Digital Strategy

Incorporating principles of the Digital Government Strategy radically improves how we conduct business and communicate with the public. Putting them into practice to create a modern digital strategy, prepares us to meet whatever new advances the future brings.

What is the Digital Government Strategy?

The Digital Government Strategy challenges us to take a hard look at our tools and determine how they can work together to better serve everyone. Improvements to our websites and tools allow you to access government information anywhere, anytime, using any device. This makes the government’s wealth of knowledge easier to find and use. Additional coordination and consistency across agencies will foster innovation that currently is impossible.

What Should I Know?

All new federal digital projects must comply with the Digital Government Strategy. All projects must be:

Information-Centric
Instead of locking information in a PDF or spreadsheet, we should share this content as individual pieces of data in the way that is most useful for you. By doing this, we encourage others to take and reuse it. This allows for innovations beyond the capabilities of a single agency. We accomplish this through the agency’s open data resource, healthdata.gov and through our API-enabled databases featured in the developers’ center.
On a Shared Platform
Currently, federal agencies have separate IT contracts and systems in place. However, multiple agencies may be using the same development platform—under different contracts and with unlinked systems. By sharing IT systems within other agencies, HHS can help the government work more efficiently, reduce costs, streamline web development, and ensure consistency in how we create and deliver information. Find out more about our shared services and resources.
Customer-Centric
HHS is comprised of 29 offices and divisions, including the Center for Disease Control, National Institutes of Health, and many others. But that doesn’t mean that our information should be divided by these groups. Visiting one site for information on a topic, such as the flu, is more helpful than visiting a department’s website, a division’s website, or an office’s website to find the information you need. Creating one-stop websites with the user in mind improves how we present information. By designing and developing websites with the customer in mind, we better serve the American public.
Secure and Private
As we open our data and information to the public, it is important that we do so in a way that is safe and secure. This is important as we support mobile devices and platforms. Developing centralized security, privacy, and data protection measures across our digital landscape will keep your information safe. We will ensure consistent, sustainable policies and procedures by implementing these standard guidelines across all HHS digital platforms.

How Can I Get Involved?

Implementing the Digital Government Strategy is not the responsibility of one office or the IT department. The American public and government employees can also support this new approach to digital services.

What Everyone Can Do:

Read the Digital Government Strategy

What Federal Employees and Contractors Can Do:

Learn about the Digital Government Strategy Milestones and Deliverables
Read how agencies are working together to improve digital services across the government
Reach out to your agency to learn how you can support the strategy
Join the Web Managers Community Listserv (U.S. government employees only).

What is the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA)?

Information technology (IT) is critical to our ability to enhance the health and well-being of Americans by providing for effective health and human services and by fostering sound, sustained advances in the sciences underlying medicine, public health, and social services. HHS spends approximately $5 billion annually on IT. Our agency has the second largest number of IT investments and the largest dollar investment in major IT systems in the Federal Government.

Given the importance of IT, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) sees the FITARA governance framework as critical to delivering results in the most cost-effective way possible for the American taxpayer.

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has provided specific guidance on the implementation of FITARA across the federal sector to ensure that government-wide implementation is consistent with existing laws, policies, and management practices by issuing the Management and Oversight of Federal IT Memoranda (M-15-14).

FITARA was enacted on December 19, 2014, and since then Congress has used an evolving set of metrics on the FITARA scorecard to measure agency progress. HHS uses an internal version of this scorecard to measure its components and forecast performance.

To implement these FITARA requirements and ensure governance is comprehensive, the HHS Chief Information Officer (CIO) leverages the expertise of HHS executives: the Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Chief Human Capital Officer (CHCO), Chief Acquisition Officer (CAO), Assistant Secretary for Administration (ASA), Chief Operating Officer (COO), and component level CIO communities.