# Improving the online experience for Medicare beneficiaries with WECMS Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services We are working to re-platform and redesign legacy systems for CMS, making it easier for millions of people to get the benefits they need. - 100 M Americans depend on CMS for health benefits - 10 legacy applications migrated and rebuilt in Drupal - 24x7 O&M support provided to critical healthcare systems ## The challenge The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) provide healthcare benefits to millions of people every year. But the websites and digital tools that help people find and enroll in these programs were built on a myriad of aging technologies and were confusing to navigate. CMS needed to streamline and update its online platforms to improve the customer experience while establishing more efficient backend workflows for agency staff. This is an enormous and complex task, involving the modernization of Medicare.gov, CMS.gov, CMS open data portals, and many other public facing apps that serve multiple user groups — including beneficiaries, caregivers, health providers, data professionals, and government stakeholders. WECMS helps more than 100 million Americans every year apply, find, and enroll in healthcare programs. The information and tools provided are essential components in supporting CMS' goals of creating a truly consumer-focused, streamlined, efficient, and omni-channel experience for beneficiaries and their caregivers. The overall intent for this contract is to ensure continuity of operations for the Americans it serves and the WECMS program, which maintains, designs and implements open source software digital services for CMS’ flagship websites, tools, components and applications on Healthcare.gov, Medicare.gov, CMS.gov, and 7 Open Data catalogs. In addition to engineering and design continuous improvements on these established websites, this contract provides security compliance, devops, system infrastructure, content strategy, information architecture, training, documentation, content editor support, public call center dev support, Section 508 improvements, mobile application development, and tooling and systems expertise. ### Client goal When this multi-year transformation is complete, CMS will be able to deliver on its mission more effectively. CivicActions is providing agile development, DevOps, and human-centered design (HCD) services to help the agency: - Improve the content editing experience for staff - Modernize legacy systems and tools - Replace proprietary technologies with open source - Support active, informed healthcare consumption ## Our approach Collaboration is the key to success in a project of this scale and complexity. With multiple partner vendors (including our primary partner [Fearless](https://civicactions.com/case-studies/cms-web-experience-services/fearless.tech)) and disparate stakeholders across many organizational layers, we work hard to keep lines of communication open and be up-front about potential problems. Balancing stakeholder priorities, user needs, technical complexity, and CMS deadlines, we created a roadmap that minimizes risk and maximizes opportunities for success. Then we went to work on “quick wins” — tasks we could complete right away that would make the biggest difference for users. ### Address the holistic customer experience We knew that each CMS application is part of a huge public-facing ecosystem of digital tools, with many touchpoints. To address the entire experience that a person would have in navigating the systems, we drew on the agency’s own knowledge of their beneficiary community, working with them to refine and document how each person interacts with CMS online. The resulting holistic view helped us identify how we could improve that experience iteratively. ### Adopt a data-driven strategy To make sure we built the right solutions, we immersed ourselves in the CMS mission from the operational, technical, and UX perspectives. We dug into existing user research, reviewed analytics reports, conducted stakeholder interviews — then created user personas and journey maps to refine the project scope and goals. All this data is managed in a shared repository of user insights and project knowledge, which we refer to as we prioritize the work to be done. ### Replace proprietary software with open source We are “reverse engineering” multiple custom-built Microsoft.NET applications (such as the [Medicare Eligibility and Premium Calculator](https://www.medicare.gov/eligibilitypremiumcalc) and the congressionally-funded [Physician Fee Schedule (PFS) Lookup Tool](https://www.cms.gov/Medicare/Medicare-Fee-for-Service-Payment/PFSlookup) with modern, open source solutions. As we recreate all these applications in Drupal, we’re making guides and code documentation that outline the entire system — allowing CMS to maintain control of its own technologies and avoid vendor lock-in. We are also migrating CMS open data platforms from Socrata (proprietary) to an open source solution using DKAN 2. ## Expertise - User Research and Testing - Human-Centered Design - Persona and Scenario Design - Accessibility Compliance and Testing - Content Strategy - Workflow and Interaction Design - Open-Source Software - Data Migration and Management - Data Architecture - DevSecOps - Agile Development and Methodologies - Cybersecurity and Information Security - Service Design - Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) - Mobile Application Development ## Tools - Akamai - Jira - Confluence - Mural - Figma - AWS - Splunk - Drupal - Acquia Cloud - Docker - GitHub - Jenkins - DKAN - U.S. Web Design System (USWDS) - PHPUnit - PagerDuty - New Relic - StatusCake ## Key outcomes ### Clean and useful technology CMS struggled to make use of technologies built on old, messy code that had been around for years. We are not only modernizing the CMS tech stack, we are documenting how it works and how to use it. ### Accessible services for all 508 compliance is required, but we consider accessibility as more than a checkbox. Because CMS serves a population with a proportionately higher level of impairments, we put extra emphasis on accessibility best practices. ### Agile delivery at scale We are managing this project using the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), working iteratively with broad cross-team collaboration and stakeholder input across the organization. Value is delivered with releases every two weeks. ### Intuitive digital tools Beyond CMS websites, we are modernizing cost calculators, finders, mobile apps, interactive map models, open data site applications, and lookup tools that are used by providers and beneficiaries to perform critical healthcare tasks. ### Well-informed solution We apply human-centered design to understand the goals of end users and CMS stakeholders, while layering in a thorough understanding of the policies that underpin each program — so the end results meet real needs. ### Ongoing technical support To improve and maintain the CMS systems, we provide 24x7 operations and maintenance support, editor feature enhancements, guidance content and APIs per executive orders, and new content sections as needed. ## Meet the team ![Alaine Karoleff](/sites/default/files/styles/uncropped_600w_webp/public/people_archive_assets/alaine-karoleff.jpg.avif?itok=5TBpZ1nT) ### Alaine Karoleff Director of Digital Services ![Ashish Kumar](/sites/default/files/styles/uncropped_600w_webp/public/people_archive_assets/ashish-kumar.jpg.avif?itok=LQ8NQHAb) ### Ashish Kumar IT Support Specialist ![Brian Seek](/sites/default/files/styles/uncropped_600w_webp/public/people_archive_assets/brian-seek.jpg.avif?itok=fRp0Za9Z) ### Brian Seek Front End Engineer ![Daniel Gading](/sites/default/files/styles/uncropped_600w_webp/public/people_archive_assets/daniel-gading.jpg.avif?itok=zhDrZ-29) ### Daniel Gading Full Stack Engineer ![Daniel Schiavone](/sites/default/files/styles/uncropped_600w_webp/public/people_archive_assets/daniel-schiavone.png.avif?itok=YbzMxzZ5) ### Daniel Schiavone Back End Engineer ![David Sumner](/sites/default/files/styles/uncropped_600w_webp/public/people_archive_assets/david-sumner.jpg.avif?itok=tDLQ-kMI) ### David Sumner Associate Director of DevSecOps ![Eric Huffman](/sites/default/files/styles/uncropped_600w_webp/public/people_archive_assets/eric-huffman.jpg.avif?itok=Eg6s90cf) ### Eric Huffman Associate Director of Front End Engineering ![Iván Latorre](/sites/default/files/styles/uncropped_600w_webp/public/people_archive_assets/iv%C3%A1n-latorre.jpg.avif?itok=mSOYBSOp) ### Iván Latorre Front End Engineer ![Timo Zura](/sites/default/files/styles/uncropped_600w_webp/public/people_archive_assets/timo-zura.jpg.avif?itok=ZcAAuA1z) ### Timo Zura Back End Engineer