Federal Leadership of the Year

Nancy Sieger, CIO at the Internal Revenue Service, said that COVID-19 “fundamentally” changed the way the agency worked. That meant accelerating digital options for both taxpayers and employees and rescaling operations for health and safety. At one point, the agency saw a record of 58,000 employees connected to the IRS network remotely. “None of that’s possible without technology. 2020 has underscored the importance of modernization. It’s what will keep the government running and delivering the services that Americans need, expect and deserve,” she said, adding that she hopes these innovations will stick throughout 2021 and after the pandemic.

Federal Leadership of the Year

The NSA has made the unprecedented move to telework in recent months — something the agency rarely did prior to COVID-19. CIO Greg Smithberger has led that effort, trying to work out what of the NSA’s sensitive workload could and couldn’t be done remotely. “It’s kind of become more of a standard for us to see how much we can actually do in a less protected environment to leverage our ability to work with some corporate partners who, in some cases, simply don’t have access to a SCIF but are fully cleared people,” he said earlier this year. “In other cases, we’re building a sort of a variation on this environment, where we’re going to be doing a lot more collaboration with people who don’t have clearances for the capabilities mission, for NSA’s cybersecurity mission, for our research.”

Industry Leadership of the Year

Shaun Bierweiler started a new chapter in 2020 as senior vice president of public sector for Riverbed Technology. While in the new role, the challenges during the pandemic and the lessons learned remain the same. “Without the availability and readiness of technology to support the shift from in-person to remote work and collaboration environments, the rapid and successful pandemic response in 2020 would not be possible,” Bierweiler said. “This year demonstrated the ability for the government to be agile and to embrace commercial technology while maintaining necessary security and governance controls essential for government applications.”

Industry Leadership of the Year

Mike Daniels, vice president of global public sector for Google Cloud, called 2020 “a crucible for change.” Transformation in the past has “seemed far off, too difficult, or not an imperative but I truly believe this year has shown otherwise,” he said. “What was previously not a priority, or perhaps even on the roadmap, might be viewed or prioritized differently today and I am most looking forward to hearing the bold and innovative ideas that come from government and higher education institutions and partnering with them on their journey as we emerge in many ways stronger than before.” In totality, Daniels called 2020 “humbling” and said it made him “proud every single day to work alongside devoted public servants and our team of experts who have led with empathy, overcome unforeseen obstacles, and have maintained their resilience during this pandemic. I have a profound appreciation of the deep passion for supporting our public servants that Google Cloud has as part of our core ethos for making the world a better place. I am inspired and grateful to work with an amazing team and incredible customers whose personal commitment has been truly amazing.”

Industry Leadership of the Year

Zoom exploded in popularity across the world with the arrival of COVID-19 and social distancing. And that meant the company had to work quickly to comply with federal cybersecurity standards so that agencies across the government could use the video-conferencing app. Matt Mandrgoc is head of Zoom’s U.S. Governments team and led that charge to make sure the company could work with federal agencies during this critical time. “My proudest moment was working alongside my Zoom teammates and partners to help our Federal customers, system integrators and contractors quickly adapt to their business and mission continuity requirements during this challenging time,” Mandrgoc said. “We were fortunate and honored to do this through our FedRAMP authorized Zoom for Government communication and collaboration platform.”

Industry Leadership of the Year

The past year has shown that digital transformation is more than a “nice to have,” said Dave Rey, president of global public sector for Salesforce. The pandemic has forced the public sector to address its issues with legacy technologies and “reevaluate how services are delivered with new consideration paid to the global pandemic’s unique health concerns,” he said. “Public sector organizations are asking questions such as: Can existing systems be scaled? Are systems available remotely via mobile? Are they available 24/7 to a remote workforce?” But Rey believes “government agencies will end 2020 with a much better appreciation for digital transformation’s revolutionary power.”

Industry Leadership of the Year

At the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Microsoft served the state of New York and its “Tech Squad” to help build a mobile COVID-19 self-assessment and testing tool in less than three days. This was just one of many ways Microsoft President of U.S. Regulated Industries Toni Townes-Whitley’s team helped its public sector partners during the thick of the pandemic. “Governments across the world have undergone years’ worth of digital transformation in a matter of months and are seeing the value of being more agile,” she said. “COVID-19 has fast-tracked this modern cloud technology adoption at speeds that are unprecedented in the history of our nation. The pandemic put a stress test on the ability of governments to deliver services amidst a crisis and we are seeing our government customers embrace a mindset that fosters innovation at an accelerated rate.” That innovation, Townes-Whitley said, will likely “outlast the pandemic as governments shift their mindsets and operations to be more agile, anticipating the needs of citizens and government workers.”

Industry Leadership of the Year

Cybersecurity has proven to be more critical than ever for federal agencies during the COVID-19 pandemic. CrowdStrike realized that importance early on in the crisis. “In order to succeed in this journey in a way that allows [our customers] to out-innovate our adversaries, it is imperative that security is part of their strategic fabric,” said James Yeager, CrowdStrike’s vice president of public sector and health care. “Our customers will need our help now more than ever and we are well positioned to help them every step of the way.” Yeager said he is most proud of two things in 2020: His team’s support of health care organizations during the pandemic and its efforts with federal, state and local agencies to secure the presidential election. “Both are clear demonstrations of our compassion for the challenges impacting our customers and the overarching impact these events can have on our country,” he said.

