Fred Haines is the chief architect of the acquisition strategy for the General Services Administration’s (GSA) 15-year, $50 billion, next generation telecommunications and IT infrastructure contract.  Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions (“EIS”), a groundbreaking contact keeps the GSA at the forefront of the delivering evolutionary telecommunications to the federal government. As the “EIS” leader, Fred fostered an open and collaborative environment which resulted in “EIS” being hailed by industry as the best managed of all of GSA’s IT acquisition initiatives, to date, and an “industry collaborative” model for future acquisitions.

 

“EIS” provides all federal agencies with mission-critical telecommunications infrastructure and IT services and is a key element of the government’s IT Modernization initiative.  “EIS” is especially important and timely to the Administration as they implement government-wide plans to modernize all of the government’s IT and telecommunications infrastructure while also improving security across all layers of the infrastructure.  “EIS” will enable agencies to provide a better customer experience in meeting specific agency missions and with the use of new and emerging technologies allow agencies to modernize their legacy infrastructure, thus providing a better user/”customer” experience.

 

Under Freds leadership, agencies and taxpayers will benefit from increased competition with on-ramping of new entrants and emerging technologies,  Moreover, Freds’ leadership throughout “EIS” has resulted in a great success story and alignment with the goal of making it easier for agencies and industry to do business with the GSA and ultimately, better serve American citizens.

 

The USA.gov team leveraged many different techniques to ensure that they could reach survivors pre and post-hurricanes despite dire conditions such as power outages and cell phone towers being destroyed.  Between August 17, 2017, and October 31, 2017 the reach included:

 

• Unique visitors to USA.gov pages (USA.gov and GobiernoUSA.gov) - 231,908

• Total touchpoints - 2.729,891 through social media, email and web in English and Spanish

• Almost 10,000 clicks on twitter; over 15,000 on Facebook in English and Spanish accounts

 

The Department of Homeland Security served as the primary coordinator within the Federal Web Council and coordinated information between FEMA, Ready.gov, DisasterAssistance.gov and the Coast Guard.  From August through October, there were over 2.8 million installs of the FEMA mobile app and 132,000 searches for shelter locations via text message.

 

The Department of Health and Human Services served as the primary source for coordinating information via agencies and kept USA.gov updated to ensure they had the most current information.  HHS responded to hurricane victims in Texas, Louisiana, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. HHS sent National Disaster Medical System staff, Disaster Medical Assistance Teams and Response Coordination Teams to the affected areas to assist them in meeting the health needs of communities.  HHS’ social media response focused on emergency response and sharing information about our response on the ground.

 

HHS’ emergency response included messaging from the HHS Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, CDC, FDA, CMS, SAMHSA that helped people get the latest information of how to protect themselves, their families and their health.  This included critical health information to help those affected get access to their medication through:

 

• The Emergency Prescription Assistance Program

• Information regarding insulin storage and life-saving dialysis services

• Crisis counseling through the Disaster Distress Helpline

 

The Federal Web Council played a critical coordination role across agencies to ensure that the public could find information across federal agencies.