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Overcoming the Challenges of Moving to Modular Health and Human Services (HHS) Solutions
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Business concept, m, ... ]
Presented by
Grant Thornton
Presented by
Grant Thornton
By stepping away from monolithic solutions, healthcare agencies can make a difference for citizens.
The biggest challenges are often solved the hard way: one step at a time.
This is an accurate description for the exciting but youthful state of modularity in HHS information technology (IT).
State and local governments have for years relied on large, monolithic systems for their HHS IT solutions. But they’re trying to make a move to modular solutions, meaning the breaking up of big business operations into smaller, individually introduced components. This trend has unique challenges of its own, but they are not insurmountable and are far exceeded by the benefits.
Leading the pack of those benefits is speed to value.
“You achieve results earlier,” says Douglas Doerr, Principal at Grant Thornton Public Sector.
Say an agency wants to start modernizing with a mobility system. They’ll add a modular mobility solution to their existing system that will live on as they continue to modernize, but which will start providing value within months.
With modular implementations, state and local HHS organizations are also free from the binds of proprietary vendors.
“Looking at an entire marketplace of options, not just what three or four systems integrators have been providing over the last 20 years, you’ll see more innovation and stronger solutions,” Doerr says.
Because of that expedited value and capacity for compounding innovations, modular solutions stand to amplify the mission of HHS as a whole.
“When it comes down to it, this is about serving citizens that need support,” Doerr says. “And modular implementations improve that support.”
Modular IT seems to make a lot of sense, but, as its name suggests, solutions enter an IT ecosystem one piece at a time. This complicates the transformation process, because the legacy systems running in state and local HHS were never designed to be retired or replaced in phases.
“In a nutshell, there’s a lot of extra time and effort that has to be spent upfront in how to architect the transition,” Doerr says.
Most of that time and effort will be concentrated on the several different procurements necessary for modular solutions, Doerr says. Because it necessitates multiple procurements, modular HHS requires each one to be tight, clean and efficient not just from a technology perspective but from a compliance one as well.
The solution to these complications will primarily be organizational change. To successfully employ modular IT, agencies need to find the right skill set and strategy to apply to their efforts. This involves tapping into an existing knowledge base—the people in an organization who already have an intimate understanding of its current systems. Then they have to create a plan that integrates all of their needed solutions, a level of complexity that may intimidate some but should excite all.
“From there, they’ll determine the art of the possible,” Doerr says.
That “art” is already being seen across the country in places like California, where, at the behest of 18F, state leaders reevaluated their child welfare system, depending more heavily on smaller contracts than on large, single-vendor procurements.
For now, most states are still relatively early on in the implementation of modular solutions. As more adoptees join in and modularity becomes as ubiquitous as big-bang acquisition once was, the return will be impactful.
More than that, it will put the power back in the hands of agencies.
“With modular solutions, states will be able to step back and control their own endgame,” Doerr says.
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