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On 16 November 2006, in a special award ceremony, Professor Samuel Epstein of the Air Force Institute of Technology's School of Systems and Logistics was presented with a plaque and pin appointing him as an Associate Technical Fellow of the Government Electronics and Information Technology Association (GEIA), specializing in Data Management. The citation was read for the GEIA by AFIT Professor Emeritus William Dean, a GEIA Technical Fellow in Configuration Management, and presented by Col. Diana Schulz, Dean of AFIT/LS.

GEIA fellowships are awarded in recognition of the fellows’ expertise in their technical fields. They provide a means to identify respected resources who can be called upon to share knowledge, mentor others, and resolve significant issues and problems across the government and GEIA membership. Sam has been active for a number of years in the formulation of the current data management standard (ANSI/GEIA-859) and data management handbook (GEIA-HB-859), which have now been published and are being used by industry and the government. Sam was one of eleven Associate Technical Fellows appointed in this “initial class” of Associate Fellows (in Systems Engineering, Configuration Management, and Data Management), which also included Michael Ucchino from the Air Force Center for Systems Engineering at AFIT.

For decades, the GEIA parent organization, the Electronic Industries Association (now the Electronic Industries Alliance [EIA]) has established technical standards for electronics (such as the format for your TV’s color picture) to ensure compatibility and interchangeability of electronic products. In the wake of acquisition reform, the government has turned to industry to also define the management standards and practices to be used in the development, manufacture, and support of the products that we need. The GEIA is one of the organizations that works to define many of those standards and practices. Some of the management areas addressed by GEIA committees include human factors, quality, electromagnetic compatibility, system engineering, system safety, configuration management, and data management. The GEIA relies heavily on the efforts of many volunteers like Sam Epstein from industry and government to develop, publish, and maintain these documents.