13th Annual GCN awards gala
Before an audience of more than 1,000 federal and industry systems executives at the 13th annual GCN awards gala in Washington earlier this month, the Army's David Borland and the FBI's James J. Jasinski accepted agency executive of the year awards.
By Tony Lee OrrGCN StaffBefore an audience of more than 1,000 federal and industry systems executives at the 13th annual GCN awards gala in Washington earlier this month, the Army's David Borland and the FBI's James J. Jasinski accepted agency executive of the year awards.Jasinski, program manager for the FBI's Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System, received his civilian agency executive award for his leadership of the IAFIS program. Through IAFIS, the FBI has converted to digital fingerprint gathering and storage after more than 100 years of managing prints on index-sized cards. But Jasinski said IAFIS fans need to sit back and watch because they ain't seen nothing yet.The IAFIS team is now striving to integrate its criminal master file with the fingerprint systems of other police organizations, he said.The $640 million system, the bureau's largest information technology project, houses the fingerprint images and criminal histories of about 38 million people. It is designed to run searches using 10 fingerprints.But IAFIS, which runs on 26 Hewlett-Packard Convex SPP2000 servers attached to 50 Symbios 3000 RAID storage arrays from LSI Logic Corp. of Milpitas, Calif., has proved its flexibility, he said.In March, a check of partial latent prints gathered at a crime scene identified a suspect in the April 1991 beating and strangulation death of an 87-year-old Boston woman, Jasinski said. IAFIS also recently gave investigators their first real break in a serial rape case that ranged over three years and involved victims in three states. 'It was a case where we just had to wait for technology to catch up,' Jasinski said.Although the bureau expected the system to take at least 24 hours to complete searches involving latent prints, IAFIS on average has been resolving such requests in just more than six hours, he said.Next year, the FBI plans to run a pilot that will integrate the system with Ohio's fingerprint database, which uses four flat-scanned prints rather than the standard 10-fingerprint method, he said.In accepting his award, Jasinski described himself as only a player on a much larger team that included many FBI workers as well as contract employees from the companies that helped the bureau build and deploy IAFIS.Jasinski, who had a private law practice before joining the FBI 21 years ago, has been the bureau's chief contracting officer, a bureau litigation lawyer and a field investigative officer. He has a bachelor's degree from the State University of New York at Buffalo and a law degree from the Albany Law School.Borland'the Army's deputy chief information officer and vice director of information systems for command, control, communications and computers'also acknowledged his colleagues when he got the Defense Department executive of the year award. He said Army systems officials and systems contractors have one person to please: the warfighter.Systems workers in the service are going to continue to work on initiatives to support the Army's digital transformation, he said.'We'll continue to lead the way on the joint tactical radio system and expect to give a lot of attention to the issue of information assurance,' Borland said.The Army needs to invest in data protection as well as develop policies and validation practices for systems security, Borland said. 'We need to work on the whole ball of wax,' he said.Borland previously spearheaded DOD's Biometrics Center and oversaw a security funding increase for the Army's computer networks.As to outsourcing efforts, Borland said the Army will likely take it slow, monitoring the Navy-Marine Corps Intranet program. 'We are excited about the possibilities that NMCI may offer,' Borland said. 'We hope they succeed, but we're going to watch and see what happens.'Borland has been vice DISC4 since 1994 and the service's deputy CIO since 1996. Before that, he held numerous contract management and acquisition posts in the Army, including a stint as deputy director of the Information Systems Selection and Acquisition Agency from 1984 to 1989.Borland served in the Air Force from 1966 to 1970. He earned a bachelor's degree in business administration from Central Missouri State University and a master's degree in finance from George Washington University.
The Army's deputy CIO, David Borland, addresses the GCN awards banquet after being honored as Defense Department executive of the year.
 | The FBI's James J. Jasinski addresses the awards gala after receiving the civilian agency executive award for his management of IAFIS. |
 | From left, the Army's Capt. Samuel Williams, David Borland, Lt. Col. Douglas Judd and Phillip Loranger talk after Borland receives the award for Defense Department executive of the year. |
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