Here's What the HUD CIO Expects From the Centers of Excellence

Housing and Urban Development

One possible change is standing up a sixth center, David Chow said.

The Housing and Urban Development Department was tapped as the second agency to get assistance with its modernization efforts from the General Services Administration’s Centers of Excellence. While the relationship will be similar to that of the first agency to go through the process—the Agriculture Department—the processes and areas of focus will be different for HUD.

“We’re doing this slightly different than USDA,” HUD Chief Information Officer David Chow told Nextgov. “There’s quite a bit of similarity. But based on our benchmarking with USDA, as well as several conversations with [Agriculture CIO] Gary Washington, we wanted to set this to what was truly needed within HUD.”

Agriculture was the first agency to go through the process, during which GSA stood up five centers focused on core areas for modernization: contact centers, customer experience, cloud adoption, service delivery analytics and infrastructure optimization. The centers’ leads are wrapping up work on phase one of Agriculture’s journey—assessing the needs and opportunities in each area—and is set to begin phase two, in which solutions will be implemented, next month.

As HUD joins the effort, the agency will be leveraging all five centers, Chow said, though in slightly different ways. The agency is also in talks with GSA to stand up a sixth center around cybersecurity.

“We’re tweaking some of the CoE’s scope to sit more aligned to what HUD is looking for from this relationship,” he said. “There have been talks—preliminary conversations—about looking into some sort of a cybersecurity assessment. GSA has been working very closely with [the Homeland Security Department] to look for ways or opportunities that we could potentially create the sixth CoE and make sure we can really go through our security assessments.”

As the process kicks into gear in phase one, Chow said he will be looking to program leads at HUD and their GSA partners to forge the path ahead.

“If you look at large corporations like Verizon or T-Mobile, you see really good customer service simply because there’s one organization. You don’t see different departments” as a customer looking in from the outside, Chow said. “That’s the intent behind having the program leading the assessment area and making sure that the first priority is to look at our business process, improve our business process. Then, based on those requirements we drive to the next phase of the CoE, which is going to be how do we leverage technology to better support the program office?”

The first step in that process will be informal kickoff meetings beginning next week between the HUD program leads and their GSA counterparts. Once the table is set, the real work begins on phase one, which Chow expects will take between six to eight months.

He hopes to be well into phase two by the second quarter of 2019 and have the whole project completed 24 to 30 months from now.

That said, Chow said he’s a proponent of agile development and expects to be able to show early results within six months of starting phase two.

None of this would be possible without the support from HUD leadership, he said, including when it comes to funding.

“This is very exciting. Having the budget to be able to jumpstart the areas that really need improvement,” Chow said, noting the agency was also one of three initial awardees for the Technology Modernization Fund, securing $20 million to migrate five legacy applications. He clarified that these two projects would remain separate lines of effort.

For the Centers of Excellence projects, HUD reprogramed $4 million from accounts across the agency.

“It’s very exciting that I get the buy-in from higher up,” Chow said. “But also having my colleagues who are able to support me in this effort… Especially since I’ve only been here for about a month.”

Along with the overview, Chow offered a glimpse into how HUD plans to work with each center and the agency’s goals for each initiative.

Contact Centers

Chow went first to contact centers as the prime area of focus for HUD’s efforts.

“We’re leveraging the contact Center [of Excellence] to make sure there’s a better experience for the public,” he explained. “Among all the CFO Act agencies, HUD is ranked last for customer service, so this is high priority for the secretary.

“The bottom line is to improve the experience of the citizens when they interact with HUD.”

Customer Experience and Cloud Adoption

Customer experience and cloud adoption are “somewhat related” for HUD, Chow said. “It’s related to going through the process of re-engineering the grants process lifecycle,” a major component of HUD’s mission as an agency.

“This business focus … is to look at ways to improve and consolidate our numerous grant processes throughout the agency to become one HUD,” he said. “In relation to that, cloud adoption [will] look at a technology that is already out in the market, doing the benchmarking and leveraging the business requirements coming from the grants lifecycle process re-engineering and then start designing solutions based on the new process.”

