MERIT Awards

By Lisa Leahy, OIT

The State of Maine is operating in a challenging environment. More than ever, the Office of Information Technology is critical to the continued mission of delivering efficient and effective services to Maine citizens. Many individuals and many teams have stood out as leaders and role models in this endeavor and we would like to recognize them.

The Maine Excellence Recognition in Information Technology (MERIT) Team Award recognizes the value and importance of multidisciplinary teamwork. The CIO and the IT Executive Committee recognize that such teamwork is vital to advancing citizen service, information sharing, and good government.

The Individual MERIT award recognizes outstanding leadership by an individual who has gone above and beyond in their respective technological area whether the outcome is a service, a product or a dramatic increase in job satisfaction due to this person's contribution.

Deadline:

Nominations must be submitted via e-mail and be received no later than 9/11/09.

Awards Presentation:

Winners will be notified by the Award Team and awards will be presented at the Maine Digital Government Summit on October 6, 2009.

2008 Merit Award Winners:

MERIT Individual Award: Jason Tourtelotte

Jason Tourtelotte's hard work, dedication with a pro-active approach on the development and implementation of the Core Status and News (CSNwebsite) is but one example of his leadership and dedication.

The actual CSN website was the fruit of Jason's labor. Jason compiled all the web pages, the layout, and wrote scripts that would gather the input of sources. The CSN site draws its information from the following areas:

WebNM3 (the WAN maps)
Scripts that are utilized to query the Enterprise SQL status
Oracle status screen is from the Oracle group
CSC Status
The OIT admin staff enter the attendance list
RFCs are coming from FootPrints and the work of the CAB group

Over the last several months, Jason has received valuable feedback from many people within the Core Technology Services that have assisted him in the development of a robust tool above and beyond what management ever expected.

Jason is also responsible for the Loadrunner performance software that Core Technology Services utilizes for deployment certifications. Jason has grasped the complexity of the system and coordination that is required by all Core Technology Services areas without any issues. He is a self motivator within the Windows Server support group and exceeds the expectations set by his peers and manager.

MERIT Team Award: Client Technologies Call Center

The Call Center within Client Technologies has undergone a series of necessary but unsettling relocations and rearrangements over the last two years. The purpose of these changes has been to build a team capable of handling the IT needs of the enterprise that is Maine State government. The percentage of calls answered on a monthly basis had climbed from the 70% range to around an average of 95%. This is a huge commitment and dedication on everyone's part to ensure that a constant is maintained. With a gross number of calls at about 4500 this translates to an additional 700 calls answered per month. On a recent day the team actually achieved a call rate of 100%.

The Call Center continues to raise the bar for themselves and are not satisfied with maintaining the status quo. While continuing to increase the calls answered, they are also providing a better customer service by fixing a higher percentage of calls remotely. Over the last 5 months they have increased the number of first call resolution drastically and continue to increase these numbers.

Article posted on: August 17, 2009
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