Kankakee Times

The Illinois Student Assistance Commission (ISAC) was awarded the Chief Information Officer's Most Effective IT Team award Nov. 19.

The award was presented by the Society for Information Management-Chicago and the Association of Information Technology Professionals (AITP).

“We congratulate ISAC for the innovation, value creation and hard work that made it such a worthy recipient of this award,” SIM-Chicago President Scot Berkey said.

AITP President Gary Czubak said that in addition to ISAC having to rise above private and non-profit organizations for the recognition, it is notable that organizations, such as ISAC, were nominated and judged for the award by their peers.

ISAC was one of three recipients of this year's awards but is the first government agency to win the award. The nominees were judged on cost effectiveness, innovation, change leadership, value creation, service quality and community in relation to other companies of their scale.

“We recognize that it’s not often that you see a government agency receiving kudos from other sectors for innovation, service and cost effectiveness,” said Executive Director of ISAC Eric Zarnikow. “We couldn’t be more proud of the entire IT team.”

ISAC's IT team is lead by Ramnath Cidambi. The team's achievements include developing two platforms to streamline data organization and providing access for schools and other clients. The team also develops tools for other agencies interested in increasing productivity and compliance.

ISAC is a government agency created in 1957 to help make college affordable and accessible for Illinois students.