Evaluation Methodologies in Public Health Information Session OMS Enterprise Architecture Evaluation August 25, 2008, 1:30 PM-3:00 PM Chuck Akin Enterprise Architect

Page 2 EVALUATION METHODOLOGIES IN PUBLIC HEALTH INFORMATION SESSION Agenda ●Introduction & General Problem Statement ●OMS Problem Statement ●Notional Answer – Applied Enterprise Architecture (EA) −IT strategy based on knowledge of the public health practice −Needs assessments should be bound to a repeatable proven process −Bringing Public Health Practice and IT together −Key Take-a-ways  Needs assessments vs. EA, What’s the difference?  Making technological desires possible: Service Oriented, GRID, Business Intelligence ●Current Experience with the Outbreak Management System (OMS) −OMS Background −Expectations −Progress −Example of interrelated work products ●What can we do with this stuff? −Short Term Vision −Long Term Opportunity

Page 3 EVALUATION METHODOLOGIES IN PUBLIC HEALTH INFORMATION SESSION Introduction & General Problem Statement Public Health Practice and Informatics disconnect ●Career Development motivates the IT practice to suggest latest technology to keep resumes current with peers. ●Exhaustive training on software that constantly changing irrespective of added value to science or practice keeps Epidemiologist from benefiting from Informatics. ●Either one of the two practices trying to do both is rare and maybe even not the right thing to do. Without means for both to communicate and collaborate ●Trends toward Service Oriented Architectures, Grids, and Business Intelligence cannot add value to Public Health. ●This years theme, “Collaboration at the Crossroads” makes perfect sense to mitigate the above mentioned disconnect between Public Health Practice and Informatics.

Page 4 EVALUATION METHODOLOGIES IN PUBLIC HEALTH INFORMATION SESSION OMS Problem Statement Stakeholder Involvement ●OMS, since 2005, has used a working group consisting of mainly representatives from state public health departments. ●Focused mainly on the OMS tool and it functionality, features, and user interfaces. ●More interested in production of software than meeting needs from the different stakeholder perspectives.Result ●Lacked perspective from a national jurisdiction and related public health practices, such as disease reporting, bio-surveillance, etc. ●A highly configurable standards based field collection tool that did not compliment the other related PHIN based applications. ●Lack of wide spread adoption ●Funding problems worsening the lack of adoption and development progress ●Outbreaks being managed with spreadsheets and access databases instead of OMS.

Page 5 EVALUATION METHODOLOGIES IN PUBLIC HEALTH INFORMATION SESSION Notional Answer Applied Enterprise Architecture (EA) IT strategy based on knowledge of the public health practice ●Software has zero value without measurable improvement to the processes need to achieve desired outcomes. ●Number of features, user friendliness, professional graphics, the highest quality and efficient code, technology platforms, hyper configurable and scalable architectures only add value when they make a difference to the day to day duties. Needs assessments should be bound to a repeatable proven process ●Being repeatable allows for needs assessments to live and evolve long after Software Projects are retired ●Using process brings uniformity and structure to provide vision outside of a projects scope – breaks down silo walls to support big picture decision vision.

Page 6 EVALUATION METHODOLOGIES IN PUBLIC HEALTH INFORMATION SESSION Notional Answer Applied Enterprise Architecture (EA) Bringing Public Health Practice and IT together ●Epi-Demonologists understand what they do in their own terminology. ●IT practitioners understand what they do through Software Design and Architecture in Public Health Language. ●Embed EA activity within the program not the IT project to ensure it is the program’s terminology and architecture. ●As a result, creativity and innovation from IT is well formed to meet and improve the programs needs.

Page 7 EVALUATION METHODOLOGIES IN PUBLIC HEALTH INFORMATION SESSION Notional Answer Key Take-a-ways Needs assessments vs. EA, What’s the difference? ●Yes, this is very similar to Business Analysts you may have worked with before. ●Focusing on or about the work practices, also know as Business Process Analysis or Modeling, is actually practiced in most IT projects. ●Problem being, their work is focused on building a software application. ●The work becomes shelfware or worse not a true depiction of the business needs. ●EA is different. We may start with stakeholders and business process analysis, but it is much, much more. ●Applying EA is a long term investment that lives beyond the life cycle of software development. Not shelfware that dies when a project is retired ●Thus, making it a wonderful practice for Communities of Practice – A repeatable process to not only describe your business, but a process to document the evolution and visionary growth of the practice.

