Yesterday, the Industry Advisory Council's (IAC) Collaboration and Transformation Shared Interest Group (SIG) announced the five federal agency program winners for the sixth annual Excellence.Gov awards program who were selected for demonstrating best practices in information sharing for federally-led IT program implementations. The announcement was made at a luncheon held in Washington, DC keynoted by Congressman Tom Davis, which honored the twenty programs selected as finalists for the 2006 awards.

The "Top 5" winners were recognized for their achievements in collaborative technology implementations based on the following criteria: effectiveness of meeting the objective in terms of overall mission, business process and service improvement; effectiveness of the approach and degree of collaboration across organizations; and incorporation of industry and government best practices and standards related to information sharing.

"Top 5" Excellence.Gov Award Winners for 2006 (alphabetically by program name):

Bidirectional Health Information Exchange, Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs - Bidirectional Health Information Exchange creates a secure, bidirectional, real time exchange of outpatient pharmacy, drug/food allergy, laboratory results, radiology text results and demographic data on shared patients from the Department of Veterans Affairs' Computerized Patient Record System and the Department of Defense's Composite Health Care System through reuse and enhancement of Federal Health Information Exchange assets.

Geospatial One Stop eGovernment Initiative, Department of the Interior - Geospatial One Stop (GOS) is an intergovernmental partnership making it faster, easier, and less expensive for all governments to get the geospatial data they need for their missions. GOS includes a portal to provide access to geospatial datasets maintained by thousands of partners, cost-sharing partnering mechanisms on future data acquisitions, and standards to facilitate easy information sharing from multiple sources. The availability of the reliable, federally maintained and interactive GOS portal holds the potential for avoided labor costs and website startup and maintenance costs.

Interagency Data Exchange Application, Department of State - Interagency Data Exchange Application (IDEA) is an interagency application that facilitates both the issuance of visas and the protection of the United States by checking background information on immigrant and non-immigrant visa applicants. IDEA saves processing time and money through automation, so that agencies no longer have to re-enter data at every point along the traveler's way or have information bounce back and forth between agencies. Three domestic sites, together with the overseas posts, are responsible for processing visa petitions, and all processing occurs after they are approved by the Department of Homeland Security through IDEA.

National Sex Offender Public Registry, Department of Justice - The National Sex Offender Public Registry (NSOPR) is the only no-cost government-sponsored application for citizen users that links state and territory public sex offender registries throughout the country. The technology uses web services and the Department of Justice's Global Justice Data Model to establish a link between already built and maintained registries. The Department provides a web services template to states, which can be customized to work with existing registry systems. Citizens can identify sex offenders in their neighborhoods and beyond with a single Internet search. NSOPR delivers matched results from public registry information nationwide based on a name, state, county, city/town, or zip code.

Radio Frequency In-Transit Visibility, Department of the Army - The Radio Frequency In-Transit Visibility (RF-ITV) system uses Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags to provide the military services and Department of Defense organizations with worldwide visibility of military cargo. The RF-ITV architecture is a worldwide system of interrogators that read RFID tags that are attached to shipping containers, vehicles, equipment, and pallets as they pass interrogator locations. The RF-ITV server network processes the location information with owner and commodity information about each shipment, and sends the latest updates to over 21 different automation systems and utilities that support all the US Armed services, USTRANSCOM, DLA, and several Coalition Partners (foreign military).

This year's "Top 5" Excellence.Gov award winners were selected by a panel of 23 judges, representing both government and industry after reviewing more than 80 entries and evaluating each on the criteria listed above. The mission of IAC is to foster improved communication and understanding between government and industry. In support of this mission, the Collaboration and Transformation SIG, formerly the eGovernment SIG, provides a forum for government and industry to identify, explore and address issues that promote the implementation of IT-enabled government change that will benefit society.