Sivak on breaking down government silos to advance innovation
BOSTON--People may be skeptical of the phrase “government innovation” but the government has been a catalyst for innovation in several instances, including its work on GPS, transistors and fracking technology. “This was all created and funded by the government and fundamentally changed the world,” said Bryan Sivak, chief technology officer at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) at the Medical Informatics World Conference on April 29.
Another example is the National Cancer Institute (NCI) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which has more than 18,000 patents for inventions waiting to be commercialized that could transform cancer care, he said.
There is a lot more potential to advance innovation within the government, specifically HHS, a multilayered agency with departments that often do not communicate or systematically share data. HHS includes 11 operating divisions, 90,000 full time employees and 150,000 contractors that handle issues spanning from refugee resettlement and Medicare operations to looking for the cure to cancer and mapping the human brain.
At NIH, for instance, there are 27 institutes and within one institute, NCI, is 28 units. “It’s like a fractal--the deeper you go the more complex you get.”
“There are a lot of very detailed operational complexities within the agency,” Sivak said. Getting the various divisions to work together—even on complementary endeavors—is a challenge, as they all operate independently and Congress designates funding for each department separately.
To break through the barriers, Sivak is leading an initiative called the IDEA Lab to “create a more modern and effective government.”
That means tapping into underutilized talent at every level within HHS guided by the following three core beliefs:
- Any individual can positively improve the health and well-being of Americans.
- People are more powerful when working together.
- There is a solution to every problem.
Central to the IDEA Lab is giving staff the freedom to experiment, which he feels propels true innovation, with a focus on improving design within agencies to improve user experience and more effectively communicate ideas, he said. It also includes efforts to liberate federated data.
IDEA Lab supports a select number of low-cost, rapid experiments envisioned by employmees to see if they can fundamentally improve operations.
Sivak cited one successful project at the Administration for Children and Families in which a team developed a dashboard to track those children who have moved through the system. This was built iteratively based on interviews with users, which ultimately fueled its widespread adoption.
“The dashboard is helping take the kids in bad situations and getting them in better situations,” he said, adding that the HHS employee who initiated the idea ended up receiving a major promotion.
From these pilots, Sivak said what the teams desire even more than money are the tools to drive improvements in their programs.
Sivak said the next round of teams will formally be announced on May 5. However, at the conference, he did a “soft launch” announcement of some of the upcoming projects:
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Modernizing morbidity database
- Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS): Blue Button as a service
- CMS: De-identified claims data
- Administration for Community Living: Digital media, aging and disability communities
- Health Resources and Services Admiration: transforming home visiting
- Office of the Secretary: Innovative databases