The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), a pivotal federal agency within the US Department of Health and Human Services, administers healthcare programs for millions of Americans.
The complexity and scale of CMS’s IT environment posed significant challenges, including decentralized architecture, disparate data sources, and difficulty aligning business and technical goals for strategic decision-making. This transformation not only enhanced efficiency but also led to substantial cost savings, ultimately benefiting the agency and the millions of Americans it serves.
This case study dives deep into how CMS adopted Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect (EA) to establish a centralized, data-driven enterprise architecture platform.
Listen to Senior Solution Architect Christine and her team of experts talk about how they addressed CMS’ business concerns with Sparx Systems tooling.
A solution that enables CMS to evaluate the effects of health legislation on both business and IT operations.
The platform must support real-time IT asset management, providing a comprehensive and up-to-date inventory of all systems within CMS. This centralized system census enhances visibility into the IT landscape, enabling more effective management and optimization of IT resources.
Facilitate the provision of business architecture services, aligning business objectives with IT capabilities. By creating a clear blueprint of the organization’s structure, processes, and systems, CMS can ensure that its business strategies are effectively supported by its IT infrastructure.
The platform aids in capital planning and investment control, ensuring that all IT investments are strategically aligned with the organization’s goals. Sparx EA provides tools for evaluating and prioritizing IT projects, optimizing resource allocation, and maximizing the return on investment.
Sparx EA supports governance boards by providing comprehensive data visualizations and reports. These insights empower governance teams to make informed decisions, enhancing the overall strategic management of IT resources and ensuring alignment with organizational objectives.
The platform simplifies federal reporting and data calls, ensuring that CMS meets all reporting mandates efficiently. Sparx EA integrates data from various sources, providing accurate and timely information for federal reporting requirements.
CMS encountered several critical issues within its IT architecture:
These limitations impeded CMS’s ability to achieve optimal efficiency and transparency in its IT operations, necessitating a shift toward a centralized, data-driven architecture.
CMS selected Sparx EA as its enterprise architecture platform to address several strategic use cases:
By addressing these strategic use cases, Sparx EA has transformed CMS’s enterprise architecture, enhancing efficiency, transparency, and decision-making capabilities across the organization.
The new architecture is centered around a cloud-based environment called “CEDAR,” which integrates several critical components:
In June 2021, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) embarked on a significant journey to address the challenges posed by their existing Enterprise Architecture (EA) tool suite and methodology. Recognizing the need for a more efficient, cohesive, and data-driven approach, CMS initiated the migration to a new EA tool. This ERP tool migration approach was meticulously planned and executed across four major phases. Phase one involved conducting a comprehensive EA assessment to understand the current landscape. Phase two focused on documenting EA and tool requirements, ensuring all stakeholder needs were captured. Phase three entailed a thorough assessment of potential tools to identify the best fit for CMS’s needs. Finally, phase four saw the implementation of the selected tool and new methodology, bringing the vision of a centralized, efficient, and innovative EA platform to life.
Phase 1: Assessment (Understanding the Landscape)
This phase involved a thorough evaluation of the existing IT architecture, including hardware, software, applications, and data sources. The needs and requirements of various stakeholders across different CMS departments were identified.
Phase 2: Requirements Definition (Charting the Course)
Design workshops were conducted to define methodologies, data visualization approaches, and desired functionalities of the new architecture platform. Stakeholder input was crucial in establishing specific use cases for Sparx EA.
Phase 3: Tool Assessment (Selecting the Right Fit)
A comprehensive vendor assessment was carried out, evaluating various enterprise architecture tools against defined requirements. Sparx EA was selected due to its data-centric approach, out-of-the-box functionalities, and alignment with CMS’s needs.
Phase 4: Implementation (Bringing Vision to Life)
Sparx EA was successfully implemented within the CMS Cloud environment. Initial modeling capabilities were deployed, allowing for the creation of visual representations of the IT infrastructure.
A critical phase in CMS’s implementation process was the tool assessment. This phase ensured they selected the most suitable Enterprise Architecture (EA) platform for their needs. The assessment followed a rigorous approach, which can be broken down into four key steps:
1. Requirements & Vendor Self-Assessment:
2. License and Infrastructure Cost Analysis:
3. Demonstration Script & Vendor Demo:
4. Consolidated Assessment:
AWS Cloud Environment
The CMS AWS footprint is organized using a sub-organization structure, inheriting services from the main CMS Cloud account. This approach ensures consistency and streamlines management of resources across the organization.
VPC Architecture
The architecture utilizes Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs) with segregated subnets for development, testing, and production environments. The best security practices are followed, with the data subnet isolated behind application and web subnets to ensure data integrity and protection.
Availability Zones
While the current deployment resides in a single Availability Zone, communication mechanisms are established across other zones to ensure redundancy and high availability. This setup enhances the resilience of the CMS IT infrastructure.
Single Sign-On (SSO)
CMS provides Single Sign-On (SSO) functionality through Security Tokens, integrated with the Sparx platform. This integration simplifies user access and enhances security by leveraging existing authentication mechanisms.
Deployment Phases
The implementation process involved a collaborative design phase with the Sparx team, followed by development, testing, and production deployment phases. This structured approach ensured that all aspects of the deployment were meticulously planned and executed.
Security Considerations
Security scans were conducted, identifying eight findings. Collaboration with the Sparx team resolved six findings within 30 days, avoiding the need for a formal Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). The remaining two findings were addressed before the final deployment, ensuring a secure and compliant environment.
Compliance
The deployment adheres to Section 508 compliance standards for accessibility. A test plan was developed with the Sparx team, achieving a score of 75.13%. Efforts are ongoing to improve the score and establish an exemption for the Sparx EA Future Client application based on its visualization nature.
The CEDAR API management suite is central to CMS’s IT infrastructure, positioned between two logical firewalls. The suite comprises three main components: the API Gateway, the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), and the API portal.
API Portal
The API portal serves as a gateway for external developers to access information about the APIs published by CMS. Through this portal, developers can:
This facilitates external collaboration and integration by providing comprehensive information about CMS’s APIs.
API Gateway
The API Gateway is the primary entry point for all incoming API calls. It performs several critical functions:
As the gatekeeper, the API Gateway ensures secure and efficient management of API traffic.
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
The ESB consists of the API runtime and the integration platform:
API Approach
Abstracting Complexity for Developers
Given that CMS API developers are not regular users of the Sparx EA system, a strategy was devised to abstract the complexity of the system. This involved a combination of the Sparx EA API, database stored procedures, and database views. Key elements of this approach include:
This approach enhances productivity and allows developers to focus on their core competencies, significantly reducing the learning curve and development time.
The journey of implementing the new toolset at CMS has yielded significant benefits and transformative outcomes. Reflecting on the accomplishments over the past several months, several key achievements stand out:
The transformation of CMS’s IT architecture with Sparx EA has proven to be a strategic success, enhancing efficiency, transparency, and decision-making capabilities. This centralized, data-driven approach serves as a model for other government agencies and large organizations facing similar challenges. The successful implementation of Sparx EA underscores the importance of adopting innovative solutions to manage complex IT environments and meet the evolving needs of stakeholders.
