HHS Accelerate to launch in January
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The Department of Health and Human Services' blockchain-based acquisition portal will get a test run this fall and launch the beginning of the year, HHS CIO Jose Arrieta said.
The Department of Health and Human Services' blockchain-based acquisition portal will get a test run this fall and launch the beginning of the year, HHS CIO Jose Arrieta said.
Speaking at NextGov's Emerging Tech summit on Aug. 14, Arrieta said the agency has been working on developing microservices for its Accelerate blockchain and artificial intelligence-infused acquisition portal.
The platform's deep database of contracting data from the agency's five acquisition systems will drive automatic pricing breaks for government the same way consumers can use competitive data at major retailers.
"If you look up the price of something on Amazon and show it to the cashier at Target or Best Buy," he said, they will immediately give you the comparable discount offered at those other retailers. "That's empowering. We created that ability for the contracting professional" on the portal, he said.
Arrieta said his agency is looking to test the portal in October and move the capability out for full agency use by January.
Other agencies, he said, can use some of the portal's top-level capabilities for their own acquisition work. Accelerate is the first blockchain-based program in the federal government to get an authority to operate certification, and its core node that supports the business service layer adheres to the Federal Acquisition Regulation and the General Services Administration's category management initiative. Agencies can build their own custom microservices based on the core and business service layer, he said.
"No more rewriting SAM.gov information, reputation and certification validation, automate financial responsibility determination" and other necessary, but time-consuming actions, he said.
HHS, he said, is also working with the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) on a blockchain-based behavioral-based identity management pilot.
"We're just talking at this point," said Arrieta of the work with DISA. The idea, he said, is use interlaced identity points to lock down access without using more vulnerable passwords or user names. The solution would combine biometrics and behavioral information as a foundation to provide secure access to a variety of networks and devices to health workers, including first responders in the field and doctors in the operating room.
Those attributes, he said, could be loaded onto a $7 dongle attached to a smart phone that would potentially provide secure, less cumbersome and costly identity access to all the user's networks and devices. "This might be too much" of a leap for the current workforce, he said, but it could provide more security down the line.
"It's powerful," he said, as it "limits the power of whoever the [network] infrastructure provider is."
This article was first posted to FCW, a sibling site to GCN.
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