Page 8 EVALUATION METHODOLOGIES IN PUBLIC HEALTH INFORMATION SESSION Notional Answer Key Take-a-ways Making technological desires possible: Service Oriented, Grids, Business Intelligence ●Hot topics in informatics are more than just something getting in the way of public health practice and science. ●SOA, GRID, Business Intelligence have receive a lot of attention this direction is being pushed at the highest levels of government and future funding for informatics may very well be tied to moving in this direction. ●Without the larger picture, moving to these new technologies cannot be planned or governed properly. ●For example, SOA and Grids are similar to building a water molecule (H20). Without a periodic table of elements, how can we understand the compilation. To build a periodic table of elements, you need a standard way to describe the elements allowing you to see how they fit together.

Page 9 EVALUATION METHODOLOGIES IN PUBLIC HEALTH INFORMATION SESSION Current Experience with the Outbreak Management System (OMS) OMS Background ●Within the Division of Integrated Surveillance Systems and Services at CDC, we have obtained funding to resurrect the Outbreak Management System (OMS), which had its funding paused last year. ●The pause in funding can be attributed greatly to the disconnect between the development team and Outbreak Practitioners causing a lack of adoption and sense of added value. ●Not collaborating with significant stakeholders at the National level resulted in system capabilities not supportive of the work practices of those who sponsored the effort. ●Stakeholder input was OMS Feature centric. Business Analyst learned very little about outbreak investigations or management. ●Larger initiatives such as PHIN key performance standards were not addressed early enough. ●Funding was restored including an additional project of applied EA to help mitigate previous and possible future mistakes. ●The OMS Enterprise Architecture Evaluation, as it was called incorrectly, was planned to be separate project from the OMS project theoretically, but funding was packaged together.

Page 10 EVALUATION METHODOLOGIES IN PUBLIC HEALTH INFORMATION SESSION Current Experience with the Outbreak Management System (OMS) Expectations ●We selected a process developed at the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI), Method for Business Transformation (MBT). MBT was DOI’s answer to an 80%est. reduction in IT funding. ●Most importantly, it was a proven commodity and endorsed by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). ●The goal, an Outbreak Management (OM) blueprint, would consist of the following analysis: (Note not OMS, but OM) −Stakeholders and Drivers −Current and Target Environment (Performance, Processes, Data needs and standards, Controls such as security and technology constraints and mandates −Conceptual Solution Architecture depicting what could be kept from previous investments and what was missing to meet stakeholder needs with or without OMS. ●It would represent the stakeholders vision of OM now and the future vision.

Page 11 EVALUATION METHODOLOGIES IN PUBLIC HEALTH INFORMATION SESSION Current Experience with the Outbreak Management System (OMS) Progress ●This week, we are compiling our analysis so far to include: −Stakeholders / Driver Analysis −Business Analysis −Performance scorecard framework (guiding structure for future evaluations of investments to process or program needs) ●This work is targeting to use: −existing work from Public Health Institute’s Common Ground project to capture state and local perspectives −stakeholder interviews conducted with various centers and offices at CDC to capture the national perspective. ●This will be a preliminary draft hopefully of interest to the OM CoP

Page 12 EVALUATION METHODOLOGIES IN PUBLIC HEALTH INFORMATION SESSION Example of interrelated work products

Page 13 EVALUATION METHODOLOGIES IN PUBLIC HEALTH INFORMATION SESSION What can we do with this stuff? Short Term Vision ●Performance Score-carding for existing IT Portfolio to help NCPHI identify opportunities, existing strengths, and investments for retirement or re-engineering. ●Business case development Long Term Vision ●OM Community of Practice not just OMS user groups. ●Applying EA to enable collaboration ●Potentially a wonderful process for Communities of Practice – A repeatable process to not only describe your business, but a process to document the evolution and visionary growth of the practice.

Page 14 EVALUATION METHODOLOGIES IN PUBLIC HEALTH INFORMATION SESSION Questions Contact Information