The Best of Georgia Technology Awards Program has been established to salute Georgia's IT professionals and managers for their dedication and hard work. Agency heads throughout the state were invited to submit nominations, with a formal Nomination Committee reviewing each submission and selecting a winner in each category. Categories recognize leadership, innovation, collaboration and stellar achievements by state and local governments.

"Welcome and congratulations to the all the winners of the Best of Georgia Technology Awards," said Patrick Moore during the Georgia Digital Government Summit November 15 and 16 at the Omni Hotel at CNN Center in Atlanta. Moore, director of the Georgia Technology Authority announced the following winners as "examples of what can be accomplished by the creative and energetic application of IT in Georgia."

Here is the list of winners.

Visionary Award

Governor Sonny Perdue: recognized for his vision and leadership in forwarding standards, governance models and best practices throughout the state, and for his tremendous efforts in fostering cross-agency cooperation and collaboration.

Fulton County CIO Robert Taylor: for vision and strong leadership resulted in a wide array of technology solutions in the county. He was recognized for his successes in doing more with less and with driving much-needed collaboration within the county.


Demonstrated Leadership in Management of Information Technology

Columbia County for their ITIL Implementation.

The ITIL implementation team shared a common vision of improving customer satisfaction, reducing unexpected outages, and reducing cost of services provided to their customers. The team decided that nothing was considered "sacred" or protected to achieve their objective of 100% Customer Satisfaction. The results have been stellar.

Demonstrated Excellence in Project Management

Venkat Krishnan for the State's Automated Child Welfare Information System(SACWIS)

SACWIS is used by Department of Human Resource caseworkers to monitor cases and track the whereabouts of those who neglect and/or abuser children. SACWIS is one of the most critical projects that GTA manages. Venkat Krishnan, as the Executive Project Director, received this award for a job well done in managing this difficult project.



Best Application Serving a Public Organization's Business Needs

Enterprise Integration, Georgia Technology Authority

Effective integration and data sharing among the state agencies is one of the key success factors for the State of Georgia. GTA established the Enterprise Integration Shared Services Team with the following business objectives:

• Increase data sharing between agencies
• Decrease system complexity
• Gain efficiency by making better use of computing environments
• Improve overall system security

The project is making a big impact on state operations.

Best Application Serving a Public Organization's Business Needs

Governor's Office of Planning and Budget for BudgetNet

The concept of a statewide Financial Management System with all data accessible through one location began evolving several years ago. BudgetNet, which is a custom-designed system, makes it possible for all interested parties and stakeholders to have one point of access for any agency or authority budget in the state. Information is accessible, accurate, timely, and quickly obtained, leading to enormous efficiencies and vast amounts of paper saved.


Best Application Serving a Public Organization's Business Needs

Georgia Department of Public Safety, for the Overweight Truck Information System

The Overweight Truck Information System (OTIS) was designed and developed to manage the issuance and assessment processes for overweight violations of commercial vehicles on Georgia roads, and