Three government leaders honored for innovations

Patients at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington now have more control over their treatments thanks to a Web-based initiative spearheaded by a government employee.

Retired Col. Jill Phillips, a former nurse practitioner at Walter Reed, founded the HEALTHeFORCES program in 2000. The initiative informs patients about treatments, provides feedback from medical professionals, keeps tabs on records, and supplies doctors with detailed medical histories, among other services. Its philosophy holds that patients should be proactive in their recovery.

In testimony on the program's Web site, retired Lt. Col. John Lopez said the program works because, "You receive the support of the doctors, but you are forced to take care of and improve yourself." Lopez said he developed asthma after retirement, and as a result of HEALTHeFORCES, he "studied the medicines I took and became an expert on my condition, for myself...I have not gone to the emergency room for many, many years."

Walter Reed said the program has "measurably improved the wellness and daily lives of patients with such conditions as diabetes, high blood pressure and chronic pulmonary disease." It has been expanded to military medical sites around the country, including Womack Army Medical Center in Ft. Bragg, N.C., and Tripler Army Medical Center in Honolulu.

Phillips was honored Thursday by the Council for Excellence in Government, a nonprofit group that works to improve government performance, which awarded her the Senior Fellow Award for Public Service Excellence.

Council Vice President Judith Douglas said Phillips "used her strong negotiation skills to ensure buy-in from the Army's top brass" and teamwork to involve technical experts and the medical community in her initiative.

Phillips was one of three government leaders the council honored. Michael Janosov received the Leadership in Action award for his counterintelligence work in Iraq. Janosov volunteered for deployment to the country in October 2004 and served as deputy director of the Strategic Counterintelligence Directorate, where he provided support for the Iraqi elections, among other accomplishments, Douglas said.

John Chambliss received the Achieving Results award for his information technology innovations at the Internal Revenue Service, which so far have saved the agency $2.6 million, according to Douglas. She said when Chambliss started his position at the IRS' Tennessee Computing Center, "He found a disjointed hodgepodge of tools and methodologies to manage the IRS data network infrastructure," which he transformed into an efficient, money-saving network.

The award winners are graduates of the Council's Excellence in Government or e-Government Fellows programs, which offer a year of training for selected government employees in leadership and seek to cultivate relationships between agency leaders.