The Virginia Association of Counties (VACo) recently announced that Fairfax County Government has received three VACo Achievement Awards, which recognize excellence in local government programs. VACo received a record 106 submissions, the highest in the program's history. Winning entries focused on addressing high-priority issues that challenge counties today.

Fairfax County was recognized for the following programs:

Program Category: Information Technology

Next Generation Security Program
Fairfax County protects businesses and residents' data with regards to taxes, sensitive personal information, business permits, land, critical infrastructure, health and human services and public safety. The Next Generation Security Program  is part of the main Cyber Security program. Its mission is to protect citizen's data, develop and enforce security policies and use technology that best protect data assets that will be on pace with modern and emerging security threats to maintain the county's no data breach, business continuity and service delivery performance record. The program follows a security defense in depth architecture approach by deploying NextGen application aware security technologies to detect, block and alert threats where data moves both inside and outside the network.

Program Category: Health and Human Services

Financial Exploitation Prevention Taskforce
The older adult population is steadily increasing with the addition of the Baby Boomer population over the next 30 years. As people age, the ability to complete day to day tasks like grocery shopping, self-care, or money management may be weakened and the need for assistance increases. This dilemma is the perfect storm for scammers to exploit older adults for their retirement savings and other valuables. Fairfax County noticed an increase of financial exploitation cases and desired to make a change. The Department of Family Services and the Police Department have formed a collaborative approach to address financial exploitation and fraud cases, which  led to the development of the Financial Exploitation Prevention Taskforce and created a network of professionals. The taskforce is a multidisciplinary team that is composed of professionals from private, local, state and federal agencies with a shared focus.

Program Category: Environmental

Revitalize, Restore, Replant!
The Revitalize, Restore, Replant! (R3) program transforms existing Stormwater facilities on Fairfax County Public School campuses into  real-world teaching tools. In this free-of-charge program, stream ecologists from theDepartment of Public Works and Environmental Services introduce students to stormwater and watershed ecosystems management through hands-on native plant installations in existing bioretention or dry pond facilities. Plant species are chosen to complement existing Virginia Standards of Learning requirements. The goal of the program is to encourage students and teachers to use their local stormwater management facility as a long-term outdoor learning classroom without leaving their campus.

For more information, visit the VACo website.