Last night was Federal Computer Week’s 20th annual Federal 100 Awards Gala recognizing the 100 people who have made a difference in government IT in the past year. You can read the profiles of the winners from FCW here.

Molly O'Neill

Each year, FCW selects two people — one government, one industry — as the firsts among equals are given FCW’s Eagle Award. These are the two people who have gone above and beyond among those who have gone above and beyond.

The government Eagle Award winner is somebody who I nominated for the award : former EPA CIO Molly O’Neill. O’Neill has been simply remarkable at EPA. As I mentioned earlier, EPA has been really innovative in how it uses technology to reach out to its multitude of constituents. They really were out when Peacock was the first government official to post a blog… there with the Puget Sound initiative two years ago… and they have only pressed further. The most remarkable thing about EPA — and EPA’s leadership — is they fostered an innovative environment where people were not afraid to try something new. O’Neill was awarded the Eagle by Defense Department Deputy CIO Dave Winnergren, and it was nice to hear that his comments mirrored my thoughts. [On Federal News Radio 1500 AM’s Daily Debrief with Chris Dorobek and Amy Morris, we spoke to O’Neill as part of our “exit interview” series. You can hear that conversation here.]

An excerpt of O’Neil’s FCW write-up:

She is best known for her role as a Web 2.0 visionary, helping her colleagues at EPA and elsewhere to understand how that emerging technology might apply to government. But in 2008, she also served as chairwoman of the CIO Council’s Architecture and Infrastructure Committee. Among other tasks, she played a critical role in getting agency support for the concept of developing segmented architectures.

Cisco's Brad Boston

The industry winner of the industry 2009 Eagle Award is Brad Boston, Cisco Systems senior vice president of Global Government Solutions and Corporate Security Programs. Here is a part of Boston’s write-up in FCW’s 2009 Fed 100 issue:

Boston advises governments on best practices and technologies and has campaigned to improve government certification of information assurance tools.

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He led an effort at Combined Endeavor 2008 to develop new international standards that support radio interfaces, and he helped develop space-basedIP networking to improve communications among space assets.

The 1105 Government Information Group President’s Award was awarded to Dinah F.B. Cohen, the Defense Department’s director of the computer/electronic accommodations program. A part of her FCW write-up:

Cohen created DOD’s first online service to provide needs assessments and assistive technology for disabled federal employees.

Cohen developed the program to serve as a one-stop shop for those who need the services. It also serves wounded members of the military.

Photos thanks to GTSI’s Leslie Barry, who did a great job being the DorobekInsider photographer. I’ll get the rest of them posted next.

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