ALCOAST 084/21 - MAR 2021 COPERNICUS AWARDS SELECTIONS

R 031950Z MAR 21
FM COMDT COGARD WASHINGTON DC
TO ALCOAST

UNCLAS
ALCOAST 084/21
COMDTNOTE 1650
SUBJ:  COPERNICUS AWARDS SELECTIONS
A. COMDT COGARD WASHINGTON DC 061023 AUG 20/ALCOAST 302/20
1. This ALCOAST recognizes the winners of the Fiscal Year 2020 Armed
Forces Communications and Electronics Association (AFCEA)/U.S. Naval
Institute (USNI) Copernicus Awards program outlined in REF (A).
The Copernicus Awards were established to recognize individual
contributions to operations and mission support within the
cyberspace domain. The members below made exemplary contributions
within the Coast Guard Command, Control, Communications, Computers,
Cyber, and Intelligence (C5I) community during fiscal year 2020.
2. I am honored to announce the Coast Guard recipients of the fiscal
year 2020 Copernicus Awards:
   a. Commander Dennis D. Good, C5I Service Center. Commander Good
was handpicked by the Commander of the C4ITSC to serve as the
Project Leader for the C5ISC Implementation Project Team (CIPT). In
this role, he led every aspect of the transformation of the legacy
C4ITSC to the new C5ISC. Commander Good superbly led over seventy
senior military and civilian personnel across eight functional teams
to manage the execution of complex activities to decommission three
major C5I Centers of Excellence, assimilate their common components
into five new functionally defined Shared Services Divisions,
transform and integrate the mission support services performed by
ten Product Lines and Core Technologies into five C5ISC Product
Lines, and established the Coast Guard’s first Product Line
dedicated to sustaining its Intelligence Systems. As a strategic,
transformational visionary, Commander Good coalesced over four
years’ worth of in-depth analysis and developed a complex two-year
project plan, integrated master schedule, and risk management
process. He leveraged his superb grasp of organizational change
management to lead the C4ITSC away from its former fragmented
support organization, to a unified command focused on enterprise
service delivery and associated best practices. This complex
re-organization had senior level visibility and as the Coast
Guard’s most complex C5I reorganization in its history, was the
largest undertaking for the Coast Guard since Mission Support
Modernization over a decade ago.
   b. LT Michael C. Overstreet, C5I Service Center. Upon reporting
onboard the former Command, Control, Communications, Computers and
Information Technology Service Center (C4ITSC) in April of 2020,
LT Overstreet recognized a serious leadership gap due to unexpected
departures on the Mobility team. He quickly took the initiative and
stepped in to fill the void, assuming a critical technical and
leadership role directing seven staff members in the delivery of
mobile services to over 7000 operational and VIP personnel.
Recognizing that mobility credentialing was a critical service
required for successful cloud application and email deployment,
he developed and implemented an aggressive plan to transition mobile
device management to the DoD Purebred system in order to permit
mobility users to demonstrate possession and usage of their Common
Access Card (CAC) to generate derived credentials and recover
existing encryption keys. LT Overstreet has had tremendous impact
on the Coast Guard’s ability to deliver cutting edge mobile
technology to the operational community. He has consistently
demonstrated exceptional technical acumen and management of
personnel and resources, which together resulted in the best
practice deployment of the Purebred managed device program. As a
result, he ensured the success of the M365 initiative, the Coast
Guard Chief Information Officer’s (CIO) number one priority,
and the continued drive to enhance the mobile capability of the
fleet in direct support of the Commandant’s Early Action Items and
Technology Revolution initiative.
