In December, the Defense Department's chief information officer plans to recognize the best of the best teams and individuals within the CIO community. This will be the 23rd year the DOD CIO has recognized top talent as part of its awards program.
This year, the office of the DOD CIO would like to expand the reach of the awards program and draw in a much larger number of award nominees than it has in the past, said Sam Kassem, program manager for the DOD CIO Awards program.
"We know there are a lot of top performers out there in the community," Kassem said. "We want to recognize the best among them. But for that to happen, their agency leadership needs to nominate them and send packages up to us for consideration. There's still plenty of time to do that."
The annual awards program recognizes individuals or teams for exceptional achievements in delivering capabilities and management practices that advance the strategic mission and objectives of the DOD CIO digital modernization strategy and support the National Defense Strategy priorities.
Capabilities and functional areas covered by the program include: cybersecurity; information enterprise; electromagnetic spectrum superiority; command, control and communications; information technology and cyber budget and resourcing, cyber workforce, records management and IT accessibility; and special access IT programs.
Eligibility for the DOD CIO awards includes those supporting the military departments and services; combatant commands and joint staff; principal staff assistants; and defense agencies and field activities.
The performance period under consideration is July 2022 through June 2023, Kassem said. Awards package submissions must be turned in by Aug. 6, and winners will be announced in early October.
The awards ceremony will be in held in December at the Pentagon and will feature a special guest speaker; DOD CIO John B. Sherman will present the awards.
"For more than two decades now we've recognized the best performers in the CIO community with our annual awards program," Kassem said. "But this year, Mr. Sherman wants to open the aperture and see a lot of nominations come into the office for consideration. Really, the best way for top performers to be recognized is for their own leadership to promote them, and this is the avenue to do that."
Agencies interested in submitting nominees for the 2023 CIO Awards program can find information and submission instructions at the program's SharePoint site. Visitors to the site will need a CAC and must request permission to view content.
Finalized submission packages can be submitted to the CIO award program office at osd.mc-alex.dod-cio.mbx.dod-cio-awards@mail.mil.