Speakers
Theresa A. PardoDirector, Center for Technology in Government and Workshop Chair
At the Center, Theresa works with a variety of government, corporate, and university partners to lead applied research projects on the policy, management, and technology issues surrounding information and information technology use in the public sector. Theresa is also on the faculty of the Rockefeller College of Public Administration and Policy and the College of Computing and Information at the University at Albany. She is one of the founding developers of the highly ranked Government Information Strategy and Management curriculum at Rockefeller College.
Theresa’s current portfolio includes the development of a public value assessment framework for open government initiatives funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and a project funded by the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) to develop a framework for smart cities service integration based on case studies from the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and China. Her most recent NSF-funded effort is as the principal investigator for a project to develop a data interoperability framework for the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) region by working with stakeholder communities involved in the growth of coffee in Mexico that is distributed, brewed, and consumed in Canada and the United States.
Theresa is an elected member of the Board for the Digital Government Society and a member of the editorial board for several peer-reviewed journals, including Government Information Quarterly. She serves as a member of national and international advisory boards for organizations such as the National Center for Security and Preparedness, the Data Center for Applied Research in Social Sciences at Centro de Investigacion y Docencia Economicas (CIDE) in Mexico City, the U. S. Government Accountability (GAO) Office Executive Council for Information and Technology Management, and the International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance (ICEGOV). She is also a Senior Adviser to State Information Center, P.R. China and has served as a member of the jury panel for the Sultan Qaboos Award for Excellence in eGovernment in Oman.
Theresa is a contributing author to practitioner publications such as Public CIO and Government Technology. She regularly participates as an instructor in leadership development programs for government executives, including efforts with the United Nations, the Instituto Nacional De Administracao Publica in Portugal, the Turkish Ministry of Finance, and the U.S. Federal Government Office of Personnel Management. Theresa has made invited presentations for several international organizations, including the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA).
Theresa has received numerous awards for her written work, including the 2008 Best Paper of the Year award from the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (JASIST) and the Best Paper Award in the E-Government Track at the 2009 Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS). She also received the University at Albany’s Excellence in Teaching Award.
Donna S. Canestraro
Program Manager, Center for Technology in Government
Donna provides management and technology support for projects at the Center in her current role as program manager. Her current work focuses on the policy, management and technology issues related to inter- and intra-organizational information integration, enterprise IT governance, and business process analysis.
Donna brings more than 25 years of professional experience in project management, education, and information technology to CTG’s partnership projects. She started at the Center in 1999 and has worked with agency partners on problem definition, process analysis, and business case development. She also participates in defining technology issues, conducting investigations of relevant technologies, managing best practices research, and evaluating organizational, process, and technology solutions for the Center's projects. She is highly experienced in facilitation, group decision conferences, and all facets of collaborative work
Donna also has experience in the fields of education and training, marketing, management, and customer service. Prior to joining CTG she was the program manager of the Computer Training Program at the University at Albany's Nelson A. Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy. She previously worked at UNISYS Corporation as the solution center manager of the Albany district and State regional product manager, and as a customer service manager at General Electric Company.
Meghan Cook
Program Manager, Center for Technology in Government
Meghan works with teams from government, corporate, and academic organizations to address information management issues through collaboration. In her role, she is responsible for overall planning and management of major Center projects. This involves developing and overseeing the execution of projects including problem definition, action plans, research designs, reporting, budgeting, publications, and presentations.
Meghan began working at CTG in 1997 and since that time has worked in many areas of government information management including investigating intergovernmental relations, specifically among New York state and local governments. She has made major contributions in the areas of mobile government, intergovernmental information sharing management, strategic planning, and IT business case planning. In addition, Meghan’s efforts have been keenly focused on understanding how organizational capabilities, information policies, management practices, and technology choices work in concert to shape government operations and services.
Prior to joining CTG in 1997, she was the education manager for a multi-state trade association for several years. She began her career in the area of government information management as a research associate at the NYS Forum in 1994.
John Bertot
Professor and Director of the Center for Library and Information Innovation, College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland
John Bertot is a Professor and Director of the Center for Library and Information Innovation, College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland. He also serves as Associate Director for Research for the Center for Information Policy and E-Government. John received his Ph.D. from the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University. His research spans information and telecommunications policy, e-government, government agency technology planning and evaluation, and library planning and evaluation.
John is President-elect of the Digital Government Society of North America, and serves as chair of the International Standards Organization’s (ISO) Library Performance Indicator working group and serves as a member of the National Information Standards Organization’s (NISO) Business Information Topic committee. John is past Chair of the American Library Association’s (ALA) Library Research Round Table. Also, John is editor of Government Information Quarterly and Library Quarterly.
Over the years, John has received funding for his research from the National Science Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Government Accountability Office, the American Library Association, and the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services.
WW Director, Technology Office Strategy, Microsoft Corporation
Lorenzo Madrid has over 30 years of working experience in the ITC industry, many of them throughout the Latin America region. He joined Microsoft in 2003, as the Public Sector Director for Brazil and thereafter moved to the USA to become Microsoft’s Chief Technology Officer for the Latin America Region and in 2007, he was appointed as the World Wide Director for the Government Interoperability Initiative.
During his professional career, Lorenzo was the CIO for Education Secretary - State of Sao Paulo, Brazil- , providing ITC services to supply the demand for IT education and Internet access in 6.000 schools, 300.000 teachers and 6 Million students.