   c. CWO Pedro P. Sullivan, Coast Guard Cyber Command. As the cyber
Field Maintenance Program Manager, CWO Sullivan provided technical
oversight and direction to 360 active duty Information Technology
(IT) specialists that provides cyber, computer, communication and
related logistical support to all Coast Guard missions. He deployed
operational cyber policy and initiatives worldwide through 11 base
C5I departments and 96 electronics support detachments. CWO Sullivan
protected enterprise IT systems through specific cyber orders and
sustained them through preventative and corrective maintenance
program guidance. CWO Sullivan’s decisiveness and inherent technical
authority can be seen in his oversight of the recapitalization of
20,000 standard workstations — nearly half the fleet. The technical
details and logistics of these hardware replacements can be a
significant disruption to Coast Guard missions when not thoroughly
planned and smartly executed. CWO Sullivan’s leadership bridged
this gap between engineers, industry partners, technicians and the
end users ashore and afloat. He overcame significant complexity
introduced by COVID-19 and the thousands of laptops injected into
workflow for short-fused enablement of the fleet’s emergent
work-from-home requirement. CWO Sullivan handled it all with aplomb,
specifically in his ability to deliver authoritative property
guidance to the fleet for short and long-term use of the contingency
-distributed systems. His navigation of these overlapping projects
enabled a swift, wide-spread VPN-based remote work capability and
simultaneously drove the long-term recapitalization project to
completion.
   d. ET1 Rustian R. Dunn, USCGC Vigorous (WMEC 627). ET1 Dunn was
instrumental in implementing and validating the Coast Guard’s
response to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s
(NOAA’s) plan to sunset paper chart production by the end of 2020.
He skillfully coordinated the service's first install of a prototype
SeaWatch Command and Control (C2) system on a WMEC-210, providing
our 51-year old ship with advanced electronic navigation (eNav)
capabilities. Despite substantial challenges encountered during a
regional spike in COVID-19 cases, ET1 Dunn rallied his team of C5I
Service Center representatives, contractors, and ship’s force to
meet the complex project’s numerous milestones. Simultaneously,
ET1 Dunn wrote a briefing paper for the Coast Guard Office of Cutter
Forces (CG-751) detailing system redundancies that supported its
ability to function as the cutter’s primary eNav platform.
ET1 Dunn’s report catalyzed COMDT (CG-751)’s historic authorization
for VIGOROUS to navigate solely by eNav, without the use of
traditional paper chart navigation. ET1 Dunn contributed technical
details to VIGOROUS’ comprehensive, post-prototype period report
that informed decision makers at the highest organizational level
on the feasibility of authorizing fleet-wide paperless navigation.
As the project’s lead technician, ET1 Dunn was our technical
linchpin to the success of this historic modernization initiative
affecting a fleet of over 90 ships. Furthermore, ET1 Dunn championed
projects that vastly improved the unit’s communication capability,
security and morale. Most notably, he established underway
“River-City” software protocols to isolate bandwidth-intensive
programs and configured hardware to give operators the ability to
physically secure unneeded IT systems, which combined to
significantly expedite communications with tactical commanders
during operations. His protocols were shared with the major cutter
fleet as best practices to improve underway connectivity.
3. Join me in congratulating the award recipients on their
contributions and success. This DoD-wide recognition is a testament
to the tremendous effort the Coast Guard is making at all levels of
the Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Cyber, and
Intelligence (C5I), and Information Warfare communities.
4. All Copernicus Award winners will receive an invitation from
AFCEA and USNI inviting them, their spouse/guest, and their
Commanding Officer to attend an awards reception and presentation
ceremony held at the AFCEA International/USNI WEST 2021 Conference
in San Diego, California at the San Diego Convention Center on
29 June 2021. Attire is Service Dress Blue "Alpha" and business
attire for civilians. For more information go to:
https://www.afcea.org/site/?q=awards/copernicus.
5. COMDT (CG-6) POC for the award and any additional questions,
contact COMDT (CG-6EA), CDR Jessica Fant at 202-475-3553 or
Jessica.A.Fant@uscg.mil.
6. RADM David Dermanelian, Assistant Commandant for C4IT (CG-6),
sends.
7. Internet release is authorized.