Rising Star: Haley Van Dyck

Haley Van Dyck, a policy analyst at OMB, played a key role in creating the Digital Government Strategy.

Haley Van Dyck

Age: 26

Organization: Office of Management and Budget

Title: Policy Analyst on Open Data, Online and Mobile Technology

Nominated for: Identifying and taking advantage of the opportunity to bring the Web reform and mobility strategy efforts together in the more comprehensive and holistic Digital Government Strategy.

First IT mentor: Professor Lew Friedland at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He planted the seed for an invaluable lesson in federal IT: It's never about the technology, it's about how people use technology to impact agency missions.

What you're most proud of accomplishing on the job: Being part of a brilliant and dedicated team of people working for Steve VanRoekel to increase government efficiency through the smart use of technology.

Career highlight: Being part of the incredible team that leveraged new mobile and online technologies to help elect President Barack Obama. We didn't sleep very much, but we had a sense that the team was making history.

Your advice for a government IT wannabe: Make friends with a lawyer, a developer and a "champion" within your agency, and you'll be surprised at how much you can get done.

What do you enjoy most about working in government IT: The opportunity to work with some of government’s finest public servants — feds and contractors alike — to increase government efficiency and save taxpayer dollars.

Favorite job-related bookmarks/apps: Remember the Milk, Evernote, GitHub

Meet the rest of the 2012 Rising Star winners.