Pushing the Envelope on Change at OIT

Although we don't talk about it much, the reality is that change is built into the government ecosystem. OIT must respond to uncertainty every day in order to thrive as a service organization.

Our work can be impacted at any given time by political uncertainties, elections, Congressional oversight and hearings, mandates from new regulations, media inquiries, as well as changing technology and emerging security risks. All of these require that we increase our knowledge so that we can better leverage technology and provide greater value to the agency and our clients.

But it doesn't stop there. Rapid technological change in an era of unprecedented knowledge expansion impacts OIT as well. Because knowledge and innovation go hand in hand, the rate of innovation is also accelerating, sending ripples throughout the agency. And if that wasn't enough, the COVID-19 pandemic continues to shift our work environment. 

Organizational change expert Albert Meige sums up the current environment like this: “Imagine knowledge as a large pot of boiling water, surging, occasionally erupting, with increasingly frequent bursts of innovation jumping out of it.”

That's what we're dealing with now – a simmering pot that is continuously being stirred by frequent bursts of internal and external pressures that are converging at the same time – all of which are driving us to change.

The good news is that OIT has continuously adapted to all this change and uncertainty. But it hasn’t been easy.

Even the best of us can get overwhelmed when change happens so frequently, and it's vitally important that we see our current situation for what it really is so that we can proactively drive change and reactively respond to it. 

So what do we need to know about the drivers of organizational change at OIT and why we’re changing? 

• It’s not because we’re not doing our jobs. We’re changing as an organization to meet the needs of our customer base, while adapting to new technology and volatility around us. 
• Change is a reality for everyone working within OIT because of our public health mission and our commitment to being leading technology solution providers. 
• OIT's priorities of moving to the Cloud and using Cloud services, implementing artificial intelligence, expanding data science, and applying disaster recovery services demonstrate how technological advances are driving us to change and deliver greater value. 
• We’re going even further than that by leveraging data to make better decisions about health care.
• Continuing to do our work and to do it better is a tremendous challenge and a tremendous opportunity that OIT has embraced.

“Building a more resilient organization requires us to recognize these drivers of organizational change so that we can be better prepared to respond to them," says Rajiv Uppal, Director and CMS Chief Information Officer. "It's also important to recognize that these changes aren't happening because of something you didn't do. 

“We're not changing because you're not good enough. We're changing because change is at the heart of what we do. Everything we're doing is about putting things in place so that we can make the kind of impact we want to make in the country and with the mission we have. That's ultimately what's driving us."

Bobby Saxon, Deputy Director of OIT, adds: “My vision of a new whole is that we become a place where modernization is a mindset, not a project. We don't modernize every five to 10 years. We modernize every day in everything we do. It’s ongoing, continuous, and part of our DNA, not the exception to the rule.”

Change is never easy, and for all of us, it will never disappear. That’s a good thing as long as we see it for what it is and embrace it for all that it can be.