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AFDW sweeps NCR military comptroller awards

  • Published
  • By Aletha Frost
  • AFDW Public Affairs
AIR FORCE DISTRICT OF WASHINGTON --  Each year, the American Society of Military Comptrollers (ASMC) recognizes their top professional Military comptrollers in the field of financial management within the Department of Defense agencies, military services, and the Coast Guard. At this year's National Capital Regional Professional Development Institute, AFDW/A8 garnered six out of nine of the awards presented. 

"The ASMC Washington Chapter 2008 annual awards are extremely competitive with more than 2,700 members here in the National Capital Region," said Col. Micah E. Killion, AFDW/A8 director of Programs and Financial Management. "The fact that AFDW/A8 swept six of the nine possible award categories is extremely impressive and reflects highly on the outstanding AFDW team."

Recipients of this year's awards are:

Mr. Geno Rucci III - AFDW, chief Financial Accounting Operations Division
Mr. Geno Rucci won the Accounting and Finance Award. He expertly managed the vast AFDW financial accounting operations with $39 billion in active and prior year funds; comprising 23 agencies, 307 accounts and 89 appropriations, serving an array of over 430 commanders and resource managers in the National Capital Region and the United States. His "heavy-lifting" and special partnership with the network of resource managers, SAF/FM, AFDW, Army contracting and the Defense Finance and Accounting Service enabled more than $8 billion in annual Air Force budgets to successfully materialize into executable funding documents, obligations and payments. He ensured expert processing of 45,000 documents in support of Global War On Terrorism programs, mission contracts, inter-government projects, travel, purchase card, accounts receivable and civilian pay.

Ms. Yvonne E. Hannickel - AFDW, chief Programs and Budget Division
Ms. Yvonne E. Hannickel was presented the Budgeting Award. She far exceeded performance expectations in the Programming, Budgeting, and Execution of AFDW's $550 million portfolio. She expertly guided the AFDW programming and financial working groups to the first-ever AFDW FY10 Program Objective Memorandum submission and FY09 Execution Plan. Her brilliant justifications and articulate defenses at the Headquarters Air Force won acknowledgment of a $30 million AFDW baseline deficiency; thereby posturing AFDW leadership with the necessary funds to meet its strategic vision. She also creatively shielded AFDW from 45 percent of the normal Air Force Smart Operations 21st Century and HAF corporate bills. Ms. Hannickel enabled AFDW to fund $30 million in airfield improvements, $10 million in AFDW critical contract support, all GWOT requirements and $44 million for infrastructure upgrades. She also won FY08 HAF recognition of $14 million in critical debit collections and over $17.2 million for Base Realignment and Closure/Leased Space moves and renovations.

Mr. George M. Varga - AFDW, deputy Comptroller
Mr. George M. Varga received the Comptroller Award. He displayed outstanding comptrollership in each endeavor that he undertook during the course of the year. He reduced AFDW/A8's contractor bill by $1.4 million by creatively filling three critical positions within the budget division and reduced the civilian vacancy rate from 27 percent to five percent. Mr. Varga was the A8 lead for the Joint Basing Resources Exhibit for Joint Base Andrews/Naval Air Field Washington. He mapped the extremely complex installation support activity costs at Andrews AFB - including $350 million and 38 program elements - to the 14 major functions contained in the joint basing guidance. AFDW's Joint Base Andrews - Naval Air Field Washington was the only Air Force-led joint basing effort to complete its resourcing plan and memorandum of agreement on time. Mr. Varga's unique comptrollership ensured AFDW received nearly $117 million in unconstrained end-of-year dollars. His superb planning lent to the expedient execution of $62 million in key infrastructure and facility projects, including $16.6 million to begin work on the AFDW Commander's top priority--revitalization of the Andrews AFB airfield.

Ms. Jessica Kasper - AFDW, Budget Officer
Ms. Jessica Kasper received the Resource Management Award. She flawlessly prepared, analyzed and justified budget execution plans and resources valued at $650 million for AFDW, three Wings, one group and five Air Force elements, supporting more than 50,000 Air Force members. Her meticulous management skills assured accountability for $19 million in AFDW organizational accounts. She organized AFDW staff's unfunded request process by validating 56 requirements and ensured funding for projects was available. Ms. Kasper reconciled 23 government purchase card accounts and recouped $14,000 in double charges to accounts. She also defended the AFDW budget program to HAF and garnered $17.3 million in end-of-year fall-out funds used towards AFDW mission success.

Mr. Tod T. Haviland - Financial Systems Administrator
Mr. Tod T. Haviland was presented the Contractor Support Award. He was handpicked to train civilian pay service administrators at the Army Management Staff College. He excelled as a client support administrator by resolving 300 computer errors in minimum time and no loss of services. He revamped the information technology equipment process and greatly enhanced equipment security and tracking, all the while helping account for $500,000 in equipment with zero discrepancies. He implemented plans to reduce office equipment by 80 percent and identified $125,000 in underutilized servers. Mr. Haviland created concise sequence query language scripts to identify civilian pay irregularities before DFAS processing. He also completed 200 preventive maintenance inspections, extending equipment service life by 75 percent.

Team Achievement Award
The AFDW Comptroller and A8 Deputy Director, Mr. Donald W. Henney, accepted the Team Achievement Award on behalf of AFDW A8 for the successful stand-up of the virtual Financial Service Desk. The virtual FSD provided quantum improvements in customer service for civilian and military pay, travel pay, and financial systems support to 15,000 customers in the NCR and more than 25,000 additional customers worldwide, to include deployed personnel. The FSD uses standard service processes, integrated team, and enabling technologies to compensate for a 75 percent reduction in financial services manpower in the NCR brought on by the Air Force Program Budget Decision 720, Force Shaping. Management teams using FSD are now able to quickly assess trouble ticket volume, identify system outages, work high-priority customers and track the status of 4,200 trouble tickets per month. The virtual FSD also benefited the Air Force Financial Service Center transformation team as a test bed until the Contact Center stands up later this year. Once operational, the AFFSC at Ellsworth AFB, South Dakota will service 750,000 Air Force customers worldwide.