Outstanding performance continues in government one level below elected officials.

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Martha Dorris founded The Service to the Citizen Awards in 2018 to honor and celebrate the successes of champions of change delivering outstanding service to citizens. To honor these champions, she organized #STTCAwards as a kick off to the Public Service Recognition Week. I attended the celebration along with 180 government officials, corporate officials, industry sponsors, and luminaries from the Administration and Congress.

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As a judge, we selected Dr. Paul Lawrence, Under Secretary for Benefits, from the Department of Veterans Affairs as the Government Executive of the Year and Tony D'Emidio, Partner at McKinsey Company as the Industry Executive of the Year. There were over 65 individuals and teams selected for their customer experience achievements. Award winners represented the federal government, state governments of Maryland and Montana and, internationally, British Columbia, Canada.  We heard from Margaret Weichert, the Deputy Director for Management at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and Acting Director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), Senator Rob Portman (R-OH) and the Honorable Ro Khanna (D-CA), both honored as Co-Legislative Executives of the Year and Matt Lira, Senior Advisor to the President for Innovation Policy emphasized that Improving service to the citizens is clearly a non-partisan issue.

 

Leading companies supporting improving the citizen';s experience with government provided support for the event, including Maximus Federal, Cisco, Deloitte, Highpoint Digital, Medallia, Senture, Accenture, Grant Thornton, TeraThink, Kastling Group, and Adobe.  

 

For the past 30 years, Martha has been an activist supporting the use of technology to provide better service to the citizens. She created The Service to the Citizen Awards Program to address one of the primary challenges in improving the customer experience - recognizing the hard work and dedication of these dedicated public servants.

 

Currently, while the media and national attention focus on elected officials and their debates, it is reassuring and uplifting to know that outstanding performance continues in government below the level of politically elected officials.

 

To learn about the award winning stories, see www.servicetothecitizenawards.org.  Photos and a video

will be available in the coming weeks.