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  • By FCW Staff
  • Feb 26, 2007
Piatt scores a new gig
Bill Piatt, who is CGI’s vice president of Global Public Sector Marketing and chairman of the Industry Advisory Council, is leaving CGI to become chief information officer of the World Bank’s International Finance Corp.

It is something of a dream job for Piatt, “leading the IT function within the premier private-sector development institution in the world,” he said.

“This is an opportunity that I just cannot pass up,” Piatt said in an e-mail message to friends. “The IFC, the private-sector financing arm of the bank, is experiencing dramatic growth — and success — in its work around the world. As the IFC undertakes a massive decentralization of its operations, I will have the opportunity to architect and deliver advanced capabilities to support staff working under the most challenging conditions imaginable. It is indeed a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to marry my profession, IT, with my passion, international development.”

This is a subject near and dear to Piatt’s heart. Before he was the CIO of the General Services Administration and in the private sector, Piatt was CIO of the Peace Corps.

IAC’s leadership changes
Piatt’s new job has spurred a change in leadership at the Industry Advisory Council because the World Bank is not an IAC member.

Venkatapathi Puvvada, the organization’s executive vice chairman, will take over, effective March 21. He will complete the remainder of Piatt’s term, which ends June 30.

The committee decided that Puvvada, chief technology officer and vice president of strategic programs at Unisys Federal Systems, will assume the chairman’s role at the March IAC membership meeting.

In a statement IAC released, Piatt said, “it is with mixed feelings that I announce my resignation as IAC chair. It has been a great honor to serve as the leader of this exemplary organization. I am also extremely proud of what we have accomplished over the past year and excited about what lies ahead for IAC. However, the opportunity to join the World Bank’s International Finance Corp. and support their work building a vibrant private sector to alleviate poverty around the world is one I could not turn down.”

In his statement, Puvvada expressed gratitude to Piatt for his contributions over the years and his leadership during the past eight months.

“Bill’s visionary and inclusive leadership embodies the true spirit of IAC and has been a key factor in enabling IAC’s successful contributions over the last year,” Puvvada said. “We wish him continued success as he moves on to this next stage of his career.”

A committee is accepting nominations for Executive Committee positions that will be available for election to a 2007-2009 term, including that of the executive vice chairman, who will then become chairman in 2008.

IAC is a member of the American Council for Technology.
Excellence.gov winnersWashington, D.C., police officers can now find information on potential suspects in about two seconds. With a keystroke, the officers can find suspects’ pictures, pictures of tattoos or other distinguishing marks, previous arrests and convictions, and upcoming appointments with their parole officers or other city law enforcement agents.

Using the Justice Information Sharing System (Justis), police officers, the federal and local court systems, federal agencies, and other law enforcement agencies are integrated on one online system to  find and use data more easily.

Today, Justis earned a place among the top five projects honored at the Industry Advisory Council’s Excellence.gov Awards ceremony. This was the first time IAC honored a nonfederal project as a top five finalist.

IAC named 20 finalists in January and recognized all of them Feb. 20 at a luncheon in Washington, where it also named the top five projects.

“When I’m asked, ‘How can the government drive effectiveness?’ I say, ‘We need to deliver better information to citizens or decision-makers,’ “ said Clay Johnson, the Office of Management and Budget’s deputy director for management and the keynote speaker at the event. “These 20 projects are wonderful examples of this.”

The Criminal Justice Coordinating Council started work on Justis in 1998, implemented it in 2002 and upgraded the application three times, including in January 2006, officials said.

“We needed a system that would connect at whatever capability the agencies had at the time,” said Richard Catalon, information technology liaison officer for the council. “Now it gives real-time information to everyone.”

Nancy Ware, the council’s executive director, said 22 federal and city agencies use Justis, which consolidated and integrated data from more than 70 systems.

“It really is a search engine that reaches into other agencies’ databases with the correct security rules,” said Brook Hedge, a judge in the Washington, D.C., Superior Court.

Along with Justis, IAC honored the following as top five projects:

  • The Disaster Management.gov project at the Homeland Security Department.
  • The E-Rulemaking e-government project at the Environmental Protection Agency.
  • The Federal Aviation Administration’s Knowledge Services Network.
  • The Department of Veterans Affairs’ MyHealtheVet.
  • IAC received 115 entries for the seventh annual award.

— Jason Miller

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