The Senate wants the Government Accountability Office to review the Defense Department‘s efforts to deploy a new military electronic health record system and challenges related to the implementation and performance of the EHR platform, Federal News Radio reported Tuesday.

The upper chamber voted 95-0 to mandate a GAO study of MHS Genesis through an amendment to the $854B minibus appropriations bill senators approved Thursday.

Lawmakers specifically want the congressional watchdog to determine measures that DoD has undertaken to update Genesis after the Pentagon’s Office of Operational Test and Evaluation found earlier this year that the system was “neither operationally effective nor operationally suitable.”

They also seek to determine if the platform works to meet health care requirements at the four Pacific Northwest sites and if the department has a capacity to accomplish its global deployment goals by 2022, the report noted.

Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., introduced the amendment that must have a counterpart version in the House before it can move up the legislative ladder. If the measure becomes law, GAO would be given six months to complete the review.

Mick Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget, has outlined new agency initiatives meant to reduce the amount of repetitive administrative tasks needed for procurement activities.

Mulvaney said in an August 27 memorandum that the OMB plans to use artificial intelligence and automation tools to handle routine procedures, thereby reducing the likelihood of errors and enhancing “compliance with contracting protocols and financial analysis and reporting.”

The OMB director added that his agency developed, in partnership with the General Services Administration, a centralized service that government contractors can use when filing post-award data in compliance with the Federal Acquisition Regulation.

The OMB’s efforts are a response to the President’s Management Agenda, which criticized the amount of resources “spent complying with outdated, redundant and unnecessary requirements.”

The PMA challenged federal agencies to divert “time, effort and funding… toward accomplishing mission outcomes” and bring about a shift from “low-value to high-value work.”

A package of fiscal 2019 appropriations bills passed by the Senate would earmark $60.3M in funds to support the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology’s health IT interoperability efforts, Meritalk reported Monday.

The upper chamber passed on Aug. 23 the minibus measure that would appropriate $854B in funds for the departments of Defense, Health and Human Services, Labor and Education.

The report said the Small Rural Hospital Improvement Grant Program would receive $15.9M in funding to facilitate health IT adoption.

The Senate measure would allocate an $85M budget for the Social Security Administration’s IT modernization effort and $20.77M for the Labor Department’s technology investment initiatives.
 

The Department of Homeland Security’s procurement innovation lab has a list of nine contracting methods that federal agencies can use when choosing a contractor for a task order issued under the General Services Administration’s $50B Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions contract, FCW reported Monday.

Eric Cho, project lead for DHS’ PIL, said one of the techniques agencies can adopt is asking potential vendors to discuss their offerings through oral presentations and raising follow-up questions following such presentations.

Agencies can also add a “twist” by presenting a specific scenario and asking vendors how they plan to address the situation, Cho said Monday at a meeting of the American Council for Technology-Industry Advisory Council.

In August 2017, GSA awarded 10 companies spots on the potential 15-year EIS contract for telecommunications support services.
 

The National Archives and Records Administration has found in a recent study that almost all federal agencies are preparing to completely adopt a digital record-keeping process, Federal News Radio reported Monday.

The agency said in its 2017 Federal Agency Records Management report that 98 percent of agencies claim they are on track to leave behind traditional means of managing records to implement a modernized procedure.

The effort is part of a joint directive from the Office of Budget and Management and NARA, as well as the Trump administration’s reorganization plan, which was announced in June.

The White House noted in the reorganization plan that electronic records will help streamline processing times and search operations for missing information.

The plan also mentions the need for agencies to review their current inventory of electronic records to save costs and lost records, as well as avoid deficient practices and services for paper records.

In 2015, NARA launched the Federal Electronic Records Modernization Initiative to help government organizations transition to electronic records and develop new service policies to keep up with changing trends in electronic records management.

NARA also partnered with the General Services Administration in 2016 to set requirements that agencies should follow to organize their e-records.