The Medicare Secondary Payer (MSP) program with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services ensures beneficiaries’ private insurance covers the cost of medical care before Medicare does. This saves roughly $8.5 billion in taxpayer dollars every year and protects the long-term solvency of the Medicare Trust Fund.
This critical mission depends on a system and infrastructure that is always available while remaining agile enough to adapt to ever growing user needs and the continuously shifting technological and cyber security landscapes.
Challenge: Orchestrate a Modern Cloud Migration with Zero Downtime
As part of a landmark modernization effort, CMS turned to GDIT to help move the entire MSP enterprise of system from five on-premises data centers to the cloud. This would require moving a petabyte of data, 20 critical applications supporting more than 80,000 users, and 88 unique system interfaces – all of which process millions of transactions daily.
The move to the cloud also included over 100 supporting processes that had been assembled over decades in a traditional mid-tier and mainframe data center setting. There was also a high priority need to convert 2.5 million lines of code written in COBOL and ultimately decommission four government funded data centers and two mainframes.
Approach: Leverage Automation While Managing Risk with Zero Downtime
As the MSP Systems Contractor, GDIT’s primary goal was to ensure the systems stayed fully operational during the modernization effort. The critical nature of the Medicare’s mission meant the systems could not become unavailable any longer than a typical maintenance window during the migration. Working collaboratively with the agency to ensure buy-in with the plan, budget and execution, GDIT achieved this goal of minimal user disruption using a staggered development and implementation approach.
Proof-of-concept projects first demonstrated feasibility of the migration and conversion plans while highlighting opportunities and gaps where the GDIT team made recommendations. The complexity and interconnected nature of the MSP system of applications drove the strategy for which applications were moved in what order.
To speed delivery, a hybrid approach for code conversion was used, using automation within some areas of code while other high-touch components of applications were converted manually. GDIT also created a collaborative environment to grow and transform staff skillsets, aligning those with newer technology knowledge with staff who held legacy technology and MSP subject matter expertise.
In parallel, while the cloud and code conversions were occurring, the system still required high quality development and releases. Through careful planning and code synchronizations, GDIT continued to deliver weekly, monthly, and quarterly enhancements to the systems, meeting not only user needs but regulatory requirements. This was alongside unwavering production support, security, system maintenance and monitoring, ensuring the MSP end users were not impacted in their day-to-day operations.
Impact: Cost-Savings, Continued Innovation
Today, GDIT has successfully executed the ambitious program roadmap, converting code, moving critical systems and data to the cloud, powered by AWS, and enabling faster deployments and continuity of operations. For the first time in decades, all MSP systems are in the cloud.
The team is better positioned to continue to innovate, to build new applications and handle even more data. Deployment times are faster, disaster recovery is quicker, and user experiences are improved with more responsive applications. The move also generated millions in annual cost savings in addition to the program’s overall cost savings. We continue to find ways to innovate and to drive operational costs even lower, even as we manage new workloads in the environment.
Looking ahead, we are enthusiastic about the continued innovation on the program, made easier by this significant modernization effort to consolidate from multiple data centers to highly redundant, elastic, and flexible cloud environment that offers greater operational and technological efficiencies. This effort, and the way in which it positions the MSP program to leverage emerging technology, supports the customer’s important mission of saving taxpayer dollars and preserving a critically important safety net for beneficiaries.