Rising Star: Liz Dean

The National Institutes of Health’s governmentwide acquisition contract system is a cornerstone of federal IT, and Liz Dean is committed to making it work better for both contract holders and government customers.

As a key player in MetroStar Systems’ work with the NIH Information Technology Acquisition and Assessment Center, Dean is responsible for ensuring a positive, productive user experience with the NITAAC website and its Electronic Government Ordering System (e-GOS). In her first year on the project, she worked with clients and development teams to reimagine the catalog for the CIO-CS GWAC for IT commodity products, the process by which contract holders enter their award information and the user’s journey through the e-GOS solicitation process.

Dean repeatedly jumped in wherever help was needed — conducting user acceptance testing for all software enhancements, for example. She also made a point of sharing key knowledge with others and led application training for colleagues.

She continually looks for opportunities to move projects along, and her efforts are helping NITAAC expand and enabling MetroStar to apply lessons learned to other government projects.