Recently, we shared a podcast featuring healthcare IT leader Candace Charlton, Vice President, Solutions Architect at Maximus, and her insights about the importance of connecting the mission with technology. Today, we’re back with more insights from Charlton on how federal health agencies are redefining IT success as they continue their transformation journeys to build systems that make it easier for citizens to connect with agencies and access benefits and care.
Over her time supporting federal agencies, Charlton has seen many changes in technology and solution architecture, but what she’s seeing now is a redefinition of success. As the federal government moves to an outcomes-based contracting model, success is no longer defined by the number of things completed or by how closely the solution matches the original specifications. Instead, in this new era, where agencies are asked to be more careful stewards of public funds, success is measured by problems solved and citizens helped.
Charlton shared on Federal News Network’s Federal Monthly Insights – Health IT 2026 webcast that, in years past, solution architects would be handed a list of requirements and told to get to work. But now, she and her team “get involved very early and think about what this program or this technological solution needs to do, ultimately, for the beneficiaries or the stakeholders of the system, and how we’re actually going to measure that.”
Related Article: Mission-Focused Human Centered Modernization Delivers Success for Federal Agencies
While this transition seems straightforward enough, Charlton noted that in healthcare IT, it’s a lot more complicated than it looks to define the outcomes. “An outcome like a healthier population isn’t a metric you can just pull from a database. So, we have to figure out what those proxies are that we can then back into technologically, to understand how we get to that mission and to that outcome.”
The proxies that Charlton refers to “might include whether people resolve issues more quickly, whether systems reduce unnecessary steps, or whether agencies can better coordinate services.” None of those metrics alone gives much insight into mission alignment or successful outcomes, but when combined and analyzed, especially with an assist from AI, they can demonstrate that a program is meeting its goals and advancing public health.
Related Article: AI at Scale Enables Federal Healthcare Agencies to Deliver on the Mission with Greater Speed, Accuracy, and Efficiency
While the process of healthcare IT modernization will always be complex, the guidance of a team of solutions architects who are human- and mission-centered in their design work is a strategic advantage for federal agencies as they enter the era of outcomes-based success.