A Year in Review: What Are You Most Proud of Accomplishing in 2022?

The end of the year is traditionally a time for reflecting and looking ahead. In part one of PlanetOIT's year-end wrap-up, we close out an eventful year by asking OIT staff what they are most proud of accomplishing in 2022. Keep reading to learn more about these accomplishments and why they were important to CMS.

Robert Suchocki, Subject Matter Expert for the Enrollment Database and Direct Billing System, OIT, DMSS  

We have made significant progress on our modernization efforts for the Enrollment Database, which is known more commonly as the EDB. We faced numerous challenges along the way due to the complexities of the business scenarios, but we were able to implement several large processes into production in Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Our most noteworthy implementations were for our entitlement services, several of our direct billing modules, and our annual Benefit Rate Increase (BRI) process, which we ran in the modernized environment on AWS for the first time this November. This effort has provided a long overdue upgrade to the code, and it allows us to be more flexible with our resources and our data processing.

Regarding customer benefits, some of the advantages of being in this new environment are being able to efficiently address problems and work with code that is more manageable. This allows us to act on known issues that were difficult to handle in the legacy system. It also provides us with better research and analytics capabilities, which should help us to improve case work and address issues that are normally a little more difficult to handle. 

This will help us do our jobs better, making sure the bills that beneficiaries receive are more accurate and making sure everything in general is more accurate. The difficulty of the task made these implementations in production even more rewarding and fulfilling. I’d like to give a shout-out to the team for all their hard work.

Tammy Johnson, Medicare Enrollment & Payment Systems Expert, OIT, DMSS 

We’ve been working on migrating our systems in our division to AWS. Two of our four systems have been in the cloud for about a year and a half. This year, we revamped an extremely large, critical portion of the Medicare Enrollment and Premium Billing Systems’ (MEPBS) complex legacy code into a Medicare Entitlement & Premium Service where we capture and maintain data for enrolling beneficiaries into Medicare.

We started in April of 2019, and in November the service finally went live. There have been minimal issues with it; and we are counting it as a great success. It was a huge amount of work by numerous teams, CMS and contractors. Kudos to all the teams involved, including our business owners!

Moving everything to the cloud will allow us to save on costs. Leveraging all the data we’re receiving from the Social Security Administration (SSA) will make the picture on our side more complete, allowing for improved data integrity and quality, which greatly assists with analysis. We’re saving time, money, and it’s also a centralized location for partners to come and retrieve the data in lieu of duplicating the data.

The MEPBS Enrollment Database (EDB) receives data from the SSA and the Railroad Retirement Board (RRB) for accreting beneficiaries to the Medicare world. This where Medicare starts. The information among SSA, RRB and CMS should be in synch for the Medicare population. This new AWS service will contribute to the three agencies alignment of the data. It was a major critical milestone for MEPBS.

Glenn Eyler, MDM & EDL Technical Lead & COR, OIT, DDES

2022 has been an inspiring year for my team and me. We have been honored and challenged throughout the year to overcome business and agency challenges and create more efficient, innovative, and cost-effective solutions. 

A few of the challenges we have worked on include: Migrating Master Data Management (MDM) to the cloud, standing up and maintaining the Enterprise Data Lake - Data Mesh (EDL) ecosystem, and helping CMS connect to data in a fast and efficient method. We have also been honored to work on other projects and collaboration opportunities with extensive agency impact. 

My proudest achievement has been working with such an amazing team to identify CMS's challenges and build and create exceptional solutions that have overcome challenging business problems and provided increased efficiency and cost savings throughout the agency.

Karan Patel, IT Specialist, OIT, ESSG/DADS

From a work perspective, it would be incorporating human centered design (HCD) into our platform. It’s all about gearing our processes and the way we work toward the person using it. It’s being user friendly and making sure we understand what their needs are from their wants. That’s something I’m proud of and glad we’re doing more of from previous years.”

Murari Selvakesavan, Director, OIT, EADG, DEIMS

The accomplishment I am most proud of is the completion of the Integrated Data Repository (IDR) Cloud migration Phase I, which encompassed the migration of all historical data from the IDR/Teradata on premises system to the IDR Cloud Snowflake (FedRAMP-authorized cloud-native Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform) system. 

It also included the redesign of all data engineering processes to keep data current and in sync between the IDR and IDR Cloud systems; the migration of all user-facing Virtual Data Marts (VDMs); and the establishment of Role-Based Access Control (RBAC), Row-and-Column-Level-Security (RCLS), and IDR Cloud access setup for the downstream interfacing systems, application teams, and users to run parallel operations across the two systems.

We also implemented enterprise level cloud-native IDR Data-as-a-Service (DaaS) APIs for Parts A & B claims data with endpoints to access claims by Beneficiary, Provider, and Claim Number. By using these APIs, our first customer, Eligibility Enrollment Medicare Online (ELMO) system, streamlined its process to review claims eligibility and payments in a single workflow. 

Emily Hill, Division of IT Investment Management & Policy, DIIMP

My main accomplishment from 2022 was developing my role as a release train engineer (RTE). I joined CMS in August and was really excited to take on new responsibilities and roles in my position. Being offered a chance to be an RTE was exciting, new, and something I was ready to dive headfirst into. 

It allowed me to interact with my new team members, develop Agile skills quickly, and gain experience with different teams in the division. Tackling a new position with CMS and being able to quickly gain knowledge as an RTE worked really well for me, and it allowed a confidence boost in the new work I was starting.” 

Doug Nock, Senior TA, ISPG

I think my proudest accomplishment was completing Project Snapshot, which was an effort to create a quantifiable, scalable risk modeling tool that could be used by any employee to assess threats or risks impacting CMS programs and infrastructure. Throughout my career at CMS, I have been a part of several risk analysis exercises that were qualitative in nature and predominantly used heat mapping, despite its shortcomings. I wish I had a tool like the one we created under Project Snapshot. I feel we could have provided leadership with more precise data to aid in decision-making. My only hope is what we accomplished with Project Snapshot will be the catalyst for more quantitative type analyses both in OIT and throughout all of CMS.

Look for the second part of PlanetOIT's year-end wrap-up next week, where we will ask OIT staff what they are most looking forward to working on in 2023.