Data Analytics

Like most agencies, HUD components collect a wealth of data through their day to day activities, Chow said. In cooperation with the Center of Excellence focused on data analytics, the agency will look to build better data pipelines and user-friendly dashboards for internal decisions makers, as well as the public.

“For one, we’ll be creating the data governance—making sure that we standardize our data sets,” Chow said. The center will also look at using technologies like artificial intelligence to curate the data and optimize its use for agency decision-makers.

“And once we have that dashboard created, we can provide that information on our website for public consumption,” he added.

Infrastructure Optimization

While this center is generally geared toward IT architecture and environments, HUD plans to take a different tack: looking at the non-technical side of the agency’s IT infrastructure.

“We talked about process, we talked about technology. We haven’t talked about people,” Chow said. “So, the last aspect is really to look at the people that we have and also, obviously, the resources—the contracts and contractors. We’re really looking at ways to retool our staff and also at the same time consolidate that oversight to the CIO and making sure that we optimize our overall environment.”

Chow cited a May executive order signed by President Trump that looked to put more hiring and budgetary authority under department CIOs.

“What we’re looking to do internally is look at the IT resources from the human aspect, as well as from the budgetary aspect,” he said. “This is in support of the executive order to consolidate IT resources under the purview of the CIO.”

X
This website uses cookies to enhance user experience and to analyze performance and traffic on our website. We also share information about your use of our site with our social media, advertising and analytics partners. Learn More / Do Not Sell My Personal Information
Accept Cookies
X
Cookie Preferences Cookie List

Do Not Sell My Personal Information

When you visit our website, we store cookies on your browser to collect information. The information collected might relate to you, your preferences or your device, and is mostly used to make the site work as you expect it to and to provide a more personalized web experience. However, you can choose not to allow certain types of cookies, which may impact your experience of the site and the services we are able to offer. Click on the different category headings to find out more and change our default settings according to your preference. You cannot opt-out of our First Party Strictly Necessary Cookies as they are deployed in order to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting the cookie banner and remembering your settings, to log into your account, to redirect you when you log out, etc.). For more information about the First and Third Party Cookies used please follow this link.

Allow All Cookies

Manage Consent Preferences

Strictly Necessary Cookies - Always Active

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Sale of Personal Data, Targeting & Social Media Cookies

Under the California Consumer Privacy Act, you have the right to opt-out of the sale of your personal information to third parties. These cookies collect information for analytics and to personalize your experience with targeted ads. You may exercise your right to opt out of the sale of personal information by using this toggle switch. If you opt out we will not be able to offer you personalised ads and will not hand over your personal information to any third parties. Additionally, you may contact our legal department for further clarification about your rights as a California consumer by using this Exercise My Rights link

If you have enabled privacy controls on your browser (such as a plugin), we have to take that as a valid request to opt-out. Therefore we would not be able to track your activity through the web. This may affect our ability to personalize ads according to your preferences.

Targeting cookies may be set through our site by our advertising partners. They may be used by those companies to build a profile of your interests and show you relevant adverts on other sites. They do not store directly personal information, but are based on uniquely identifying your browser and internet device. If you do not allow these cookies, you will experience less targeted advertising.

Social media cookies are set by a range of social media services that we have added to the site to enable you to share our content with your friends and networks. They are capable of tracking your browser across other sites and building up a profile of your interests. This may impact the content and messages you see on other websites you visit. If you do not allow these cookies you may not be able to use or see these sharing tools.

If you want to opt out of all of our lead reports and lists, please submit a privacy request at our Do Not Sell page.

Save Settings
Cookie Preferences Cookie List

Cookie List

A cookie is a small piece of data (text file) that a website – when visited by a user – asks your browser to store on your device in order to remember information about you, such as your language preference or login information. Those cookies are set by us and called first-party cookies. We also use third-party cookies – which are cookies from a domain different than the domain of the website you are visiting – for our advertising and marketing efforts. More specifically, we use cookies and other tracking technologies for the following purposes:

Strictly Necessary Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Functional Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Performance Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Sale of Personal Data

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.

Social Media Cookies

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.

Targeting Cookies

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.