As Federal agencies increasingly look to capitalize on the rich data they are collecting, they need to ensure their workforce is up to the challenge. However, many agencies are finding that their current workforce lacks the needed skills.  The Office of Management and Budget estimates that approximately 400,000 Federal employees will need to be reskilled by Fiscal Year 2021 – accounting for nearly 20 percent of the government’s current workforce. To help get the workforce they need in place, agencies are looking for ways to effectively retrain and reskill their workforce to enable an agency-wide digital transformation. […]

Any good healthcare provider will tell you that early diagnosis of a problem can lead to better outcomes down the road – and IT leadership at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) proved the enduring truth of that adage in the agency’s quick adjustment to a telework footing as the coronavirus pandemic emerged earlier this year. […]

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health (OASH) is seeking to better inform the direction of efforts to improve access to emerging technologies and healthcare services to improve health outcomes for aging Americans. […]

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) is delaying the implementation timeline for certain provisions of the 21st Century Cures Act in order to offer more flexibility for healthcare providers dealing with COVID-19, according to a notice set to be published in the Federal Register today. […]

Not only did the COVID-19 pandemic radically alter how Federal agencies meet their mission, but it also gave some agencies new responsibilities that are, quite literally, matters of life and death. […]

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) today reported results of its review of Federal agency efforts to reduce IT contracts duplication, and found that four of the seven agencies reviewed had fully or partially taken recommended steps to regularly identify potential contract duplication. […]

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) reimburses states for most Medicaid costs and is supposed to oversee how states use funds, but its IT systems have had problems with ensuring proper oversight, and CMS no longer supports efforts to reduce duplication by state systems, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said. […]

Back in August, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) consolidated 11 different contract opportunities under an Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions (EIS) vehicle into a single contract with telecommunications giant, Verizon. […]

The Department of Health and Human Services has appointed Perryn Ashmore acting CIO, following the departure of former CIO Jose Arrieta on August 28. […]

Federal IT operations time and again have proved to be the resilient lifeline to vital citizen services during the COVID-19 pandemic. As government and society map the path to recovery, MeriTalk is chronicling the untold stories and lessons of how government IT has innovated on the fly to meet the demands of the crisis and anchor more resilient services going forward. In the latest installment of CIO Crossroads, we turn to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) five months into the fight. […]

Reps. Scott Peters, D-Calif., Lucy McBath, D-Ga., Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., and Brian Fitzpatrick, D-Pa., introduced legislation August 21 to streamline COVID-19 data collection and management through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). […]

In a letter to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), Democrat House Representatives are asking for a review of the Trump administration’s recent order to have hospital data on coronavirus be reported to a private contractor through the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) rather than through the CDC. […]

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is embracing a new cybersecurity routine after the ongoing public health crisis placed a new target on the agency and malicious actors boosted their efforts to infiltrate the agency and access sensitive data, HHS CISO Janet Vogel said this week. […]

Jose Arrieta is resigning his positons as CIO and interim chief data officer (CDO) at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), an agency spokesperson has confirmed to MeriTalk. […]

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is seeking software to help members of NIH communications offices to monitor, distribute, and analyze social media mentions of the agency. […]

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released a slew of new Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) initiatives on July 28 to enable innovative research objectives through technologies such as AI and cloud. […]

The Departments of Veteran Affairs (VA), Health and Human Services (HHS), and Energy are partnering on a new initiative to share COVID-19 health data to enable the research and expertise on the virus. […]

The FY2021 Financial Services and General Government (FSGG) appropriations bill approved by the House Appropriations Committee on July 15 asks the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), among other government agencies, to cooperate on a report to Congress that explains limitations to integrating and modernizing Federal health and human services-related IT. […]

The House Appropriations Committee voted to approve $196.5 billion in funding in a fiscal year 2021 appropriations bill covering the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies (LHHS), which also includes the Social Security Administration. […]

Federal agencies’ total spend for COVID-19-related purchases has cooled in the past month, decreasing by over $1 billion due to changed contract awards, according to data obtained from the Federal Procurement Data System. […]

While the mass shift to telework amid the COVID-19 pandemic caught some organizations off-guard, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) had already practiced with a full telework workforce just weeks before the maximize telework order came. […]

The Departments of Commerce and Health and Human Services are teaming up to take down websites that sell opioids illegally online through a new pilot program with three domain name registries. […]

COVID-19-related spending by Federal agencies grew to a total of $15.5 billion as of early June, up from a total of $13 billion as of May 22, according to data obtained from the Federal Procurement Data System. […]

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is working with about 60 clinical institutions affiliated with the Clinical and Translational Science Awards Program to support the analysis of electronic health records in a new cloud-based database. […]

Federal agencies and departments have spent more than $13 billion on COVID-19 related contracts since February – including an additional $3 billion in just the past nine days. […]

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is considering a new approach to the Strategic National Stockpile, a “supply chain IT control tower” that would allow officials a full, comprehensive view of emergency supplies. […]

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has continued to harness innovation for diagnostics, treatment, and prevention and have launched the Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics (RADx) last week, as a national initiative for COVID-19 diagnostics. […]

Federal agencies and departments have spent more than $8.7 billion on COVID-19 related contracts since February – spending more than a billion dollars in the past week. […]

An official from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) explained in an April 30 public meeting on regulatory data hosted by the General Services Administration how analytics tools associated with rulemaking process are saving the agency both resources and time. […]

Federal agencies and departments have spent more than $6.9 billion on COVID-19 related contracts since February – spending more than a billion dollars in the past week. […]