GSA Blog

GSA's Centers of Excellence drives innovation, change and cost-savings with agency partnerships

Since the start of FY21, the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) has grown to support over 15 federal agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and National Aeronautics Space Administration (NASA), through its IT Modernization Centers of Excellence (CoE), expanding digital transformation across the federal government. These agency partnerships are transforming how employees and the public interact with government.

CoE is housed within the Technology Transformation Services (TTS), with a mission to accelerate IT modernization at federal agencies by leveraging private sector innovation and government services while centralizing best practices and expertise for holistic transformation.

The CoE initiatives bridge private sector innovation and government services, centralizing best practices and expertise together. Participating agencies have achieved great results by receiving support tailored to each agency’s unique structure, challenges, and goals. As we reported in August, the CoE’s partnership with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) led to a cost avoidance of $50M+ and consolidation of more than a dozen online contact centers.

“The CoE is growing fast thanks to the positive impact and amazing energy our partner agencies have brought to our work,” said Jennifer Rostami, Acting Executive Director of the Centers of Excellence. “Now solid, mature and thriving, the CoE has expertise we will bring to future work with agencies providing public-facing digital services.”

The CoE provides expertise in artificial intelligence, cloud adoption, contact center support, customer experience, data analytics and infrastructure optimization. The CoE collaborates with agencies using the Center(s) that best align with the IT modernization challenge. For example:

• The U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) partnered with the CoE to advance their IT modernization journey through the launch of a new Office of Digital Transformation (ODT), which included a new People and Culture Service organization. Through ODT, FDA meets a key Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA) goal by elevating the Chief Information Officer role to reside within the Office of the Commissioner, and positions the agency to deliver on its Technology, Data and Enterprise Modernization Action Plans. Through the People and Culture Service organization, FDA continues to put people at the center of IT modernization by delivering improvements to employee recruitment and retention, onboarding and offboarding, performance management and workforce development.
• The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation’s Office of the Participant and Plan Sponsor Advocate (OPPSA) is leveraging CoE to review its existing internal pension plan search capabilities and develop a strategy to operationalize and scale to assist pensioners searching for their benefits. This will provide a roadmap to improve the OPPSA’s capacity to connect individuals with information about their lost or missing benefit pension plans. The OPPSA’s initiative is a complement to PBGC’s existing Missing Participants Program.
• The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) partnered with CoE to establish an internal Robotic Process Automation (RPA) center of excellence program. The robust program will be attuned to the VA’s specific needs and opportunities for VA employees to shift focus to higher value work and deliver an improved customer experience for veterans.

The CoE is proud to have recently worked with the following agency partners:

• Centers for Disease Control (CDC)
• Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)
• National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
• Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI)
• Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC)
• U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA)
• U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA)
• U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)’s Farm Services Agency
• U.S. Department of Labor (DOL)
• U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO)
• Surface Transportation Board (STB)
• National Institutes of Health (NIH)
• Internal Revenue Service (IRS)
• U.S. Copyright Office
• U.S. General Services Administration (GSA)

In addition, four partnerships were successfully completed in FY21 with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers (FLETC) and the U.S. Department of Defense’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC).

To learn more about the entire TTS Centers of Excellence (CoE) program, please visit coe.gsa.gov or contact the team directly connectcoe@gsa.gov.