WT Industry Day: HHS presence too big to ignore

Next week’s Industry Day on the Health and Human Services Department is shaping up with a few more speakers.

HHS is a hot bed of IT activity these days and will continue to be an important part of the market for several reasons. And we'll all be talking all about it on Oct. 11.

The most obvious reason HHS is an important agency is the size of its annual IT spend at $13.8 billion. And a significant portion of its spending goes to investments, not just steady state IT maintenance. That makes HHS an important potential customer if you are looking at modernization, enterprise IT, data analytics and, of course, cybersecurity.

“As new technologies continue to emerge at a rapid pace, opportunities to improve mission-focused activities will emerge,” states the HHS IT Strategic Plan for 2017-2020.

A second reason are the major contract vehicles that reside at some of HHS’s component agencies, particularly, the National Institutes of Health.

But it is interesting to look at the data and you’ll see that even if you don’t a spot on CIO-SP, HHS spends a lot of money through the GSA schedules. In fact, Schedule 70 captured $695.9 million of HHS’s spending in fiscal 2016 and Schedule 874 took in another $568.7 million, according to Deltek.

Lesson: Just because you aren't on CIO-SP, don't give up on HHS.

So our WT Industry Day on Oct. 11 offers a great chance to hear firsthand what the agency’s priorities are.

The event begins with breakfast and networking at 7:30 a.m. at the Renaissance Washington in downtown Washington, D.C. The program starts at 8:35 a.m. and everything wraps up by noon.

Use this link to register for the event.

We’ve just added Andrea Brandon, deputy assistant secretary with the Office of Grants and Acquisition Policy and Accountability. She’s also had leadership roles at Homeland Security and the Agriculture Department.

In fact, she leads several government-wide initiatives. She is co-chair for the Council on Financial Assistance Reform, and is the financial assistance representative on the DATA Act Interagency advisory committee.

This broad perspective is always important to hear because you can learn what HHS is doing but also how it fits with other trends in the market.

She joins some of our other already announced speakers: Chris Wlaschin, chief information security officer and executive director of information security at HHS, George Chambers, executive director of IT infrastructure and operations for the department, and Bridget Gauer, acting director of the NIH IT Acquisition and Assessment Center.

So come take a deep dive with us into their priorities and specific contract opportunities across HHS and its component agencies.

As always these events are great opportunities to network and scope out your competitors and potential partners.

Again, here is a link to register.