Awarded to: Sarah Campbell - State of Michigan

An IT Training Analyst for the Client Service Center at the State of Michigan.  Sarah has successfully trained 50 new hires for the State of Michigan's largest IT help desk, in just the last year. She did so while reducing the time to train a new hire by 25%, with no degradation in training standards. In addition to streamlining the training process, Sarah also created a scorecard for trainers as well as revamping the training assessment program. This allows the CSC to effectively gauge agent progress while assessing trainers’ effectiveness. These enhancements enable the CSC to effectively monitor both agent progress and trainer performance. All the new hire classes have provided feedback after completing their training, and they have consistently praised the new hire process as the best they have experienced. Recognizing the importance of engagement in adult learning, Sarah introduced gamification to the training process. This initiative has resulted in more interactive and engaging sessions, enhancing information retention among new hires. In addition, she redesigned the CSC's weekly staff meetings to be more impactful, using these sessions to present training and performance metrics directly to the entire team. All changes have been introduced while she also plans and schedules training for these meetings. Along with all other training responsibilities, Sarah jumped at the opportunity to spearhead the CSCs conversion to a new call center platform. This process will completely change the way the CSC conducts daily operations. She submersed herself into being the subject matter expert by created a training program for the entire CSC. She meticulously worked with her team of trainers to go step-by-step through every aspect of the new platform. By doing this Sarah was able to outline every action required in the new system, allowing her to identify and resolve potential issues before the system's launch. Her hard work and preparation ensured that over 100 staff members, in a multitude of different roles, were trained and familiar with the system before implementing the new process. Sarah was also crucial in the HDI call center recertification process, achieving a perfect score from the auditor in Skill Assessment and IT Training Plans. Her oversight on the Quality Management section earned the State of Michigan CSC a perfect score in that area, helping to gain recertification for a third consecutive cycle. She collected and analyzed data for our Quality Rewards and Recognition program, ensuring that agents are rewarded for the excellent work that they do. Sarah Campbell has been exemplary in her role as the Training Analyst in the CSC ensuring Customer Satisfaction is over 97%. Her dedication and skill are unmatched. She has become the gauge in which all training is measured.

Awarded to:  Tate Swan

Tate is a member of the

Michigan Department of Management & Budget Client Service Center.  Tate Swan has demonstrated exceptional skill, dedication, and a remarkable balance of technical brilliance and customer service excellence. Tate has always shown an admiration for technology, beginning his career path as a student intern in computer networking and servers at Calhoun Christian Schools. His commitment to expanding his technical knowledge continued through a two-year hands-on course at the Calhoun Area Career Center, where he focused on cybersecurity, software, and hardware support. Following his high school graduation, Tate embarked on a professional journey with TEK Systems and secured a job with the CSC as a contractor. Only a year later his exceptional performance earned him a full-time position as a State of Michigan employee. Despite having only minimal prior experience in customer service roles at Walmart and Kentucky Fried Chicken, Tate’s dedication to merging his technical knowledge with a customer-centric approach has significantly contributed to the success of the Client Service Center. During the past year and a half Tate has actively improved the CSC through his volunteer efforts and willingness to go above and beyond his standard responsibilities. Tate’s performance in the Client Service Center has been nothing short of extraordinary. He has been named Agent of the Week three times, showcasing his consistently high performance and dedication. In both 2023 and 2024 (so far), he has been the top contender in receiving the most positive feedback and messages from clients. Additionally, he achieved Employee of the Month three times in 2023, as well as earning the highest honor of being named the CSC Employee of the Year for 2023. Notably, he was selected for cross-training in MiCJIN, our 24/7 helpdesk that supports all Michigan State Police. Through this certification he stepped up to support customers requiring MiCJIN assistance, demonstrating a commendable level of adaptability and a commitment to meeting the needs of our clients. These accolades underscore his exceptional work ethic and the high regard in which he is held by both clients and colleagues alike. Tate Swan embodies the qualities of an outstanding rookie through his dedication, technical prowess, and commitment to customer service. His rapid ascent from a newcomer to a leading performer in the DTMB Client Service Center is a testament to his hard work and talent. 

