"One thing [agencies can do] is to have their operational model set up for speed, so that speed isn’t the exception and they’re ready to go at a moment’s notice," Corinna Dan told MeriTV's Gail Emery. Dan, a former frontline nurse and Department of Health and Human Services team member who is now Managing Director of Federal Health at Maximus, used that line to frame a short, practical blueprint for federal healthcare agencies preparing for the next crisis.
Data readiness: making disparate sources decision-ready
Dan rehearsed a lesson learned during the 2020 global pandemic: speed depends on data that can be operationalized. Agencies must be able to take information from “numerous, disparate sources” and make it “decision maker ready,” she said. That readiness is not merely a technical exercise but an operational posture. When data systems are built for speed, Dan argued, rapid response becomes ordinary rather than exceptional.
She stressed that federal agencies cannot carry a comprehensive response alone. For resources to reach citizens quickly, data must flow between federal, state, and local agencies. To accomplish that, Dan recommended establishing governance rules and building playbooks that standardize data formats, operations, and continuous testing. “Public health has really struggled with … interoperability … a lot of it comes down to not having consistent funding,” she said. Modernizing data, she added, enables apples-to-apples comparisons, dashboards, forecasting, and clearer leadership choices.
Interoperability across federal, state, and local agencies
Dan was explicit that interoperability requires both technical and institutional work. Governance agreements between federal, state, and local counterparts, along with playbooks that operationalize data during a crisis, let teams test processes continuously rather than improvise under pressure. Those agreements are the mechanism she offered to translate better data into faster, more trustworthy public action — an especially salient point while the United States faces concurrent threats in public health, including measles outbreaks in 45 states and an approaching flu season, even as the Atlantic Hurricane Season has been unusually quiet.
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See what we buildSecurity: FedRAMP, Zero Trust, and geographic redundancy
Healthcare data and federal systems remain top targets for attackers, Dan cautioned, and the threat landscape has widened since the last major public healthcare crisis. The operationalization of data through new tools, including large language models, increases both the amount of available data and the surface area for attacks. Federal healthcare agencies have relied on FedRAMP-approved solutions, she said, but must now pair that with Zero Trust architecture and modern threat-hunting tools.
Training staff in what security looks like in advance, and building continuity plans, are nonnegotiable elements of readiness. Dan also highlighted redundancy — particularly geographic redundancy — as a practical safeguard: having data stored and accessible in multiple locations ensures leaders can make decisions and preserve patient safety even if one site is attacked.
Contracting options: IDIQs, BPAs, and pre-planning
Contracting can be an accelerator or a bottleneck. Drawing on her experience as a contract officer representative at HHS, Dan said the journey from concept to contract is often too long in a crisis. The remedy is pre-planning: put in place flexible contracting vehicles such as indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contracts (IDIQs) and blanket purchase agreements (BPAs) that allow federal staff to tailor task orders quickly to an emerging threat.
Equally important, she said, are cultivated relationships with trusted private-sector partners. When leadership and vendor partners understand each other’s capabilities and operational realities in advance, agencies can more quickly identify who can deliver what is needed on the ground.
What this means for technologists, policymakers, and procurement leaders
- Technologists and security teams: prioritize interoperable data models, implement Zero Trust and threat-hunting tools, and design geographic redundancy into system architectures so data remains available under attack.
- Policymakers and regulators: fund and formalize governance rules and cross-jurisdictional playbooks that allow federal, state, and local agencies to share and operationalize data under stress.
- Procurement leaders and agency program managers: pre-establish flexible contracting vehicles (IDIQs, BPAs) and nurture vendor relationships so response decisions can move from concept to contract without delay.
Federal healthcare agencies face a crowded risk horizon — from widespread measles outbreaks to routine seasonal influenza — and competing daily missions that tug resources away from preparedness. Dan’s prescription is procedural rather than technological alone: make speed standard through data readiness, harden operations through security and redundancy, and remove procurement friction before the alarm sounds. If those elements are in place, agencies will be better positioned to move faster, coordinate more effectively, and deliver support when communities need it most.
