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USIA-Chaired Interagency Working Group
Earns Vice President Gore's Hammer Award

Twenty-eight federal agencies-members of a working group chaired by the United States Information Agency won a Hammer Award for reinventing the way federal agencies communicate, cooperate, and coordinate U.S. government-sponsored international people-to-people exchanges and training activities.

"Your work demonstrates that many agencies working together can accomplish what no one agency can do alone," said Morley Winograd, Senior Policy Advisor to the Vice President and Director of the National Partnership for Reinventing Government.

Winograd presented the award to the Interagency Working Group (IAWG) on United States Government-Sponsored International Exchanges and Training at a ceremony in Washington, DC on April 7, 1999.

Dr. John P. Loiello, former IAWG Chair and former USIA Associate Director for Educational and Cultural Affairs, and former IAWG Staff Director Jacob P. Gillespie accepted the award on behalf of the 65 others representing the 28 IAWG member agencies.

The coveted Hammer Award goes to teams of federal employees and their partners who make extraordinary progress in creating a government that works better, costs less, and delivers results people care about.

What IAWG Accomplished

The IAWG earned the award for establishing ways of disseminating information about international exchanges and training to federal agencies, the private sector, foreign partners, and the American public.

The IAWG orchestrated the most comprehensive gathering and evaluation of information about international exchange activity ever undertaken by the federal government.

The IAWG has issued its first annual report and six regional reports on U.S.-sponsored exchanges, developed case studies of successful public-private partnerships, and created a centralized clearinghouse. "We expect a website-www.iawg.gov-to be available very soon, said IAWG Staff Director William P. Kiehl.

The IAWG's 1997 Annual Report includes an inventory of more than 200 international exchanges and training programs worldwide from more than 60 U.S. government departments and agencies. These programs involve approximately 140,000 participants annually.

More About IAWG

The IAWG was established by Executive Order in 1997, and later modified by law. It was based on an original recommendation of the then-National Performance Review in 1995. It is composed of senior representatives from the Departments of State, Defense, Education, and Justice, and the Agency for International Development, with representatives from 22 other federal agencies. By law, the United States Information Agency chairs the group. USIA Associate Director for Educational and Cultural Affairs Dr. William B. Bader is the current chair.

For More Information

Contact Theresa Markiw at tmmarkiw@usia.gov or (202) 619-4130. For hardcopies of IAWG reports call Gloria Simms at (202) 260-5124.