Page 69 - FCW, November/December 2019

JONATHAN RIKSEN
Associate Partner and Client Leader, IBM
Jonathan Riksen joined IBM right after graduate school nearly a decade ago and has steadily expanded his role serving federal clients. In 2018, he began supporting the Department of Homeland Security with a special emphasis on Customs and Border Protection.
Riksen was instrumental in helping CBP use intelligent robotic process automation to move more than 350 million archived email messages into the agency’s new system. The RPA solution relied on 50 bots, supervised learning and machine learning to migrate some 30 terabytes of data
in a matter of weeks — orders of magnitude faster than the estimated 60 staff-months a manual process would have required.
In addition, he has enabled CBP to pursue a mainframe-as-a-service model and reduce the time and expense of maintaining traditional mainframes for legacy business systems. The new approach also improves cyber resiliency and positions the agency for future cloud flexibility.
Riksen, who earned “Best of IBM” recognition earlier this year for those efforts, has worked hard to share his insights with the broader federal IT
CHRISTOPHER RORVIG
Senior Consultant, Consulting Services, CGI Federal
Christopher Rorvig is that much- discussed but rarely seen entity in the government technology community’s talent search: a skilled developer with expertise in machine learning and artificial intelligence who wants to work in public-sector IT.
CGI hired Rorvig, a 2015 graduate of James Madison University, to provide development support for
a large federal web application. However, he quickly pivoted
to applying machine learning enhancements to CGI’s own operations. The application he developed, dubbed Maera, has been in production for over a year and has dramatically improved the accuracy, speed and consistency of CGI’s call center agents.
Although Maera originally focused on assisting with email-based queries, the tool is now being enhanced to power chatbots, text responses to queries, speech-to-text and text-to- speech functionality for voice calls, and mobile applications.
BLAKE M. SCATES
Digital Program Manager, Department of Veterans Affairs
Blake Scates recently earned the Department of Veterans Affairs’ prestigious ICARE (Integrity, Commitment, Advocacy, Respect and Excellence) award for making the agency’s websites more accessible to veterans.
It was recognition of his success
in eliminating more than 2 million Section 508 accessibility issues on the site and the fact that no matter what he does, his focus is on the veteran.
“Ultimately, I want to show how we’ve made a difference in the lives of the veterans we serve,” Scates said. “And I like to look at each of our small wins as a victory for our veterans.”
In his role as digital program manager, he oversees more than
275 public-facing websites, provides leadership to about 1,000 field- based web content editors, and leads analytics and data visualization for the Veterans Health Administration’s digital portfolio.
Colleagues at VA and other
community. He is active in ACT-IAC, AFCEA, and the Homeland Security and Defense Business Council, among other organizations.
When Maera launched in 2018, his colleagues said the efficiency gains were almost immediate, and the company continues to see steady improvements.
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