The Department of Health and Human Services has finalized an official mobile strategy and will begin implementing the plan in January, Acting CIO John Teeter announced at a presentation to federal contractors Thursday.
Teeter said the strategy was finalized Wednesday and indicates the department’s commitment to technology and progress.
“If we don’t prepare for it now, we’re going to be way behind, as the government usually is. HHS is a little more risk averse than other agencies and we’re going to change that,” Teeter said. “The reality is all of the divisions have made investments in this and we need to bring it all together. ‘That’s too risky’ has been the mantra of HHS for quite some time. My perspective is ‘find a way.’ … We need innovative ideas to move forward. That’s the only way we will get the services we need … to satisfy our mission.”
Teeter, who was the featured speaker at a presentation on HHS procurement opportunities sponsored by immixGroup, said the department’s mobile technology strategy will involve identifying user and business requirements as well as security and privacy requirements. In addition, the department will develop configuration baselines and provide recommendations on identified mobile technologies for implementation.
He also noted the need for mobile applications that are certified to meet federal standards for use in the health care area, such as the Food and Drug Administration’s diagnostic radiology app (see slide in gallery below).
“I’m very interested in the emergency response area and making the best use of mobile technology in a natural disaster,” Teeter said. “Building an application that you can make available to the federal government that satisfieds security requirements — that’s going to be a huge area of opportunity.”
He also cited the need for and budget dollars to support identity management within the cloud as part of the 25-Point Reform Plan as well as continuous monitoring, asset management and data center consolidation efforts in the next year. Plans call for reducing HHS’s 189 data centers to 131 by 2015, Teeter said.
He added: “Practicality tells me we only need six. Politics might mean otherwise.”
Teeter also highlighted the need for IT security solutions for cloud computing and noted recent efforts to capitalize on the government’s FedRAMP program, expressing some disappointment it would not be immediately available.
“That’s a little bit of a delay,” he said. “We’re operating in the cloud now.”
In addition, Teeter stressed the importance of information sharing as the National Information Exchange Model (discussed in the video above) has taken hold across the U.S. and pilot projects in Canada as well as gleaned interest from Europe.