Public health gets
a booster.
(Thanks, cloud!)
Modernizing infrastructure at the CDC’s Global Health Center
CLOUD MIGRATION = GREATER EFFICIENCIES = HIGHER MISSION IMPACT
The Situation
These past few years have reminded us of a hard truth: Disease knows no borders. Our interconnectedness means a health threat anywhere in the world can quickly and easily come home to the United States, causing … well, we know too well the potential costs.
This is why the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) established the Global Health Center (GHC) (previously Center for Global Health), an overseas network of 60+ labs and offices from which CDC officials can monitor risks and collaborate with local health ministries to mitigate them. No surprise: The best way to protect Americans against emerging health threats from abroad is to stop them before they reach our shores, and these outposts serve as first responders. Also no surprise: This kind of far-flung, connected protection takes a lot of logistics and back-office technology to run smoothly.
That’s where Deloitte and prime federal contractor Chickasaw Nation Industries (CNI) come in. Since 2015 we’ve collaborated to develop and maintain the GHC’s Overseas Business Management System (OBMS), improving its ability to communicate, learn, and respond in an increasingly complex global health environment. Based on technology decisions made by GHC, we started by delivering an integrated Microsoft .NET solution for the GHC’s motor pool and travel functions (dependable mobility being crucial on overseas postings), as well as a SharePoint 2013 solution for workforce and procurement.
Then, in 2019, the CDC’s Office of the Chief Information Officer launched a cloud migration strategy. The mandate meant (among other things) that all SharePoint 2013 sites needed to be shifted to the cloud by December 2020. But how, exactly? The project team got down to work.
THE SOLVE
Together, Deloitte and CNI assessed various software-as-a-service (SaaS) and platform-as-a-service (PaaS) options against a series of overlapping requirements. There were CDC security considerations and implementation readiness. Business requirements from OBMS. The given solutions’ out-of-the-box technical capabilities. Licensing costs. In the end, the client chose Microsoft’s Power Platform.
Decision made, the project team turned to delivering a production-ready proof of concept (POC) for one of the four OBMS functions to be migrated: procurement—with particular emphasis on data security. They did so in just 65 days, showing that low-code/no-code application development could significantly increase the team’s output and reduce delivery time. The POC deemed a success, rebuild and stabilization of the first two functions was completed a month before deadline, with both going live on schedule in 2020. All four legacy OBMS functions have since been migrated.
Of the 60+ CDC country offices around the globe, 43 are now using these solutions to streamline and standardize their operations, with more to follow soon. Now, CDC country office staff moving from one post to another can be confident that key supporting business processes will be consistent in either location.
Success begets success; GHC leadership has since asked the project team to assess whether other shared processes could integrate and/or interface with OBMS. The team has developed two new functions for inventory and facility management, including a mobile app that will allow the country offices to track and restock supplies in their warehouses quickly and easily.
STREAMLINED, STANDARDIZED OPERATIONS IN THE FIELD BRING RENEWED MISSION FOCUS.
The Impact
Technical terms aside, here’s how the real value of the project team’s work can be described: They’ve reduced operating complexity for the CDC so it can concentrate on its mission abroad—protecting public health. The rest is detail (however important):
- Created a connected operations management solution that provides country offices a holistic view of their back-end operations from procurement to inventory management to facility management
- Developed a standardized, visual approval processes with enough flexibility to streamline business processes in the country offices and enable users to approve requests through their mobile phones
- Significantly reduced the administrative work needed to maintain the application by standardizing the underlying security model of the application
- Empowered users to create custom dashboards and views to meet their specific needs
- Developed two mobile applications targeting user groups, such as motor pool drivers, enabling them to complete their tasks on-the-go through mobile phones, thus significantly reducing their offline work
- Automated currency exchange rate conversion by syncing with the Department of Treasury API
1,500 personnel. User experience improved significantly for CDC employees based in more than 43 countries due to replacement of a legacy user interface with a modern and “fluent” one focused on faster response times and reduced number of steps needed by users to complete tasks.
88% user adoption increase. The re-platforming team increased user adoption by eliminating manual, paper-based processes and raising awareness of the application through adoption of a strategic communication plan that included weekly user community calls to address questions, newsletters to highlight new features, and deployment of a quick and easy way to issue support tickets.
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