2022 Awards
IT Professional of the Year
Awarded to Jim Baker, IT Director, Crawford County
The award honors the government agency information technology professional who exemplifies the qualities, skills, and leadership necessary to provide local government with current, effective IT solutions to support its citizens and employees.
The award this year was given to an individual who has spent much of his career working to better the technology endeavors of local a government not only in his home county, Crawford, but also throughout the State of Michigan.
Jim's nomination was put forward by an employee working for the court system in Crawford County. She cited multiple examples of his leadership, some of which are: working tirelessly to support County employees during COVID-19 quarantines; guiding a major software conversion that underpins law enforcement in the county (including converting records going back to 1994); serving as a LEIN TAC for the Sheriff's Office; and assisting with the 46th Circuit Court's migration to the WebTCS platform.
An excerpt from the nomination submission states: "Beyond the support Jim has provided to the courts and county, I want to particularly note the inspiration eh provides to all those around him. Jim is a leader in the IT industry with his work ethic and the relationships he has built and established with all the other IT connections that will leave the county in good hands when he decides to retire. We all hope that Jim will never retire, but everyone deserves retirement at some point in time. That is just an example of the legacy Jim has established here in Crawford County with his passion, knowledge, and leadership Jim has for IT."
In light of both his work and his leadership, Mi-GMIS was proud to recognize Jim's contributions by giving him the 2022 IT Professional Award.
IT Security Project of the Year
Awarded to Oakland County
Security Project of the Year is given to a government agency that develops creative solutions for Information Technology security, recognizing the ever-present threats to our infrastructure while demonstrating technology's role as a vital player in improving organizational security.
The challenges that arise from keeping government entities' computer applications and data secure in today's world are daunting. There are never sufficient resources to fend off every threat, and even when organizations upgrade their security posture something new arises that works around those just-implemented measures. Elected officials who oversee IT-related spending are often concerned about how much of the budget security consumes and want to know funds are being used effectively.
Recognizing the issue, Oakland County set out to define a set of processes and tools to help create a repeatable, defensible methodology to ensure an efficient allocation of tax dollars across the multitude of people, processes and technology. There were multiple questions tackled by this undertaking. How to appropriately allocate limited time, money, and resources to effectively protect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of County data, even in the face of all this change? When buying new tools, how can we balance their protection with tools already purchased? How can we use processes to reduce risk in the environment, even with the toolset in place?
The project team set out, electing to leverage existing, proven frameworks and methodologies rather than create everything form the ground up. A foundational component was the Center for Internet Security's Critical Controls. Oakland County elected to use the most stringent set of controls for its project but recognized that there are lesser sets that can be used by smaller organizations. Assessing itself using this framework, the team created an Excel spreadsheet that provided a "heat map" of risks laid on top of the criticality of data the County holds. This in turn grounded the assessment of where to put resources.
While the final work product is specific to Oakland, the methodology is both scalable and repeatable. The County will be making it freely available to other government entities, as it has with other frameworks it has created. In recognition of the benefit this provides to all Mi-GMIS members, we are pleased to recognize this as the 2022 IT Security Project of the Year.
IT Project of the Year
Awarded to City of Detroit Water & Sewerage Department (DWSD) - Oracle Cloud Supply Chain Module Implementation
Project of the Year is given to the government agency that shows resourceful initiatives, cost savings measures or an innovative solution to a problem.
This project took Oracle's Cloud Fusion Supply Chain module and configured, tested and implemented it as a replacement for Oracle's Work and Asset Management (WAM) system, DWSD's legacy supply chain management platform. This solution was selected because it leveraged the City of Detroit's existing ERP platform, Oracle Cloud Fusion and would meet the implementation schedule required.
The project was delivered on time and under budget with the full support of the business unit that sponsored it. The key to the project was weekly status meetings - alternating between a meeting with all stakeholders and one with the executive sponsors only (a governance meeting). that cadence provided enough guidance and conflict resolution opportunities to clear blockages before they impacted the project. Ask any IT leader and they will tell you that one of the struggles in any large project is that the business units are busy. It is not uncommon to hear stories where the business invested the time to make a selection and then just handed over the project for IT to implement the solution. While IT plays an important part of any software implementation, it is the business resources that need to be fully vested in defining the features needed and in clearly communicating the workflows required to get to the desired outcome. this was a project with an enormous amount of time dedicated from both the IT Department and the business units. There were severe demands on the business to bring its best and brightest and they delivered. Teh result was also a win for IT because it is a business owned and operated system that IT supports, rather than owns.
Recognizing that such business-level involvement is critical to successful projects, Mi-GMIS awarded this undertaking, the 2022 IT Project of the Year Award.