Collaboration at the Forefront of the 7th Annual Awards Celebration
6/30/2023 7:35:54 PM
On Friday, June 23, Minnesota IT Services (MNIT) held its Annual Awards ceremony to recognize service excellence and the honorees' dedication to furthering MNIT’s mission, vision, values, and priorities. The awards are given in several categories to best reflect MNIT’s culture, staff, and ongoing work. Learn more about this year’s finalists and honorees.
The Employee of the Year Award recognizes an employee who embodies the mission of the agency, produces excellent work, and displays characteristics admired and valued by colleagues. The finalists in this category include:
Nancy Skuta is the 2023 Employee of the Year honoree for her tireless work in vulnerability management. Nancy recognizes the need to continuously improve the state’s security posture in the face of ever-changing cyber threats. As a senior information security analyst, she often goes above and beyond her duties to detect threats and find solutions to fix them. Her ability to build relationships across enterprise security teams and help them respond rapidly to new and evolving threats makes her an asset to MNIT. She is recognized as an expert in her field and presents on vulnerability management nationally and locally.
The Manager of the Year Award recognizes an outstanding director, manager, or supervisor who is a motivational leader, maintains a steady flow of information between executives and employees, and makes decisions based on organizational direction. The finalists in this category include:
Elizabeth Guidarelli is the 2023 Manager of the Year honoree for her ability to deliver continuous business value. Her balanced combination of technical and business strengths helps turn ideas into reality and build great partnerships across MnDOT and MNIT. Her success is visible in many projects and platforms, be it to create the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) tool app; partnering as co-owner of a very large multi-year accounting modernization program; promoting the IT Trainee program as a pathway into State service; or embracing emerging technologies such as Microsoft Power Platform.
Elizabeth, who has 25 years of experience partnering with the MnDOT, serves as the application and data development IS manager and leads a team of more than 45 people.
The Project of the Year Award recognizes a project that produced a deliverable of significant value for one or more business partners as a part of MNIT’s project portfolio. The finalists in this category include:
The Frontline Worker Pay program is the 2023 Project of the Year honoree for its cross-agency collaboration to process over 1.2 million applications to distribute over $500M to frontline workers in less than six months. The program balanced fraud prevention while removing barriers for eligible applicants. The success of the Frontline Worker Pay program demonstrated the importance of clear goals, a commitment to excellence, and steady leadership.
The collaboration among multiple state agencies, vendors, and other stakeholders was marked by planning, creativity, teamwork, and data-driven decision-making. It led to the successful implementation, management, and execution of the project. The Frontline Worker Pay program modeled how to plan and collaborate to deliver technology solutions to quickly improve the lives of Minnesotans.
The Team of the Year Award recognizes an operational team that supports an existing product or service by providing outstanding, customer-focused service. The finalists in this category include:
The MMIS Health Care BA Team 19 is the 2023 Team of the Year honoree for its successful delivery of healthcare solutions related to COVID-19. The Medicaid Management Information System (MMIS) is an integrated health care coverage system. Partnering with DHS Health Care Administration (HCA), the team helped ensure people gained and retained health care coverage throughout the public health emergency. This allowed people to seek and receive COVID-19 testing and treatment as needed while retaining coverage during the pandemic.
The Partner of the Year award recognizes an agency for establishing and supporting a trusted partnership with MNIT.
The Minnesota Department of Public Safety is the 2023 Partner of the Year honoree for its demonstrated commitment—in its operations, services, and practices—to serve Minnesotans better, remove structural inequity, promote accessibility and transparency, and improve the delivery of IT services throughout the state. The DPS teams partnered with MNIT to deliver a language access project, a Project of the Year finalist for the Driver and Vehicle Services (DVS) that uses new AI technology to help 67% of Minnesota’s non-English-speaking population use DVS services. It empowers non-English speakers, making them feel more confident to engage with a state agency. This project is one of many innovative partnerships between MNIT and DPS, alongside DVS in a Box and the Minnesota Crime Data Explorer. DPS also embraced Minnesota’s Modernization Playbook, Agile development, and product management, focusing on innovation, cybersecurity, and better customer experiences.
Nominations for the awards opened on March 15, 2023, and closed on April 28, 2023. MNIT’s Employee Recognition Committee (ERC) reviewed and scored each nomination. Those with the highest average scores became finalists. MNIT’s executive team chose an honoree from the finalists that closely matched the organization’s mission, values, and priorities.
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