of Pat's dedication, professionalism, and vision over more than twenty years of service. His work has established standards that many organizations strive to achieve, and his impact extends well beyond the systems he manages. He has created a culture of excellence that benefits employees, elected officials, and the citizens they serve every day.

IT Rookie of the Year

Awarded to: Adam Helgevold - City of Walker

Adam began working with the City of Walker approximately three years ago as a summer intern, helping to replace computers at City of Grandville and City of Walker. He is always willing to take on new challenges and find solutions. Over the years, he has become a reliable resource for various issues, including deploying Threatlocker application control software for both cities last year. He has progressed from an intern to an IT Technician and now serves as a Cybersecurity Analyst, where he has significantly improved the cybersecurity defenses for both City of Walker and Grandville.

Agile Acrobat

Awarded to: Heather Booher - Ingham County

Heather Booher was awarded the “Agile Acrobat” award for her tireless work on the transition of Ingham County’s ERP system which included a new timekeeping system. As with any new system, there were many issues. Heather really took the time to get her arms around the issues, work with the various departments to resolve issues, understand processes, implement the necessary logic and perform audits to verify data integrity, allay concerns and get the new system up and running as quickly as possible. Without her steadfast drive the project would not have been completed as quickly or successfully. This is the perfect example of dedicated local government IT professional in action.

Keyboard Warrior

Awarded to: Jason Rucker - City of Southgate

Jason Rucker, IT Director The “Keyboard Warrior” award recognizes a MI-GMIS member whose consistent engagement and willingness to help have made him a trusted resource for municipal, county, and state colleagues throughout the State of Michigan. In this context, the title celebrates someone who puts his knowledge to work through timely responses, thoughtful, often detailed feedback, and practical advice. Whether answering a technical question, sharing an experience, or helping a colleague consider their next steps, he is readily available and committed to supporting others in public service.

This recognition reflects both his individual contributions and the value of collaborative leadership in local government. By sharing expertise beyond his own organization, he helps colleagues solve problems, make informed decisions, and build stronger professional connections across the state. His participation brings positive recognition to the community he represents and demonstrates how one dedicated public servant can extend his impact through responsiveness, generosity with his knowledge, and a dependable commitment to helping others succeed.

Project Excellence - Citizen Impact

Level 2

Level 2 organizations have IT budgets ranging between $250,000 - $999,999

Level 3

Level 3 organizations have an IT budget ranging between $1M and $2.99M

Project: Project Genny
Awarded to: Genesee County

Project Genny is Genesee County’s AI initiative and is built around two main points. The first is an internally hosted enterprise AI focused on deploying large language models, retrieval systems, and automation capabilities in a secure government environment. Its’ purpose is to provide County employees with a centralized AI assistant capable of answering operational, technical, administrative, and policy-related questions using both general AI reasoning and County-specific knowledge sources. The project was designed around maintaining County ownership of data, reducing dependence on public cloud AI systems for sensitive workflows, and creating a foundation for future AI-enabled government services. The second point is an AI tool to solve an ongoing communication problem. The County has never had a centralized intake system for calls; each department maintained their own separate phone numbers and used their own

methods to advertise them. This created confusion for citizens on how to reach a department. Genny is a citizen facing interactive AI assistant, completely seperate from the internal LLM, that creates a single centralized phone number for the County where they can interact in natural language with the AI assistant and get directions, information, or be transferred to the correct person. This same AI assistant is also tied into the County web page as a chatbot. The IT department worked with each department to establish key areas and to plot out where users would be transferred to based on key words and subjects. We worked with a company called CitiBot to provide this service. This project went live 6/5/26. The internal LLM has been made available to a subset of users in the advanced testing group. Testing, prompt refining, tool additions, developing skills, and more are part of the refinement process to make the tool more useful to our end users. We are also working on risk and reliability benchmarking with community created tools like AILuminate. Coupled with this is the development of training for County employees on AI tool usage, and the implementation of a Board of Commissioners approved AI usage policy as part of the Technology Use Policy. Future planning is around integration into the IT Helpdesk for the IT department, Certificate of Insurance analysis for the Risk Manager, and other form-based workflows for other departments.

Level 4

Level 4 Organizations have an IT budget greater than $3M

Project: Pet Reunification
Awarded to: Livingston County

Livingston County’s newly implemented Animal Shelter software did not include a mechanism for the public to report lost or found animals. The GIS Administrator created a form through ArcGIS Survey 123 to meet this need. Survey123 does not have the ability to notify the Animal Shelter of new lost or found pet submissions by email, so Microsoft Power Automate along with a connector to ArcGIS Online was leveraged to accomplish this functionality. When filling out the Survey123 form, the person reporting chooses whether the animal is lost or found, then drops a point on a map indicating where the animal was lost or found. The user provides contact information, choosing to provide the information only to the Animal Shelter, or to allow their contact information to be displayed on the web mapping application. They record animal details (name, species, gender, color, collar, etc.), along with any other pertinent details, and can upload two photos of the animal. When the report is submitted, an email is sent to the Animal Shelter staff. In addition, lost and found pets can be viewed by the public through a web mapping application built using ArcGIS Experience Builder. The web mapping application displays the location of lost and found animal reports from the last 90 days. Each point can be clicked on to display information about that reported animal, along with contact information (direct or Animal Shelter). There is also a list of those animals, and clicking on one in the list will zoom to that reported animal and display the information. Custom pop-up scripts written in Arcade are used to dynamically display contact information as well as some basic animal characteristics provided by the user reporting the animal. The Survey123 form can be used by itself on mobile or desktop; the option to use the Survey123 form within the desktop version of the web mapping application is available as well. The app is now live and available! Check it out

