Summary

OIT project pairs Agile and HCD methods to deliver big value.

Photo of EASi Project Lead Nick Downey.

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EASi Does It with Innovation Award Win

FedHealth IT CEO Susan Sharer presents EASi Project Lead Nick Downey with Innovation Award

Representatives of the OIT team that designed Easy Access to System information (EASi) received well-deserved recognition from leaders in the health IT industry when they were notified they’d won a FedHealth IT Innovation Award on May 11.  

Sponsored by FedHealthIT and G2Xchange, the award “recognizes and honors the Federal Health technology and consulting community by celebrating programs for driving innovation and results across the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Military Health System, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.”

The EASi program facilitates and monitors the movement of IT systems through the CMS Software Development Lifecycle. It also provides CMS stakeholders, from leadership to business owners, a centralized location for interacting with governance processes, resulting in a change in perspective and productivity within the user base. Once fully adopted by user communities, EASi should reduce overall cost of CMS system development by 10% or more.

On receiving the news of the award, EASi product owner Nick Downey said, “I was both surprised and grateful. It is gratifying that we are getting noticed for innovating at CMS.”

The original minimum viable product (MVP) of EASi was to create a system portfolio where business owners and leadership could quickly find system information in a centralized location. However, after kicking off the effort and completing user experience (UX) and human-centered design (HCD) sessions with hundreds of business owners across the agency, a common theme of feedback became apparent.

Business owners valued more transparency and better facilitation of governance processes over having a centralized source of system information. They were saying things like, “I don’t know who to talk to, what to bring, why I’m doing this.”

The EASi team then pivoted to improving the intake and 508 compliance processes. They also built a “health and knowledge center,” which explains governance requirements to users in plain language.

By applying practices such as Agile development, open sourcing, and HCD - an approach that centers the needs, constraints, and behaviors of customers - the EASi developers were able to amend their project so that it provided the greatest possible value to CMS. Pairing HCD with the Agile development model, they quickly implemented revisions by working in short, iterative bursts informed by stakeholder feedback.  

Now, after building a foundation of processes and resources that best serves users, the EASi team is using that foundation to build a dashboard that tracks the status of systems for CMS leadership. 

Downey said he is especially proud that the EASi will enhance systems and facilitate the work of his fellow employees. “I think EASi will really improve the agency when everything is in full swing,” he said.

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