HHS makes 57 awards on AI, automation contract

The Health and Human Services Department has made dozens of awards on a five-year, $49 million contract vehicle to help integrate artificial intelligence, automation and other emerging technologies for use in shared services and other back office functions.

HHS’ Program Support Center embarked on the “Intelligent Automation/Artificial Intelligence” (IAAI) procurement to acquire a wide range of technologies for use not just within the department itself but by other federal agencies for small fees.

Solutions the center is looking for include those in AI, robotic process automation, blockchain and machine learning it believes can drive more efficiencies.

In total, HHS chose 57 companies ranging from large federal systems integrators to mid-tier and small businesses, plus commercial technology firms with significant government footprints. That list is available here.

Solicitation documents indicate winners will vie for task orders in functional areas that include:

• Applied ideation and design support
• Engineering and process engineering support
• Systems design
• Engineering, prototyping and model making support

Shared services the HHS PSC supports include administrative operations, financial management, procurement, occupational health, real estate and logistics.

The center launched IAAI in January as a mechanism to help “fundamentally transform how the public sector gets work done -- redesigning jobs and creating entirely new professions,” according to the statement of work.

“PSC believes that IAAI solutions will be doing everything from reducing backlog and cutting costs to performing functions; such as predicting fraudulent transactions and identifying critical suspects via facial recognition, which are considered difficult for an individual to complete on their own,” the statement added.