Project Excellence - Organizational Impact

Level 2

Level 2 organizations have IT budgets ranging between $250,000 - $999,999

Project: People's Building
Awarded to: Tuscola County

After COVID, Tuscola County found that it had no usable space to socially distance court proceedings, but also realized that the county needed training space, more room for technology operations, GIS and other uses. To that end, Tuscola County leased and renovated an old bank building. With a $2.1 million dollar budget obtained from using Provision of Government Services funds which were then recovered from ARPA (American Rescue Plan Act) the county was able to create a space that includes a 100 person training room, two large conference rooms, a Geographical Information Systems (GIS) Office, backup 911 office and a large break room for the county. The training room is used, not only for training, but to also host community events. Other entities that have already taken advantage of the space include the National Weather Service, MSUe and MI-GMIS, which used the space for one of their regional roundtable meetings. Additionally, local citizens have booked the room for a New Year’s Eve gathering in downtown Caro, MI to celebrate the Sugar Beet dropping, right next door.

Level 3

Level 3 organizations have an IT budget ranging between $1M and $2.99M

Project: New Fire Building
Awarded to: City of Westland

Our new Fire Administration and Fire Station building was completed in late 2025. The City of Westland had to replace a very old fire station located on the north side of town and combined it into a much larger building to include housing Fire Administration. The IT department worked as the project manager for all technology related features. This 13,000 square feet facility required multiple technology RFPs to be issued for physical security, networking, audio visual, and others, which we wrote and managed. The IT Department was part of the original design team for the layout of the building, determining technology placement, determining power and HVAC needs for the whole building, etc. IT had to manage the installation of a new dark fiber connection to our existing network through 123.Net which had to go across the Rouge River from the previous fire station site. During the project IT also had to learned about the Fire Station radio systems as that was not originally designed into the project, but IT was able to take on this responsibility for the entire department and ensured that radio service was installed and properly configured at this new building. IT also designed a state-of-the-art audio-visual system for the new training room that included multiple connected monitors, wireless connection services for presenter devices, and a smart board working as the hub to the system. The facility also required the relocation, not only the staff and equipment at the existing fire station, but also the staff from the old Fire Administration building. Lastly, everything had to be coordinated with to provide for a seamless transition from the existing fire station to the new fire station without any drop-in technology service at the old fire station when moved to the new fire station. To accomplish this, IT had to configure duplication systems for the two stations to work at the same time for the 1 week overlap and then decommission the duplicate systems. This project was an exciting one as it involved the complete design and implementation of technology from the ground up which is something a lot of teams do not get the opportunity to do in their careers. This project was a great project. It really required IT to stretch their abilities as a small team to reach successful completion. IT also had to learn a number of new skills related to the radio systems that the Fire Department uses and processes related to working with construction crews and timing of different aspects of implementation.

Level 4

Level 4 Organizations have an IT budget greater than $3M

Project: Emerging Tech Program
Awarded to: Great Lakes Water Authority

The Great Lakes Water Authority (GLWA) has launched a forward-looking, organization wide initiative that is transforming how our teams work, collaborate, and deliver services. This effort represents a sustained and evolving Emerging Technology program designed to accelerate innovation, strengthen operational efficiency, and futureproof the organization. The program brings together three major components: the establishment of a formal AI Policy and AI Literacy plan to ensure safe and responsible use of AI, which supported the adoption of Microsoft Copilot and other AI powered SaaS technologies, and which also laid the foundation for the establishment of the Emerging Technology Council. The council empowers a structured intake, evaluation and pilot execution process that improves transparency, alignment and decision velocity. Together, these elements have begun to reshape our daily work by reducing friction, supporting informed decision making, and creating new avenues for problem solving. To date there have been four successful pilots and three implementations, focused on team member productivity, team member experience, and operational efficiency. Developing an AI policy was necessary to give employees clear guidance on the responsible use of AI, protecting data privacy, and ensuring fairness and transparency in AI supported work. This clarity not only reduces risk but also builds confidence that staff can explore new technologies safely and effectively. The Emerging Technology Council supports Emerging Technology ongoing pilots and implementations by creating a structured, repeatable process for evaluating new tools and ideas. This ensures that innovations are aligned with organizational goals, vetted for security and feasibility, and implemented using a thoughtful, value driven approach. By providing a central intake and review process, the team enables employees at all levels to bring forward challenges, opportunities, and concepts that might previously have gone unheard. This fostered a culture where experimentation is encouraged, cross department collaboration is strengthened, and technology decisions are both more transparent and more inclusive. Team members are already experiencing the benefits. Routine tasks such as drafting communications, summarizing meetings, analyzing data, and preparing documentation can now be completed more quickly, giving staff more time to focus on critical thinking, customer service, and strategic initiatives. Early use of AI enabled tools has improved accuracy in documentation, reduced error rates, and increased consistency in processes that previously required significant manual effort. The result is a noticeable shift in how efficiently teams can produce high-quality work. Overall, this program has helped GLWA become more agile, data driven, and future-proof. It empowers employees, enhances service delivery, and positions technology as a strategic enabler rather than a background utility. Most importantly, it has created an environment where continuous improvement is not only supported but an expected impact that will continue to shape the daily work life of every team member for years to come. This project will enhance the way technicians work together to perform maintenance. It's a game changer for GLWA that almost didn't happen because of connectivity issues.