Health and Human Services (HHS) is the largest non-defense federal agency. At $13.8 billion, HHS’s top line IT budget is several times bigger than other large non-defense agencies. And although most of that money goes straight out the door in the form of grants to state and local agencies, the remainder still makes HHS the largest non-defense IT agency in government.
So how exactly is that money being spent and how can industry get their share? Get a sneak peek at my slides. View my webinar to get more details: https://immixgroup.com/partners/resources/type/webcasts/
Budget piece – high top line, much of it grants, driven by CMS, talk about ACF being a grant-giving org as well
DME flat year over year but important to dig into differences between FY17 and FY18 DME requests in the event of a CR – will talk about later
Boilerplate about difficult to put together one slide covering all the strategic drivers at HHS but if there was one organizing principle across the enterprise, it would be modernization of legacy infrastructure with a special focus on improving the FITARA scores for DCOI, PortfolioStat, and MEGABYTE – “A by May” being the goal, and there’s ample opportunity for industry to help
Agency’s own plan for FY18 virtualization and server utilization metrics falls short of the FITARA mandates, so there’s a disconnect that industry can possibly help bridge
Also talk about modernization through lens of MGT/TCO reduction – more on future slides
Twin technology requirements: security (see number of attacks) and data management/transfer/protection (esp. CDC, NIH, FDA – orgs with large scientific communities that need to exchange TB-scale datasets at speed)
MUCH OF THIS DEPENDS ON OUTCOME OF APPROPS FIGHT
If omnibus: modernization, working capital becomes much more relevant – use this slide to talk broadly about MGT, mention working capital idea
Data centers/DCOI
IF CR: identify what your customer was already doing, and strengthen existing relationships
GET INTO FY17 DME REQUESTS – there was a lot of moving money around in the FY18 budget due to program consolidation etc. Trump admin has had more impact on HHS than most non-defense agencies, really wanted to put a stamp on the agency, CR makes that much more difficult – so work with customers who are willing/able to find leeway in last year’s requirements to try and meet this year’s agency goals
Target tech refreshes
Org stuff
A BY MAY – this is something that leadership is really big on, but again by their own strategic documents they don’t have a goal to meet OMB metrics by the end of FY18. If you can message at all around those requirements for server utilization, virtualization, software license management, and total cost of ownership tracking and reduction – MESSAGE TO THAT when working with HHS customers
Haven’t mentioned it much, but keep security in mind as well (500M attacks per week) – nobody at HHS wants to be the victim of the next major breach and there’s a lot of PII here. Safe to say that there will always be cap ex money available for security investments, and if at all possible talk about data protection even if you aren’t a security manufacturer
Finally, MGT – TOTAL COST OF OWNERSHIP REDUCTION is critical to enable HHS customers to reinvest money and truly drive the kind of modernization that leadership wants. Bring that message to bear wherever you can.