Jose Arrieta, the Division of Well being and Human Companies chief data officer, abruptly resigned in the present day.
Arrieta stated in an interview with Federal Information Community that he advised senior management he can be leaving the company after solely 16 months.
“It has been fairly intense since March with numerous exercise across the pandemic. We’ve had plenty of cyber occasions and launched HHS Defend. We’ve obtained it to level the place it’s totally useful and just some small technical issues have to be addressed. We’ve been clear with knowledge and pushed boundaries. The management in expertise is able to lead us via this fall,” he stated. “I need to spend time with youngsters, who like most children are going to highschool on-line. It is a good alternative to work with them as a result of studying through Zoom isn’t simple for five and eight yr olds. I’m unhappy to depart individuals in HHS and the OCIO workplace is the perfect group I’ve ever labored with. That is probably the most I’ve felt at dwelling throughout complete profession.”
Arrieta stated he was uncertain when his final day can be, saying he advised Secretary Alex Azar he may very well be as versatile as wanted to make sure a easy transition within the CIO’s workplace.
Arrieta turns into the second senior expertise official to depart HHS within the final month. Todd Simpson, the chief product officer for HHS, left in July to be a deputy assistant secretary for DevSecOps on the Division of Veterans Affairs.
With Arrieta leaving, the HHS CIO’s workplace will likely be lacking two key management positions and Robin Collins already is appearing deputy CIO for enterprise companies, that means solely Janet Vogel, because the chief data safety officer, and Chambers are everlasting executives.
Arrieta’s departure additionally marks the third CIO to depart within the final two years. He changed Beth Killoran, who moved to the Normal Companies Administration, and Ed Simcox served in an appearing function.
No particulars about who will take over as CIO on an appearing foundation have been accessible.
Arrieta’s resolution to depart is stunning. He had solely been within the CIO’s function since April 2019, and was an regular alternative from the beginning.
However in his quick tenure, Arrieta centered on IT modernization initiatives across the community and knowledge.
He stated in July, HHS upgraded its community to incorporate including extra capability for its digital personal community to deal with the surge in telework throughout the coronavirus pandemic.
On the info entrance, HHS labored with Palantir to create a coronavirus knowledge assortment platform referred to as HHS Defend, which pulls collectively greater than 200 datasets from about eight,000 hospitals to create a standard working image of the unfold, affect and conduct of the virus. Arrieta stated in July that the info from HHS Defend feeds into the report White Home Coronavirus Job Drive Coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx receives each night time on the standing of COVID-19 an infection charges within the nation.
Moreover, Arrieta centered on utilizing rising applied sciences like synthetic intelligence and machine studying to give attention to his buyer wants in addition to lower your expenses.
He stated in February that the CIO’s workplace helped reduce $20 million-to-$25 million out HHS’s working prices. Arrieta stated in the present day HHS has seen a price avoidance financial savings from strategically sourced contracts of $200 million this yr, whereas his workplace’s customer support score elevated to 67% from 26% in a single yr.
“We’ve tried to chop out layers of overhead. We’ve tried to focus in immediately on the shopper and transfer the shopper to the middle of every part we do with the thought of standardizing the way in which we do enterprise on totally different platform capabilities that we at present have after which sharing these platform capabilities throughout our buyer base to really push our prices down,” he stated earlier this yr.
Arrieta stated he doesn’t plan to use or work within the personal sector within the quick time period. He stated he’ll take a month or two, or extra, to determine what comes subsequent.
“We pushed actually onerous throughout all my precedence areas. We lowered our working prices. We moved to industrial cloud and we hardened our cyber posture.. I believe we hit it out of the park in every precedence space,” he stated.
HHS’s IT finances in fiscal 2020 is $6.6 billion and it requested $6.four billion in 2021.
On the newest Federal IT Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA) scorecard, HHS earned a “C-“grade for the third grading interval in a row. HHS, which made vital progress in December 2018, fell backwards significantly within the reality the CIO nonetheless doesn’t reply on to the HHS secretary or deputy secretary, CIO authorities round finances and oversight stays an issue and the company doesn’t have a working capital fund for IT modernization as approved below the Modernizing Authorities Expertise Act.
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