A Year in Review Part 2: What Are You Most Looking Forward to Accomplishing in 2023?

Editor’s Note: In Part 2 of our Year in Review story, PlanetOIT asks OIT staff to talk about what they are most looking forward to working on in 2023. Here are their answers.

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

It’s two-fold. We’re very much looking forward to finishing the Enrollment Database modernization project and the subsequent retiring of the legacy Enrollment Database in the mainframe. After multiple years of hard work from the design and development phases to testing and implementation, we’re very close to the finish line. We can see it, we know we’re right there, and we’ve just got to push through a couple more months of hard work.

We’re really looking forward to existing in a modern system that allows us flexibility in processing and empowers us to proactively address issues that have been difficult in the past. The retirement of the legacy system represents a fresh start for us in a new environment where we are free from the restrictions that were imposed by the legacy mainframe and the aging software that performs updates, processes the data, and calculates bills. It’s not just the database being upgraded here. It’s also the accompanying software that is involved in calculations. We’re targeting early to mid-2023 for the project to be completed, and we are very excited. 

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

I’m looking forward to the completion of the Medicare Enrollment and Premium Billing Systems (MEPBS) migration to the cloud. In addition to this effort, we also have the MARx (Medicare Advantage and Prescription Drug) system, which goes hand-in-hand with the MEPBS migration because both systems use a Common Medicare Environment (CME), a shared database per se. 

We have to ensure the two systems are working together with this migration to the cloud in 2023, along with all the processing for the two systems. We are targeting early next year for this crucial milestone. The CME migration is one of the final tasks to complete for the division. Once complete, all of our systems within DMSS will be in AWS. 

We also have a huge event with the Social Security Administration (SSA) in November where CMS receives information from SSA, and millions of Medicare beneficiary premium rates are updated for the upcoming year.  If all goes as planned, November 2023 will be the first time that we’re running 100 percent on the cloud. We did it in a hybrid fashion this year, where processing occurred on the mainframe and on the cloud. 

Next year, everything will be totally in AWS. I’m really looking forward to that. Based on everything we’re seeing with the cloud processing, things are very quick and we’re hoping the BRI event will take just a fraction of the time that it has taken in the past. 

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

I am passionate about creating and applying technical solutions to overcome business challenges and making solutions more cost-effective and efficient. I look forward to supporting the current programs I work on within MDM and EDL and finding new ways to leverage the technology we have built to drive innovation. I look forward to the challenges that arise throughout the new year and the collaboration it will foster in identifying agency and business needs and turning them into success stories.

Karan Patel, IT Specialist, OIT, ESSG/DADS

I’m mostly looking forward to continuing our work with human-centered design (HCD) on our platform and from a broader perspective, helping with modernization of our systems, moving away from mainframe to the cloud and using Amazon Web Services (AWS) to fulfill most of our needs.

Murari Selvakesavan, Director, OIT, EADG, DEIMS

In 2023, I’m looking forward to completing the Integrated Data Repository (IDR) Cloud Migration Phase II, shutting down the IDR on-premises, and developing a user-friendly IDR Cloud Data Catalog. This will show the end-to-end data lineage and organize data assets for ease of access and consumption by users. I’m also looking forward to establishing a “data share” from the IDR Cloud Snowflake to the EDL.

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

I’m looking forward to taking on a performance manager role within DIIMP during 2023. This opportunity brought me a lot of excitement when it was first offered to me. It is a chance for me to take on something more impactful than I originally thought I would be doing as a first-year employee with CMS. 

Not only will I be going through the training for the role, but I’m also taking the lead on a lot of the work tailored to developing the role within the division. The performance manager role is a goal that I can now direct energy toward and grow into a significant achievement for myself. The excitement and opportunity surrounding this has made me really excited to get this started in 2023.

Doug Nock, Senior TA, ISPG 

In 2023, I am looking forward to improving our threat detection network to address the greatest risks facing CMS and enhancing threat intelligence by curating more intel in-house, which will be possible through more quantitative risk analysis and projects like the Security Data Lake. I am also looking forward to creating early warning systems, like SBOM Harbor, using leading metrics to give business owners the information they need to make risk-based decisions, and being a part of making security engineering a greater focus within the Information Security & Privacy Group's lines of business.

I am also looking forward to seeing our CMS business/system owners take full advantage of batCAVE, OIT's platform as a service (PaaS) cloud offering. As a former business owner of several CMS systems, I would have liked to have had this option at my disposal to help reduce development and maintenance costs, and to make complying with information security requirements easier since the controls are already “baked in'' to the offering.

The addition of optional ancillary services, like threat modeling or secrets management that might come standard with the base package, is an added benefit since we (business owners) typically had to pay extra for these services or contract separately, which is difficult when your ops and maintenance budget is constrained. I really like that OIT is trying hard to anticipate the needs of its customers in its newer product offerings.