Centers of Excellence Team With Another Health Agency Amid Pandemic

The Food and Drug Administration is teaming up with the General Services Administration’s Centers of Excellence to improve the quality of technology and processes used by FDA employees.

On Thursday, the CoE announced the new partnership with FDA’s Office of Information Management and Technology to “strengthen an inclusive culture of employee engagement to drive the FDA’s technology modernization efforts.”

“The FDA’s OIMT is responsible for the technical infrastructure of the agency,” FDA Chief Technology Officer Vid Desai said in the announcement. “When we put our workforce first we know they’ll be better equipped to meet the challenges of the FDA’s diverse mission by enabling a modern organization, strategies, and infrastructure.”

According to the release, FDA IT leaders will work with the CoE in a “people-centered partnership” focused on improving the user experience for agency employees “in ways that directly aid the FDA’s broad regulatory responsibilities.”

“The Centers of Excellence is partnering with the FDA to support its IT community and accelerate the modernization of core capabilities,” said Anil Cheriyan, director of GSA’s Technology Transformation Service, which manages the CoE program. “We’re bringing the best talent from within the federal government and the private sector together to collaborate and drive the next generation of customer-centric results at OIMT.”

FDA is the ninth federal agency to sign up to work with the centers, and the fourth to join the program in 2020. Other participants include the Agriculture Department, the Housing and Urban Development Department, the Office of Personnel Management, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Defense Department Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, the Labor Department, the Government Accountability Office, and the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

The latest CoE partnership comes days after the organization announced a team-up with another public health agency, NICHD.

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