By: Walter S. Harris, M.B.A, P.M.P.
At its core, FDA is an information- and process-driven organization. Day-in and day-out, FDA’s experts make thousands of weighty and complex decisions by evaluating, and allowing access to, life-sustaining, life-enhancing and life-saving products. This is done using a vast amount of sophisticated and reliable data. And it is done while continuously engaging with consumers, patient representatives, industry, academia and other government agencies.
Since the establishment of the Office of Information Management and Technology (OIMT) seven months ago, we have fundamentally changed how we support the Agency’s mission – primarily, to increase transparency, and better align functions and resources to achieve more efficient and improved customer support and services. To further these objectives, we have taken the following steps to help transform our service to our internal and external stakeholders.
- Reorganized the Office of Information Management into a more stable structure that is focused on our customers and the delivery of services. This new IT structure includes robust leadership, increased scientific capability and closer attention to IT’s business and customer needs, including a new IT audit and compliance program.
- Hired the first Chief Health Informatics Officer (CHIO), Taha Kass-Hout, MD, M.S., to promote and develop innovative enterprise solutions and identify opportunities for transparency and availability of FDA’s public health data to our consumers while ensuring accountability and privacy. With the launch of openFDA, we have demonstrated our ability to respond quickly and accurately to emerging scientific, technological and economic trends.
- Requested that the CIO Council, FDA’s IT governance board with representation across all of its Centers, focus on opportunities to consolidate IT solutions into capabilities that benefit the agency, eliminating duplication of efforts and creating possibilities for reinvestment.
- Creating an IT service cost-allocation model that will include a service catalog and identification of cost drivers for IT services.
- Restructuring our IT portfolio to a service based portfolio model that is in alignment with our cost allocation model.
OIMT, together with IT leaders in the Centers, will transform our IT operation to minimize redundancies, streamline IT, and enhance customer service while lowering IT costs to the agency. We continue to seek opportunities to identify and tackle issues, improve communications across functional lines, and more fully capitalize on the expertise of our talented staff.
These are exciting endeavors and I am proud of the efforts IT leaders across the FDA have taken to focus on customer service. With a renewed emphasis on service delivery to enable mission outcomes, we are better able to use resources in a manner that will achieve greater efficiency, improve support across the FDA, and provide results that benefit the public health.
Walter S. Harris, M.B.A, P.M.P., is FDA’s Deputy Commissioner for Operations