Cybersecurity Leader of the Year

Al Bowden was selected as the State Department’s CISO in 2016. He also serves as the Deputy Chief Information Officer for Information Assurance. In these roles, he oversees the implementation of the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) to ensure the integrity and confidentiality of system-related information. Bowden has nearly 30 years of IT experience, including a previous stint as the Director of the Enterprise Network Management (ENM) Office.

Federal Leadership

Chris Cleary capped what has been a big year as principal cyber adviser for the Department of the Navy with the release of the service’s Cyberspace Superiority Vision, which features three main pillars: secure, survive and strike. The new document, Cleary said, is meant to show “the people who don’t consider this their core business space why these things are important — [and] more importantly, why it’s important to their mission.” He continued: “What the vision really talks about is we need to talk about those three things in concert. One doesn’t outweigh the other.”

Cybersecurity Leader of the Year

Fortunately, the Department of Education had just transitioned a legacy contract and improved many aspects of its resiliency right before the pandemic hit earlier this year, giving it a much-needed technology refresh before the systems were truly put to the test with remote work. Still, there were other surprises, including the closure of the agency’s badging offices right before a surge of onboarding new employees. CISO Steven Hernandez and his leadership team quickly responded with a solution to onboard everyone virtually, what he estimates as two months of design, engineering, security and configuration work completed over five days. “It was an incredible achievement of contracting, security, planning and collaboration that allowed us to move at an intense speed while remaining secure,” he said.

Cybersecurity Leader of the Year

Janet Vogel has been the CISO at HHS since April 2018, after 12 years within the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. While this year brewed the “perfect storm” of facing a pandemic while increasingly relying on a virtual environment, Vogel said that rapidly scaling HHS’s security infrastructure to a vastly different operating environment ended up allowing the agency to work more effectively. “Even under the high stakes and high-pressured deadlines, our teams seamlessly collaborated, producing timely and appropriate responses to new and dangerous types of cybersecurity threats,” she said. The Emergency Use Authorization forced her to leave her own comfort zone, Vogel said, and allowed the agency to “expedite procurements, leverage technology capabilities such as machine learning, and stand up systems within days.” Once the pandemic is over, Vogel hopes agencies can continue to exchange meaningful cybersecurity information.

Tech Champion of the Year

“The pandemic underscored the need for top tech talent in the department,” said Katie Olson, deputy director of the Defense Digital Service. Without such talent, the Department of Defense would not have been able to respond so quickly to the challenges created by the health crisis. “If the Navy had to execute and hire contract support for the MyStatus.mil tool, instead of turning to the DDS team of experts, the Navy would probably still be waiting for a symptom-checking tool and COVID-19 would have claimed more military lives,” Olson said. As the COVID-19 pandemic struck, DDS pivoted quickly to provide its innovative services across the DOD. “While DDS is already a distributed workforce with tools and resources to keep work moving seamlessly, our counterparts overseeing employee onboarding at the DOD’s Washington Headquarters Services did not,” she said. “DDS had a healthy hiring pipeline of candidates we’d worked hard to recruit in 2019 and we didn’t want to lose such amazing talent. So, DDS helped WHS to apply technology and acquire the equipment necessary to continue to hire and onboard employees. Since March, DDS has enabled the DOD to onboard 32 of our own employees and over 1,000 DOD employees virtually.”

Disruptor of the Year

The Air Force faced global challenges before the pandemic struck — ones that its Kessel Run team needed to help respond to. When tensions with Iran flared following the U.S.’s alleged killing of Gen. Qasem Soleimani, Kessel Run jumped to action in assisting the Air Operations Centers in linking command and control systems and ensuring the military had the use of “software as a weapon.” Months later when the pandemic struck the U.S., Kessel Run was prepared for the remote work. “I think we were probably more prepared than most organizations,” Adam Furtado, chief of air operations for Kessel Run, said. In some ways, it even helped. By listing full-time remote positions, Kessel Run increased its applicant pool by 350%. As for the road ahead, Furtado said he is “hoping that 2021 is the year that we graduate past ‘innovation theatre’ and start making real inroads in modernizing the way the world’s largest bureaucracy thinks about not just technology, but work itself.”

Most Inspiring Up & Comer

As the lead for the Department of Labor’s recent implementation of Self-Service Password Reset (SSPR) and Multi-factor Authentication (MFA), Eric Day is bringing efficient, effective, and streamlined solutions to DOL. Eric’s multi-faceted campaign to increase SSPR/MFA registration across DOL achieved a 75.4% registration rate in only two months. Before SSPR, users physically journeyed to or called the helpdesk to have their passwords reset. Perceiving the benefits of both tools’ features to ease staff’s ability to securely and quickly access and reset their own passwords, Eric swiftly mounted a comprehensive campaign to encourage user adoption, tracking down hard-to-reach staff to register.

Most Inspiring Up & Comer

Allison Wolff has been at NASA for nearly 17 years, starting in human resources and advancing to her current role as an applications architect in the Office of Chief Information Officer. A major pandemic-driven innovation at the agency was setting up a contact tracing and tracking system to identify COVID exposure at NASA facilities, especially important because so many agency operations need to be in-person. Wolff worked with her office and NASA’s medical community to develop and deploy the application in less than two months. Wolff also had the added challenge every parent had this year: learning how to balance the demands of a global pandemic with full-time childcare and a transition to online learning with her three daughters. “It’s not easy but we feel very fortunate to have the opportunity to work from home, the flexibility to support our family’s needs and the unexpected blessing of (temporarily) playing a more integral role in our children’s education,” she said.