Federal chief information officers (CIOs) are urging vendors to move beyond product pitches and deliver technologies that solve mission-focused problems, agency officials said at AFCEA Bethesda’s Health IT Summit on May 26.
Patrick Newbold, CIO at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), said his office recently held an IT strategy discussion centered around mission outcomes.
“The most important aspect of that discussion … was about every investment we made, every decision we made has to be rooted in the mission outcomes that we’re trying to achieve,” Newbold said.
The CIO said he is “starting something new” and pushing teams and vendors alike to focus less on product features and more on measurable impacts for the more than 160 million Americans CMS supports.
“If I’m not hearing how those solutions, those capabilities are going to support a person … I’m going to stop and ask the question, ‘How is it supporting, and who is it supporting?’” Newbold said.
“That’s been a gap this year,” he explained. “There have been far too many meetings and discussions that have been very focused on my feature X and my feature Y, and I want to change that discussion to my outcome A and my outcome B with people being back [at the center].”
Lance Jenkinson, CIO at the Department of Veterans Affairs Office of Inspector General (VA OIG), echoed those priorities. Jenkinson said he is also looking for solutions that address concrete challenges instead of broad technology pitches.
“From everyone’s own perspective, they have solution X, Y, or Z, and Y is a particular grade of how it’s going to save the world, or do this, or do that, and it’s all well and good, but … does it actually map to a problem that I really have?” Jenkinson asked. “I’m not looking to buy tools to solve a problem I may not have.”
Similarly, Sridhar Mantha, the acting CIO at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), said that he’s looking for vendors that can reduce the FDA’s complexity and that are “more mission-focused.”
“We are dealing with too much complexity, too much technology,” Mantha said. “You need to know our mission.”