Page 25 - CARAHSOFT, March/April 2020

The new AI tool will empower HHS divisions with new levels of negotiating power.
Artificial Intelligence
We will complete the build of the FCS tool on March 31. After that, we will be in a great position to do some presentations to our fellow departments.
How has HHS prepared the acquisition workforce to embrace the new tools?
Stakeholder engagement and mission focus are the foundation of the entire BuySmarter effort. We engaged the agency heads of contracting activity to be our Planning and Development Committee from the onset. Every aspect of the people, process and technology for BuySmarter is designed with their guidance.
We have also staffed our Category Collaboratives to lead each category and sub-category with volunteers from across HHS agencies. These teams will then launch the Sub-Category Pursuit Teams on individual product or service acquisitions, which will bring together SMEs from all the buying agencies. This entire community is currently engaged in our human-centered design sessions for the FCS Tool.
What lessons have you learned along the way?
The success in designing AI is way more about the SME who knows your business than it is about the AI itself. In my first experience with an AI vendor for our proof of concept, I expected magic and soon realized this was an incorrect assumption. I realized this was going to be very different from any other IT solution I had been part of.
I learned to adapt my approach to a more hands-on engagement with the vendor where we built the tool together. The phrase “AI learns” holds true, but you have to “teach the teacher.” This translates to the need for experts in that domain to sit with the AI development team and teach them what the tool needs to do, how the data should be structured, what the outputs need to be and more.
We have all heard of agile as a quicker way to conduct development in two-week sprints. When it comes to building AI tools, the process is even quicker. I call it “full- contact development.” We meet daily with our AI vendor to give guidance and clarity on what the tool should do. Then we start bringing in waves of SMEs to study the tool and help teach the teachers to improve the capabilities. This full-contact development approach is truly what it takes to build a robust AI tool.
What impact is BuySmarter having on the department’s overall acquisition strategy?
Led by David Dasher, deputy assistant secretary for the Office of Acquisition and the HHS senior procurement executive, the BuySmarter initiative is incorporated into the department’s approach to category management. The BuySmarter initiative is scheduled to “graduate” from the ReImagine portfolio to become a program operating from the HHS Office of
Acquisition, institutionalizing the change and shifting the acquisition culture of the department.
What advice do you have for other agencies that want to apply AI to their mission challenges?
From the many skinned knees experienced early on in this project, we have developed an AI Microservice Request Tool that clearly states the core elements needed to craft a comprehensive AI tool. Well before you endeavor to build an AI tool, you
must fully and clearly define the following elements:
• Define the mission challenge. What exact problem are you trying to solve?
• Define the impact statement. What specifically is the tool going to do to improve your mission?
• Identify the data and systems. What data are you pulling from what systems, and who owns them?
• Define the SMEs. What SMEs will you need to engage to “teach the teachers” on what the data should do, and at what point in the development of the tool should they engage?
• Define the users. Who will be using this tool?
• Define the customers. Who will benefit from what this tool accomplishes?
• Describe the process steps. What are the detailed process steps that the tool will accomplish task by task?
• Define the output. What will the actual deliverables be for the tool?
• Define the security requirements. What data is resident in the tool, and what security protocols need to be in place for that
data?
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