- Amy Gleason will lead the new Office of Health Technology and Products
- CIO Patrick Newbold will continue overseeing enterprise IT, cybersecurity and cloud migrations
- Deputy Administrator Kim Brandt said CMS is working to shift employees away from longstanding IT processes
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services created its Office of Health Technology and Products in June to work alongside, not replace, the agency’s chief information officer, Federal News Network reported Friday.
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What Approach Is CMS Taking to Technology Projects?
CMS Deputy Administrator and Chief Operating Officer Kim Brandt said on Ask the CIO that CIO Patrick Newbold is still leading enterprisewide IT while the new office helps modernize existing technology and build new digital products across the agency’s Medicare, Medicaid and marketplace lines of business.
Newbold said the strongest technology work starts before anyone writes a line of code, with a business owner naming the problem to solve and the results that would matter before engineering, security and data architecture teams get involved. The approach reflects CMS’ broader shift toward measuring technology by outcomes rather than usage, an issue Newbold discussed in a recent interview on the agency’s AI strategy. He said the measure of success is not whether a tool launched but whether it cut wait times, eased burden, made payments more accurate or helped a worker make a better decision.
Newbold added that when speed and risk pull in different directions, his job as CIO is not to block a project but to lay out the risk clearly for Brandt as chief operating officer so the two can settle on a safer path together.
Brandt said CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz has made modernizing the agency’s technology infrastructure a top priority, adding that one of the biggest hurdles has been pulling employees away from old bureaucratic habits around IT.
How Are Responsibilities Split Between the Two Offices?
Brandt said the new office, led by Amy Gleason, focuses on products that reach beneficiaries, providers and states directly, while Newbold’s team integrates, maintains and operationalizes those products once they launch and continues handling enterprisewide IT, cybersecurity and cloud migrations.
Brandt pointed to CMS’ push toward interoperability, including building application programming interfaces that make data easier to share, as an example of the two offices working together, crediting Newbold’s team for backing that effort. Newbold described the arrangement as “one CMS” working toward a single objective under one set of cybersecurity and investment oversight rules required by law.
