Inside the Shark Tank: OIT Community and Collaboration
At the April All-Staff meeting, OIT leadership challenged employees to propose solutions that address opportunities for improvement. In this series, we are sharing brief summaries of the resulting proposals, playfully dubbed “shark tank pitches,” that your colleagues presented to the Front Office, with updates on their progress.
Various efforts are underway to expedite the movement of knowledge within OIT, an organization whose federated structure can lead to information silos. Some of those efforts—like the Knowledge Management Platform—focus on technological solutions.
Meanwhile, a team of managers from Enterprise Systems Solutions Group (ESSG) is focusing on the human side of the equation.
The OIT Community and Collaboration (OCC) program would allow employees to temporarily join projects on other teams to share their knowledge and bring back new competencies to their own team. An additional benefit would be increased communication and transparency throughout the office.
Making it easier for employees to share their knowledge across groups and divisions also benefits all of OIT’s stakeholders.
“A lot of us share the same users,” explains Rabeea Rafiq, IT Specialist in the Division of Identity Management Enterprise Systems (DIMES). “If different service providers within OIT are more aligned, there is less burden on the user.”
“When we talk to other divisions, sometimes we ask, ‘Why did you use such and such a product, has anyone figured out how to meet such and such requirements using an Agile SaFe methodology?’ OCC would create more of those conversations.”
Managers could also learn how other teams tackle some of the same challenges they are faced with, including Experian RBA implementation, Jira integration, and Identity Management modernization.
Temporary assignments would not be full-blown rotations requiring HR action. They would be handled on the managerial level by memorandums of understanding (MoU), and they would differ based on team needs and individual availability.
The Front Office has asked the OCC team to run a pilot program within ESSG. It will start with ESSG’s four divisions: Applications Development and Support (DADS), Enterprise Services (DES), Identity Management Enterprise Systems (DIMES), and Medicare Systems Support (DMSS).
The team has set up a matchmaking matrix where division managers can list projects available to participants and where participants can list their skills.
“This knowledge-sharing program,” says team member and DADS IT Specialist Anusha Sathyanarayan, “will help us avoid reinventing the wheel from scratch.”
For more information about OCC, please contact Rabeea Rafiq at rabeea.rafiq@cms.hhs.gov.
Team Members: Rabeea Rafiq, Anusha Sathyanarayan, Tim Purcell, Yani Mellacheruvu, Tej Ghimire, Steve Felsenberg, Nanda Kandala, Tamar Zelcer