Employee Feature: John McWhorter

John is an Air Force DCGS Senior Program Manager in the Mission Applications (MAPS) section, Distributed Common Ground Systems (DCGS) branch at Robins AFB, GA.  John has managed a large IDIQ with sustainment task orders across GEOINT and SIGINT and has proven leadership skills exemplified with successful team enterprise-wide, high priority, critical system updates. In the last two years he has completed over 50 contractor field team installations, including major system updates to remove and replace legacy End-of-Life (EoL) and End-of Service (EoS) Oracle server and storage devices (GB4.1 architecture) with new Dell and Unity equipment known as GEOINT Tech Refresh 5-servers (GTR5) across 21 separate enclaves in just 14 months.  He also oversaw similar system updates for Trusted Manager (TMAN) Cross Domain System (CDS) with numerous Software and Hardware Tech Refresh efforts fielding seven separate TCTOs across the enterprise with urgency broken out in two phases – over 30 installations. 

But, the latest example of solid team performance was captured when Col Rusin, 480^th Commanding Officer, requested immediate and urgent action to update and make operational the TMAN Demilitarized Zone (TMZ) known as the BICES requirement to establish a network connection from DGS-4 ops to the BICES enclave for the purposes of information sharing with NATO partners in Europe.  Team performance was exceptional with engineering and boarding actions completed within 10 days from receiving the directive, urgent and direct “Green Sheet” shipping of hardware to OCONUS Location, with team on-site performing the installation, released TCTO within 20 days with plans to complete all testing and assessments for ATO within six weeks of original request.  John stated team performance was simply remarkable with several GMRE Subject Matter Experts (SMEs), including, but not limited to Alan Heyward (Sr. Computer Scientist), Chuck Jackson (Equipment Specialist), and Scott McIntyre (Technical Order Manager) providing outstanding support.  John continues to look for the next opportunity to make a difference for the warfighter! Thank you for all you do and congratulations on your well deserved award!