Tulip Time Eats

Awarded to:  City of Holland

The City of Holland’s Tulip Time brings many tourists to come and enjoy the tulips every year. It also brings some amazing food trucks with people always asking where they can get a certain product from the food trucks or want to compare prices before they venture out. City of Holland’s GIS Specialist, Alex Ebenstein, worked within his ESRI platform and marked out the locations with pictures of menus/prices for each food truck vendor and plotted them on an interactive website.  The website URLs Tuliptimeeats.cityofholland.com or tuliptimeeats.com were created for public access. There were a lot of positive responses from the public on the City of Holland’s social media pages after the tool was launched. City of Holland plans to continue to offer this website moving forward, going out each year to confirm locations and menus/prices and updating accordingly.

Historic Park Audio/Visual Improvements - Awarded to:  City of Westland

This project had a huge impact on the City of Westland’s residents. The Historical Park Commission Chair wanted to increase their programming at the City of Westland Historical Park. After some discussions between the Historical Park Chair and City of Westland IT Director, Craig Brown,  it was decided that monitors for streaming video in one of the buildings was a great idea, however, the Historical Park Commission had a limited budget.  The city IT Department had a couple of networkable monitors available, as spares in storage, and donated them to the Commission.  The City of Westland IT was able to set up a couple of 60” monitors in multiple buildings that have the ability to be networked, with a signage player that the city made available, or have video running from a presentation device or USB stick. This donation allowed the City of Westland to provide the Historical Park Commission a number of new and interesting ways to provide educational and entertaining information for residents that visit the Historical Park. It also provided them additional opportunity to bring in outside speakers who can utilize these monitors for presentations in the various buildings when previously they would have to use a projector and folding screen.  The collaboration between the City of Westland IT and Historic Park Commission, to utilize repurposed monitors for their needs, to improve their facilities and the experiences of their visitors was a win-win for everyone.

Michigan Clean Slate

Awarded to:  State of Michigan

Success and Measures Automatic Set Asides in support of the Michigan Clean Slate legislation went live, on-schedule on April 11th 2023. On day one: • 1,077,788 Misdemeanor convictions were Set Aside • 105,078 Felony convictions were Set Aside The resulted in the following impacts for Michigan citizens: • 842,593 distinct citizens benefited with at least one conviction Set Aside • 252,417 citizens were conviction-free on their Criminal History Record While these numbers are impressive, the ongoing impact adds even more value to the hard work and dedication of the project teams and their respective State of Michigan departments. The following results are the daily averages: • 2,504 Misdemeanor convictions Set Aside • 102 Felony convictions were Set Aside • 314 distinct citizens benefit with at least one conviction Set Aside • 177 citizens become conviction-free on their Criminal History Record These benefits to Michigan citizens occur largely without any effort by MSP staff members. This use of technology to perform the heavy lift, allows MSP staff members to focus their efforts on other tasks enabling them to further focus on the Mission of the MSP, “Provide the highest quality law enforcement and public safety services throughout Michigan.” (Mission Statement (michigan.gov)). Driving for Success The technical teams along with Subject Matter Experts for MSP Criminal History identified and performed extensive situational testing of the appropriate logic for the rules engine. With each additional round of testing, the project team was able to ensure the system would operate as intended. However, one challenge arose upon the extended project teams. To perform the automated Set Asides under the Clean Slate legislation, data from MDOC’s offender management systems is required. When intending to perform testing within the non-production environments for both MSP systems and MDOC systems, it became clear quickly that the data would not match for testing as each department had very different methods and schedules for the grooming and use of testing data in the non-production environments. This precluded full testing in these non-production environments. Another challenge identified highlighted that the legacy MDOC systems did not restrict manual data entry to match the expected format. While identified in the final months of testing prior to April 2023, MDOC business team members were able to work through their existing process and execute the necessary data fixes across thousands of records over the entire history of their information system datasets with long-lasting retention schedules. The technical teams came together to collaboratively identify a technical architecture and integrations across systems and IT divisions. Their partnership built web services which can be called upon as needed to exchange data. In the recent past, these integrations leveraged legacy integration methods operating in batch jobs.