GSA Wants to Increase Work With Smaller Agencies Under CoE Program

The General Services Administration is looking to collaborate with more small federal agencies as part of its Centers of Excellence program.

Housed within GSA’s Technology Transformation Services, the CoE program was launched in 2017 to help accelerate information technology modernization at various agencies. It operates six centers focused on interconnected areas of transformation: artificial intelligence, cloud adoption, contact center, customer experience, data and analytics, and infrastructure optimization.

Jennifer Rostami, acting executive director of the CoE program, told FedScoop that smaller agencies benefit more from the work done by the centers since they lack the necessary transformation budget.

The CoE portfolio currently includes the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Personnel Management, Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, Department of Labor, the Government Accountability Office and the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

GSA recently concluded a three-year digital transformation partnership with the Department of Agriculture.

Under the CoE program, USDA was able to address data duplication challenges by establishing a centralized data repository and data lake. The agency also received help in consolidating 15 online contact centers under the AskUSDA website, modernizing the department website and training 3,000 employees to use dashboards and visualizations.

Ongoing transformative efforts at NICHD, one of the newest agency clients under the CoE program, are focused on the creation of an IT modernization strategic roadmap for critical infrastructure, data and applications used by its lab and field researchers.