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Department of Health and Human Services

Updating critical state and local systems

Photograph of people meeting in small groups during a workshop

Project details

Health and Human Services (HHS) is a federal agency, but many crucial HHS programs — like Medicaid — are administered by states.

HHS encourages states to upgrade legacy systems by offering funding incentives, but many states struggle to manage risk and build usable systems while navigating federal and state contracting rules. HHS hired 18F to step in and help states set these projects up for success through the technology acquisition process.

Approach
### Reducing risk by breaking up contracts

In our first project with HHS, we helped California get on the right path to buying a new system for child welfare case management by facilitating a two-day workshop to break a monolithic contract into smaller pieces (along with colleagues from California’s Department of Social Services, the Office of Systems Integration, and Code for America).

Next, HHS asked us to work with other states who needed to procure case management systems for child welfare. We also began applying what we learned to a new challenge: working with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Systems (also within HHS) to support states who were upgrading Medicaid data systems.

Agency partner

Department of Health and Human Services

Resources

Related blog posts

See all posts about this project

  • Announcing the State Software Budgeting Handbook

    We’re proud to announce the release of our state software budgeting handbook, a 40-page guide for executives, budget specialists, legislators, and other decision makers who fund or oversee state government technology projects.

  • Modular contracting and working in the open

    Working in the open is a key component of building trust between governments and vendor partners. Read about how the State of Alaska is using openness and code sharing to foster greater trust between government project teams and vendor teams as part of a large legacy system overhaul.

  • Using agile methods to improve the RFP process

    The process of developing and issuing RFPs is often viewed as a one off - a special activity that occurs infrequently and in isolation. What if we applied the principles of iteration and continuous improvement to the way that RFPs are developed?