WE ASSUME ONE OF THOSE PRIORITY
FUNCTIONS IS IT ACQUISITION?
Acquisition absolutely is one of those functions. And the
acquisition of technology needs to be strategic, efficient,
and consistent. Allow me to talk about one such initiative.
HHS today maintains five major contract-writing systems.
ACCELERATE is a program we initiated—blockchain-based—
designed to provide visibility into those systems, their datasets
in particular. These datasets, by the way, comprise about 10
terabytes—40 million pages of unstructured text data.
From this data, we created a series of micro services that
search the historical data and provide high-value pricing,
market research—a spectrum of acquisition information—
so that acquisition professionals can employ high-value
historical and organized data to support everything from
best-price product acquisition to acquisition strategy and
planning. ACCELERATE incorporates blockchain, AI,
advanced analytics, and already demonstrated tremendous
efficiencies and cost reductions in target acquisitions.
ACCELERATE is pure acquisition innovation.
Relatedly, we used machine learning to analyze government
functions and match those against professional services
contracts. It is a solid model, one that already has produced
direct savings of more than $100 million. Through what
essentially is a recurrent neural network, some 9,000 contracts
are being reviewed against an alpha-numeric model that is
highly accurate and providing valuable predictive models for
acquisition of professional services and technical solutions.
WHAT ROLE HAS FITARA PLAYED
IN YOUR ROLE AS CIO?
What Congress has done with FITARA and other laws
that allow us to reinvest savings associated with smart IT
investments is give Federal CIOs the power and ability—indeed,
the accountability—to drive change in their organizations.
Now we have the incentive to show real ROI—savings—
through IT modernization initiatives that incorporate
designated technologies: cloud, blockchain, AI, machine
learning. When savings are recorded, we are able to reinvest
them against a disciplined, process-driven IT strategy.
Our elected officials are pushing us (CIOs) to innovate. If we
are not paying for on premise infrastructure, if we are able to
push that to secure commercial cloud environments, which is
exactly what the intent is, the opportunities to innovate and
modernize IT are limitless. What Congress has done is extremely
important to CIOs and to Federal IT management overall.
5G IS A FLAGSHIP TOPIC AT BOTH
CES GOVERNMENT AND CES. ARE
YOU PLANNING FOR 5G AT HHS?
We believe 5G will have a huge impact on the way we live and
on the way we work. The ability to analyze and collect data
that 5G will enable is unprecedented, almost hard to imagine.
We have plans underway preparing for 5G so that we can
incorporate it into our infrastructure and leverage it as much
as possible as it comes available. GSA has done a great job
with its EIS contract, which will enable acquisition of 5G and
related services. 5G will be especially powerful in pulling in
data from the edge—large amounts of data at blazing speed.
It has great potential here at HHS and we are planning for it.
IS ATTRACTING THE TALENT YOU NEED FOR
THESE INITIATIVES AN ISSUE, GIVEN THE
GOVERNMENT’S INABILITY TO COMPENSATE
AT THE LEVEL OF COMMERCIAL ENTITIES?
Tech talent is in high demand everywhere, and it is not always
about the highest salary or total compensation. At HHS, I like
to think people come to work here for the mission. Our missions
offer the greatest reward in terms of impact on people’s lives,
on so many things. When you speak to a group of potential
employees and can talk about the opioid crisis—I mean specific
examples of where you are creating and applying technologies
that are saving lives—we want people to understand the
mission, feel it, be part of it. I think we are doing that. To
answer your question, we do a pretty good job of attracting top
talent. Our mission is powerful and it is about the mission.
Jose Arrieta is participating in the January 9th CES
Government Executive Roundtable “Innovation and
Acquisition” and January 10th’s CIO Healthcare IT Roundtable:
“AI, Analytics and Efficient Healthcare Delivery.“
MEET JOSE ARRIETA
As the Chief Information Officer (CIO), Jose provides leadership and oversight of the
Department’s IT portfolio - $11 billion in annual IT spend - in support of HHS’s expansive mission
to enhance the health and well-being of Americans by providing for effective health and human
services, and by fostering sound, sustained advances in the science underlying medicine, public
health, and social services.
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