Under the Data Modernization Initiative (DMI), the CDC’s ultimate goal is “to move from siloed and brittle public health data systems to connected, resilient, adaptable, and sustainable ‘response-ready’ systems that can help us solve problems before they happen and reduce the harm caused by the problems that do happen.” While we wholeheartedly agree that CDC should move from a “siloed” public health data — an acquisition that “silos” the public health data over nine years will predictably produce a “siloed” and less “response-ready” system. We believe this status quo approach to the acquisition strategy is the riskiest option to the success of this initiative. Building a successful data platform does not require just one “siloed” business to implement it. This has not worked in other areas of government; the failure of Healthcare.gov under the Obama Administration is a prime example, and using this strategy is not the best use of commercial practices... Digging a little deeper into what we think is risky about this approach: The period of performance of 9 years: In this situation, the CDC is relying on the technical capabilities of the commercial industry to drive the future of data management, including emerging capabilities such as Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning methods. Data management and digital transformation services are improving, changing, and updating at a pace faster than government procurement and implementation lead times. How can a contractual scope be drafted now to represent the future technological needs of the CDC when better future options and methods might not yet be invented? This IDIQ results in a technology and vendor lockout for the unforeseen needs of the CDC without the opportunity to continually leverage a competitive marketplace with new & inventive methods of managing data... Read the full post here.