“Agency program offices have found plenty of opportunities to save time and money through artificial intelligence and automation pilots. But unlocking the full potential of those tools requires agencies to spend time improving their data infrastructure.”
“The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, for example, is looking at using AI and machine learning tools to flag fraud, waste and abuse. But first, Deputy Chief Information Officer Bobby Saxon said the agency needs to make its data systems — made up of 30 data warehouses and three enterprise data lakes — more cohesive.”
“’That kind of volume that is not well-orchestrated and not working well as an enterprise [and] causes us some challenges because we have so many different repositories of data — some of which are redundant and some of which are dirty because of the redundancy,’ Saxon said Tuesday at ACT-IAC’s virtual ReImagine Nation ELC conference. ‘We’re never unable to get to the answer, but we do believe we could get to the answer faster and more efficiently and ultimately save money for the taxpayer by utilizing our IT systems more efficiently.’”
“Saxon said CMS is taking a long-term enterprise approach and a short-term tactical approach to implementing automation, where officials identify use cases that can show results in three-to-six months. The agency, he added, is also looking to improve the data literacy of its entire workforce, but will take a tiered approach to this training…” Read the full article here.
Source: CMS untangles its data infrastructure to enable AI-powered fraud detection – By Jory Heckman, October 27, 2020. Federal News Network.
