MERIT Award Winners 2007

By Lisa Leahy, OIT

2007 Maine Excellence Recognition In Technology awards were given out at the Maine Digital Government Summit .

MERIT Individual Award: Eric Erskine

Eric is the Applications and GIS Support Manager for MaineDOT. His group is responsible for keeping the DOT Oracle systems up, running, and working well for users.

This year Eric was also responsible for the interface development within DOT for AdvantageME. DOT lost some key business managers this year as well and Eric picked up the support work that they did. Because of Eric's support and mentoring, construction contractors are getting paid on time and the new users are coming up to speed quickly.

Eric has implemented a support model inside the DOT Applications & GIS Support Unit where there is enough documentation in a common area that anyone inside this unit can solve a problem with any of the systems.

Recently this was proven to work well twice when the key people were out and a problem came up that would have delayed multi-million dollar payments. Staff who had not worked on this system were able to get the problem fixed in time to make the payments.

Eric also implemented a Work Request tracking system that

  • takes in user requests for systems work, keeps a status
  • is available to DOT users to monitor
  • Eric has set aside a week every month for staff to focus on completing these requests.
  • Eric's creative reward system to mark this event is homemade chili on the Friday of Work Request Week.

Team Award: IBM Mainframe Support Team: Ann Salverson-Seales and Nick Zarahurchuck

Ann and Nick are the only members of this team within the Core Technologies Group.

Working in tandem, these two support the State of Maine 's IBM mainframe environment. This platform supports several critical applications:

  • Maine Revenue Service's MATS application
  • MFASIS-HR
  • DHHS NECSES

The technical environment is incredibly complex. Probably the most remarkable thing of note about this team is that the work they do is largely unknown even inside OIT, quite simply because they have created and maintained a rock solid application hosting environment. This alone is enough to merit recognition, but it gets even better.

Customers have offered comments like:

"Nick and Ann have the service oriented mindset that frankly, everyone in IT would be well served to emulate"

This is a high performance team focused on service, results and customer satisfaction.

MERIT Honorable Mention Individuals:

Mike Biddle – Office of Substance Abuse – Behavioral Heath Program

Instrumental in the Cognos 8 program implementation, he supports the data and research teams, has taken the time to understand and help OSA with data systems and reporting needs. Mike juggles all of the Behavioral Health IT needs without putting any of their many programs needs on the back burner.

Chris Oberg – CORIS Financial System

Chris provided fundamental input into the design of the system, developed test scripts, prepared training materials and conducted the classes, fully engaged in post deployment support, his support ranged from assisting staff at each institution as they sold inmates canteen items to leading the Business Center with bank reconciliation efforts for all accounts. Even under stressful situations, Chris fosters positive relationships, consistently treats others with respect and gracefully accepts criticism.

MERIT Honorable Mention Teams:

DEP web team: Hetty Richardson, Paula Ripley, Karl Wilkins, Karen Anderson

This team was nominated for making their department web presence accessible. The progress made by this team is truly remarkable. In fall of 2005 1% of their web site, 4800 pages, was accessible. Over the last 2 years, this has risen to 100%. No other organization of comparable size has achieved nearly so much with so few resources.

Com Vault team: Bob Tremaine, Jon Richard, Dawnna Pease, Nancy Parmenter, Ed Lincoln, David Johnson, Sharon Horne, Joy Elwell, Justin Curtis, Andy Benner, Peter Bouchard, Don Loud

The OIT Enterprise Operations group is in the process of implementing an Enterprise backup solution, CommVault, which will replace all the diverse backup systems currently in place at the State. The project team is now nearing completion of Phase I which is bringing servers located at EDOC and CMCC into the new environment. There were no dedicated resources to this project so this progress was made while the team continued to provide support in their individual areas of responsibility. Their efforts have been key to moving this critical project forward and those efforts are very much appreciated.

Realty Management System Implementation Team: Scott Avore, Joe Larrabee, Jim MacFarland

The Realty Management System automates the process of acquiring land rights for transportation projects. This system was developed for Maine DOT by a vendor using a prototype from Virginia DOT. It integrates closely with the DOT project management system and represents working across disciplines in OIT.

Client Technologies Services

Today, Client Technologies has become a single service organization.  It is arguable that no other group of people in OIT has yet been through such transformational change and lived through as much stress.   While there is much yet to be done, and while in this business change is the only constant, this team has committed itself to excellence in service and serves as a shining example of how to "Do IT."