Accenture Federal Wins $96M Task Order to Modernize and Automate VA Services
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Through human-centered design, federal employees and other users will weigh in on what works, along the way.
Accenture Federal Services on Tuesday revealed that it’s teamed up with the Veterans Affairs Department to upgrade the agency’s enterprise service management tools and information technology capabilities over the next five years—and the tech company plans to unleash user-centered design all along the way.
Through a $96 million task order that officials said in the announcement “will fundamentally change the way in which their employees get work done and how veterans engage with VA for the wide range of services to which they have access,” Accenture will help the agency automate a variety of its manual workflows and enrich insiders’ use of its mission-critical services. Nextgov confirmed Wednesday that this task order was competed and awarded using the Transformation Twenty-One Total Technology-Next Generation, or T4NG indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contract.
Accenture Federal Services “is working with [VA’s] Service Management Office to co-create a roadmap using human-centered design to improve the employee experience and make it easier for VA employees to execute their jobs serving veterans,” its Managing Director and Client Account Lead for VA Shawn Roman told Nextgov via email. “At the same time, we are supporting the SMO in rapidly delivering projects to support priority [Office of Information and Technology] services.”
Through the work, Accenture plans to introduce applied intelligence and machine learning capabilities to help free up VA personnel from the more monotonous tasks, enhance some of the resources veterans tap into through VA and help the department thoroughly boost the health of the underlying infrastructure supporting its services. ServiceNow will be the “primary platform” behind the automation and service modernization projects, according to the announcement.
Roman said the work seeks to improve VA’s service management capabilities across “scheduling, resource management and associated costs, reporting, establishing and maintaining records, data repositories, quality assurance and metrics and other strategic business planning tools.”
He also repeatedly emphasized that throughout the modernization effort, Accenture will apply human-centered design concepts, which involves directly eliciting feedback and insights from those services’ main users: VA personnel and veterans.
“As VA looks at new approaches for how they design and stand-up new solutions, we want to make sure the capabilities being designed work effectively for VA employees and ultimately for the veterans they serve,” Roman said.