At last month’s EBT-The Next Generation conference, sponsored by the Electronic Government Payments Council, I was honored along with my colleague, John Pfeuffer of Conduent State and Local Solutions to present the Council’s 2018 Leadership Award to Art Burger, the President and CEO of Burger Carroll and Associates. (https://www.burgercarroll.com) What follows is a summary of our comments while making the award to Art.
BCA is a national public sector information technology consultancy based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Some 100 Federal, State, Territorial and Tribal government agencies have consulted with BCA.
BCA is a charter member of the Council. Art has served as the Council’s chairman as well as chairing a number of its work groups and committees.
Perhaps more than any other EBT professional, Art has been responsible for the successful adoption of EBT technology by state- managed Woman, Infants and Children nutrition programs.
In addition to advising WIC state agencies on EBT technology he was instrumental in explaining to the EBT industry what a WIC EBT transaction would look like.
He also brought WIC-facing organizations into the Council to help speed the migration of EBT technology to the WIC program, one of the most efficient federal programs, in terms of outcomes.
In addition to helping birth the technology of WIC EBT, Art is a master at understanding the public policy and funding issues of WIC and EBT.
Perhaps his crowning achievement came when he met with a team of Congressional aides and explained the many benefits of WIC EBT. More than anyone else Art Burger was responsible for Congress agreeing to fund the conversion of state WIC programs to EBT. This culminated in a Congress mandating that all state must adopt EBT technology for their WIC programs by 2020.
An accomplished and trained debater, he demonstrated for Congress the absurdity of the paper-based system that WIC programs used prior to EBT by showing the congressional representatives a fistful of more that 30 paper vouchers that a typical WIC shopper would have to negotiate each time she shopped with WIC benefits.
This time-consuming process in the grocery store or supermarket slowed throughput at the cash register lines and contributed to higher food costs.
Today, because of Art’s effort, WIC EBT enjoys widespread support within Congress and the food retailing communities