DHS Buys a $95 Million IT System to Improve Employee Skills

The Homeland Security Department is deploying a cloud-based enterprise talent management system to help analyze and develop the skills of more than 250,000 employees.

The department awarded a $95 million single contract to Visionary Integration Professionals to consolidate the learning and talent management systems across DHS headquarters and eight components. The cloud-based program, which will incorporate infrastructure certified by the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program, or FedRAMP, will create a single platform for analyzing employees’ skills and automate the way the department tracks and designs programs for developing talent.

Jonna Ward, chief executive officer for VIP, said in a news release that there currently are at least four separate technology platforms for learning and development across DHS. The consolidated platform will help make DHS more efficient and agile, she said.

Meridian Knowledge Solutions, a wholly-owned subsidiary of VIP, will team with VIP to provide technical support and customer service for the talent management system.

In keeping with the government’s cloud first policy, VIP and Meridian also have partnered with CGI Federal to provide FedRAMP-certified IT infrastructure such as Web hosting and continuous security monitoring.

“An integrated talent management system with large-scale system integration services and a secure, cloud-based infrastructure to underpin the software is something VIP/Meridian look forward to implementing at DHS,” said Terry Miller, chief operations officer at VIP. “We expect that other federal agencies could look at similar models to achieve the same cost savings.”