SLA member wins Federal 100 Award

Information Outlook, June, 2004

Bonnie Carroll, president of Information International Associates, Inc., has been named one of the nation's 100 most valuable information technology professionals.

She has been a member of SLA since 1992.

Carroll recently accepted the award for her long time leadership in CENDI, the Federal STI Managers Group. Federal Computer Week (FCW) describes the Federal 100 winners as individuals with "uncommon vision" who play pivotal roles in the federal IT community. They are the ones who make a "lasting impact" on their organizations and their communities.

Kent Smith, director of the National Library of Medicine, nominated Carroll for FCW's 2003 Federal 100 Award. In making the nomination, he said she is "a driving force in interorganizational cooperation in federal information management."

Smith chairs CENDI, an organization of managers of scientific and technical information from 11 federal agencies, and Carroll has been the group's executive director since its inception in 1985.

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According to FCW, the chosen 100 were those whose efforts strongly supported the current federal focus on "electronic delivery of services, cross-agency collaboration, and results-oriented management." Through her role with CENDI, Carroll was instrumental in bringing to fruition Science.gov, the science portal of Firstgov that provides access to authoritative government science information, including research results.

Carroll's information management firm, headquartered in Oak Ridge, TN, was named the IT protege for Oak Ridge National Laboratory in 2003. Her company provides IT infrastructure to DOE OSTI. OSTI Director Walt Warnick seconded Carroll's nomination: "... she's an original thinker; she's a great spark plug. In terms of leadership ... she is world-class. CENDI, OSTI, and other leaders in information management continue to benefit from Bonnie Carroll's energy, influence and vision."

In addition to being executive director of CENDI, Carroll is senior technical advisor to the U.S. Geological Survey. In that capacity, she has been instrumental in developing the National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII) and has been the lead in developing the Southern Appalachian Information Nodeof the NBII, a successful public/private regional cooperative project. Internationally, she has been influential in the 34-nation Inter-American Biodiversity Information Network and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility.

In July 2003, the National Academies chose Carroll to serve as the U.S. national delegate to the Committee on Data for Science and Technology, a committee of International Council for Science that serves 22 nations. She has consulted for such international organizations as the International Atomic Energy Agency, UNESCO, and the International Council for Scientific Information.

Carroll is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a designation she received for her "outstanding contributions to the development and accessibility of federal scientific and technical information resources for research and national security." She is a past president of the American Society of Information Science and Technology.