Sue Gordon, deputy director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, has said NGA has set up a team of personnel in Silicon Valley that will work to forge partnerships and facilitate innovation, Federal News Radio reported Thursday.

“The idea is to position us to be present with the innovators as they innovate, and have enough of our talent there… so we can discover together the possibilities of the offering and introduce them right into our mission space,” she told Federal News Radio in an interview.

Gordon noted to the station NGA’s Silicon Valley group will comprise up to 12 analysts, data scientists and technologists and that she expects the team to adopt the delivery and marketing strategies that technology companies use.

She added the agency has made changes to the way it provides GEOINT products to clients through the GEOINT Services platform and cloud computing technology.

The Education Department has announced a job opening for a new deputy chief information officer who will be responsible for information technology acquisition and information resources management efforts.

The deputy CIO will also advise department executives and agency officials in the planning and implementation of IT programs, a USAJobs notice stated Monday.

The Career Senior Executive Service position will be based in Washington and the person selected will serve a probationary period of one year.

The Education Department also requires the appointee to have an Executive Core Qualifications certification from the Office of Personnel Management’s qualifications review board.

Responsibilities for the job include development of strategic plans for IT practices within the department, IT security policy implementation, organizational framework management and analysis of regulations and policies related to IT.

The deputy CIO will also help the CIO review and schedule the work products of subordinates, identify training needs, screen candidates for positions, reassign employees and resolve complaints from employees.

Individuals can send in their applications through May 31.

The Department of Health and Human Services has issued a challenge to solicit designs and approaches that will work to address concerns from patients about the clarity of medical bills.

HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell spoke at the Health Datapalooza conference regarding the “A Bill You Can Understand” design challenge, which seeks to boost patient experience in the medical billing process, the agency said Monday.

Burwell said the challenge works to build on HHS efforts to help patients manage their own healthcare and create a new medical bill that will “simplify” the billing process in a way that is understandable to patients, doctors, hospitals and insurance companies.

AARP and Mad Pow have worked with HHS to administer the challenge and work to draw attention to the impact of medical billing to patients, HHS said.

Two winners — selected for the bill design and for a transformational approach to the medical billing system — will be featured on the challenge website and win $5,000 each as well as an opportunity to feature the designs at the Health 2.0 Annual Fall Conference in September.

The challenge is open until Aug. 10 and the winners will be announced in September.

Cambia Health Solutions, Geisinger Health System, INTEGRIS Health, The MetroHealth System, Providence Health & Services and the University of Utah Health Care have also committed to test or implement the winning designs for their patients, HHS added.

Patricia Flatley Brennan, a professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, has been appointed by National Institutes of Heath Director Francis Collins as the new director of the National Library of Medicine effective August.

“Patti brings her incredible experience of having cared for patients as a practicing nurse, improved the lives of home-bound patients by developing innovative information systems and services designed to increase their independence, and pursued cutting-edge research in data visualization and virtual reality,” Collins said in a release issued Wednesday.

Brennan was the Lillian L. Moehlman Bascom Professor at UW-Madison, the lead of the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery’s living environments laboratory and a former American Medical Informatics Association president.

She has previously worked on the development of patient information systems such as HeartCare, an online information and communication service designed to support home-based cardiac patients, and ComputerLink, an electronic network that seeks to facilitate self-care for outpatients.

“This combination of skills makes her ideally suited to lead the NLM in the era of precision medicine,” added Collins.

NLM is the world’s largest biomedical library that maintains a range of print and electronic information, as well as supports and conducts biomedical and health informatics technology research, development, and training.