Michael “Chase” Levinson, Chief, Modern Delivery, Financial Operations and Information, Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Financial Management and Comptroller was recognized with a Department of the Army Pace Award at a Pentagon ceremony August 10. The award was presented to Levinson by the Honorable Gabe Camarillo, Under Secretary of the Army.
The Pace Award, named after former Secretary of the Army Frank Pace Jr., has been presented annually since 1962 to one Army officer, lieutenant colonel or below, and one civilian employee, GS-14 equivalent or below, assigned in a staff capacity to Headquarters, Department of the Army, for a contribution of outstanding significance to the Army that culminated during the calendar year. Awardees are selected based on their performance and completion of significant staff assignments that benefit the Army by providing substantial financial savings, or technological or military development. Levinson was recognized with the civilian Pace Award for 2022.
In 2022, Levinson served as the Robotic Process Automation (RPA) Lead within OASA (FM&C). There, he was responsible for programs that introduce modern capabilities for the financial management community, including RPA, cloud migration, data quality/ monitoring programs and the implementation of data platforms. Since 2020 his RPA projects, focused on legacy system divestiture and audit support, have saved the Army over 200,000 hours in manual labor.
Levinson’s most notable achievement was ensuring the successful transition of the Army to ADVANA, or Advanced Analytics, which is DoD's big data platform for advanced analytics that pulls data from hundreds of business systems to make it discoverable and usable.
According to Ms. Caral Spangler, Assistant Secretary of the Army for Financial Management and Comptroller: “Chase effectively managed the complex technical migration of the Army from legacy capabilities to ADVANA by exercising smart leadership through the triage of challenges, effective use of resources and open communications with various stakeholders across the Army and the DoD. His leadership ensured the successful transition of capabilities to ADVANA increasing timeliness and accuracy of data provided to auditors.”
Levinson also serves as the functional data manager for the financial management domain, with responsibility for setting data standards and protecting sensitive financial data. His efforts have enabled the financial management community to become data-centric through access to next-generation technology.
The military recipient of the Pace Award for 2022 was Lt. Col. Neal Erickson. As the Analysis Support Branch Chief, Warfighting Analysis Division, Force Development Directorate, Deputy Chief of Staff, G-8, Erickson coordinates a wide variety of analytic efforts to inform G-8 force development processes and support G-8 senior leader decision making.
In response to Army senior leader requests for information, Erickson convened expertise from stakeholders across the Army to collect, consolidate and arrive at authoritative data and assumptions, resulting in a Predictive Analysis Framework. This framework conveyed clearly and with a high degree of confidence, the effects of certain Army decisions on readiness, including implications for training and support to priority war plans. His technical expertise, communication skills and collaborative approach were essential to delivering outstanding analytic support on complex tasks with clear operational and strategic implications.
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