The Challenge

The FDA established an Architecture and Engineering (A&E) Program to examine and employ innovative concepts, tools and technologies to support the agency’s mission of promoting and protecting America’s public health and to achieve goals on the Office of Information (OIM) Strategic Plan.  The A&E Program required strategic guidance and technology consulting to support their primary goal to modernize and stabilize the existing Office of Information Management and Technology (OIMT) environment. 

Our Approach

TSPi engineered and supported the implementation of a Cloud Strategy and Governance structure to increase FDA user adoption of certified cloud service providers and services.  TSPi analyzed and mapped existing processes associated with internal SDLC processes and designed a new framework, based on industry best practices that guided application owners and project teams through the cloud initiation life cycle process.   Our team led an application assessment approach for legacy applications to determine their cloud readiness, recommendations and guidance on system types, decision trees, application intake procedures, workflows, security, cloud services/provisioning request forms and processes and exception processing. 

Using our proven technology assessment methodology, TSPi also conducted an enterprise architecture level assessment of the FDA’s 81 high-tier applications and developed a series of cloud-readiness reports as the foundation of an application modernization planning initiative.  The initial criteria used to assess an application’s cloud readiness was based upon the platform architecture and the current FDA cloud offerings supported.  The applications were categorized and TSPi formulated recommendations on the re-engineering actions required to modernize the assessed applications. 

Results

TSPi’s team of senior cloud, network, and security architects provided the FDA with thought leadership, technical oversight, and strategic guidance for multiple technology initiatives with a keen focus on the CIO’s Strategic Plan.  Our cloud framework was successfully implemented and led to the FDA having a future-focused cloud-smart approach coupled with necessary international security demands of the organization’s critical public healthcare mission.