Agency Spotlight: Health and Human Services

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has been in the spotlight like never before with their critical role in managing the pandemic. While there is a lot of work still to be done on that front, other critical efforts are taking place across HHS agencies that will have an incredible impact on the health and well-being of citizens.

Data Sharing

The necessity of sharing data to understand and respond to the pandemic spawned a host of new applications and a new openness to data sharing across HHS as well as governmentwide. The first major HHS data sharing platform was launched in April 2020. Named HHS Protect, this platform provided visibility into more than four billion data elements from 225 sources providing intelligence on rates of infection and hospitalizations. HHS is committed to expanding its use and sharing of data in all areas of its mission with programs including the Data Optimization Initiative, Administration for Children and Families Data Sharing Solutions, and the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement (TEFCA). Continue reading

Planning Toward FY 2022 – A Peek at the Federal Budget

The Biden Administration recently issued its request for 2022 spending. This practice is really more of a policy effort than actual budgeting, but serves to illustrate administration priorities to inform agencies as to what is likely to get approved in the final budget. The 2022 budget request has a number of IT-specific priorities, starting with the funding of the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) at another $500 million for fiscal 2022. This would be in addition to the $1 billion that was invested as part of the American Rescue Plan Act--money that helped support the ongoing effort to digitize government services and operations.

The $58.4 billion in IT spending includes marked increases in the IT budgets of the Treasury Department, Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Department of Homeland Security. NASA and the Department of Commerce had small reductions to its IT budgets.

Continue reading

A Short History of Shared Services…and What’s Next.

Shared Services in government is nothing new. The idea began in the 1980s with the consolidation of payroll and some other administrative functions. In the '90s the focus was on creating entities that could provide common business functions across government and, in that effort, become a cost center.

The 2000s saw the rise of the term 'Line of Business' that looked at common business functions across government to identify opportunities to transform, streamline and share. The Obama Administration looked specifically to IT as a shared service, releasing the Federal IT Shared Services Strategy that provided federal agency chief information officers and key stakeholders guidance. This guidance focused on the implementation of shared IT services as a key principle of their efforts to eliminate waste and duplication, with the intention to reinvest in innovative mission systems.

Continue reading