Defense Health Services System (DHSS) Code Maintenance
U.S. Defense Health Agency (DHA), Program Executive Office (PEO)
The Problem
In the past, the Defense Health Services System (DHSS) and the MHS were standalone applications; however, the DHA determined that migrating to shared IT components integrated into multiple solutions would reduce time to deliver incremental value, improve service quality and consistency, and reduce costs.
The Defense Health Agency (DHA) operates a Military Health System (MHS) that provides healthcare services to active and retired military members and their dependents. Continuous upkeep and improvement of the MHS is critical to supporting warfighter readiness and ensuring optimal delivery of healthcare to the millions of veterans nationwide.
Elements 5 (E5) was asked to provide maintenance of various MHS products managed by the DHSS Program Executive Office for integration into the DHSS. Additionally, E5 was responsible for modernizing various legacy applications and adding new functionality to comply with security and IA control mandates.
The Solution
We provided management and direct software modifications using CMMI Level 3 appraised and ITIL based practices. Vulnerability scans and penetration testing were done to adhere to DoD IA guidelines and to provide accurate information for registering and maintaining assets within the DoD Vulnerability Management System.
The Impact
E5 supported 400 users with over 200 concurrent issues, achieving 99.5% system availability, and resolved 99% of help desk tickets within 1 hour. Our team enhanced performance, reduced processing times, and maintained security across multiple applications in the DHSS Code Maintenance Program:
(1) We managed to support 2,000 end users and 30,000 ad hoc queries a month after improving M2, a query tool used for summary and detailed views of clinical and financial data from all MHS regions.
(2) We reduced the processing time of MDR, MHS’s Data Repository, by 20% and introduced a cost savings of $520,000 by eliminating legacy hardware.
(3) Our team reduced the deployment time of the ESSENCE system, an application capable of monitoring disease outbreaks, from years to months and decreased code-based vulnerabilities from over 10,000 to 100.
(4) We also reduced the standard regression testing time of the EAS IV system, which is responsible for generating reports on health expense allocations, by half (from 8 to 4 weeks).
Our team performed quality assurance through an internal QA team who successfully delivered 2200 work items annually. Configuration management and testing were done to ensure versions were updated, incidents were resolved, and IAVA systems were implemented. We also ran a Tier III service desk to resolve escalated issues from Tier I/II desks, including researching and providing solutions for deficiencies, managing support operations, logging service requests, reporting help desk statistics, and conducting virtual quarterly training events with the TMA Enterprise Help Desk.