Lorenzo also participated as a consultant for the Brazilian Government on the technical architecture of innovative e-government Systems such as the SISCOMEX, (for handling Import and Export on-line documents) and in the On-Line Income Tax System. These systems incorporate the use of multiple IT platforms and support over 55 millions of users.
He has been keynote speaker in several international events, such as COMDEX, The Economist World Forum, the World Wide Forum in Technology for Tax Systems, the West Indies Government Conference, The Philippines Information Officers Forum among others, addressing the impact of technology in society and its importance to leverage economic growth.
He also has been a lecturer at The Lee Kwan Yew School of Public Policies in Singapore, The Dubai School of Government, and The Center for e-Governance Development in Ljubljana and in addition to the Schools of Engineering of Quito in Ecuador, São Paulo – Brazil and Santiago de Chile.
Lorenzo Madrid holds a BSc in engineering from the Polytechnic School - University of São Paulo, where he also had his MSc work in Calculus. He has published three books and several articles about the impact of technology in society.
Ariel Matías Pacecca
Latin American Director of Public Private Alliances (PPA), Microsoft
Ariel Pacecca has 20 years of experience working with Government’s all around Latin America and in the US. He is the Latin American Director of Public Private Alliances (PPA) in Microsoft’s WW Public Sector organization. In this position he developed, in the last 4 years, over 50 Public Private partnerships in 18 different countries and targeting almost 6 million citizens.
The goal of the PPA program is to raise visibility with our government customers about how to shape smart, sustainable and inclusive technology solutions for their citizens. Aligned to the company’s ‘Leading with the Future’ vision in FY 11, Shape the Future enables governments to attain ambitious goals by combining Microsoft Products and Services, Citizenship, Government and Education expertise along with broad Public Private Partnership experience.
Ariel holds an Master in Business Administration Degree from Universidad de Belgrano – Argentina, joint program with L’Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussees - París, Francia, and a Degree in Information Systems (1991).
Josemaria Valdepeñas Rubio
Regional Technology Officer, Microsoft Corporation
Josemaría Valdepenas is the Regional Technology Officer for Microsoft Latin America and The Caribbean. In this role, he is responsible to work closely with governments to assist in the development of information technology strategies, allowing countries to increase their level of efficiency, competitiveness, growth, and social development.
Previously, Josemaria held the position as Chief Security Advisor in Microsoft Latin America. Josemaria is best known as a visionary who has been involved in leading edge technologies for more than twenty five years, sharing his passion on how technologies used strategically can make a difference in companies, countries and ultimately, people.
Before joining Microsoft in January 2005, Josemaria was an Associate Partner with Accenture in Boston, Massachusetts. In such role, Josemaria was responsible for the management and execution of high caliber projects in the Financial Services Industry, more specifically in building the strategic architecture of straight thru processing, -the ability to run processes without human intervention- for financial securities. Other previous professional experiences were held at Lotus Development Corporation and Wang Laboratories.
Josemaria has a Bachelor in Computer Science and a Bachelor in Computer Systems Engineering from Franklin Pierce University in Rindge, New Hampshire. Josemaria holds a patent as one of the inventors of what is known today as RAID 5 from Berkeley University. Josemaria also holds a patent on the optimization of document storage on massive capacity devices.
Born in Caracas, Venezuela, Josemaria resides in the United States of America since 1983. He is married to Maria Antonia, from Caracas, Venezuela and has two sons, Antonio Jose and David.
Flavio M. Calonge
Government Director for Microsoft Latin America and The Caribbean
Flavio Calonge is the Government Director for Microsoft Latin America and The Caribbean under the Public Sector segment and he is the strategist behind Latin America and the Caribbean Government vertical. His work includes guiding the business, technical and architectural structure of Microsoft’s offerings in the Government Industry. He has the honor to act as a trusted strategic advisor to national, regional and local government leaders helping them create an ICT environment that supports their individual policy agendas and support their citizens.
In Microsoft since 2000, he has held several positions in the Caribbean region until June 2007 were one of his most important achievements was the trust built with partners in the region where Microsoft grew from having 15 partners in 2000 to 30 managed and 120 unmanaged partners in 2006. During this period, he also successfully organized several Annual Partners Conference and also regularly brought partners and customers to Executive Briefings’ days in Fort Lauderdale, FL (Microsoft LATAM HQ) which included official members of several and different Public Sector organizations from the region.
Prior to Microsoft, he was Managing Director and Sales and Marketing Manager of EC International, serving Latin America region in market development for specialized and emerging solutions and opening markets to new technologies and products. In the IT industry since 1986, Flavio has a vast experience in in the Latin America and the Caribbean in strategy, sales and marketing specialized in ICT applied to business needs.
Involved in the internet since 1993, he participated as speaker in the following events:
- Comdex with the topic: Will your business survive the internet?, Miami, 1996
- First ICT & TOURISM Event, Lima – Sept 2009
- IX encuentro Ibero-American event of Digital Cities, Veracruz, Mexico – Oct 2009
- IDB, First Session of the Latin America and Caribbean Experts Network in the Managing for development results ( (RELAC-GpRD), Medellín, Colombia - Nov 2009
- BID-FOMIN event in the V Annual Cluster of Sustainable Tourism meeting, Buga Colombia - Mar 2010
- Governemnt event in Valle del Cauca, Colombia – Aug 2010
- OAS Civil Registry event , Granada – Sep 2010
- Government Citizen Services event, Panamá - Oct 2010
"There is virtually no possibility of becoming bored in the dynamic ICT industry due to its constant change, improving and impacting every day people’s life, and national, regional and local are at the center of this unique opportunity"
