Public health and the cloud: North Carolina DHHS’ multiyear migration plans

An ongoing theme at the re:Invent conference was the increasing volume of public sector investment in the public cloud.

Agencies all over the U.S. now see the cloud’s benefits in areas like innovation, service delivery, research and data protection; and North Carolina’s Department of Health and Human Services adds to that growing list.

“We started off with our first module within our Medicaid expansion, and that was the first time that we went into the cloud,” said Charles Carter (pictured), assistant secretary for technology services at the state of North Carolina’s DHHS. “We worked with AWS to do our Encounter Processing System, and it was an incredible success. I think the ease of use was something that people weren’t quite ready for, but it was really exciting to see that in addition to the scalability benefits.”

Carter spoke with theCUBE industry analyst John Walls at the recent AWS Executive Summit at re:Invent, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed the challenges and progress encountered with the Agency’s cloud migration. (* Disclosure below.)

Setting things up for the long term

The DHHS’ cloud migration journey is a multiyear effort, with 60% of the organization’s business to be transitioned to the cloud by 2025. And while the majority of that cloud transformation has been supported by AWS to date, it plans to stand up and support a multicloud infrastructure in the future.

The pandemic served as an accelerant for the DHHS’ cloud migration. It simply couldn’t execute certain projects without leaning on the cloud, according to Carter.

“We knew that in order to do what we needed to do, it couldn’t happen on-premises,” he explained. “It wasn’t an option. So if we wanted to build these capabilities, if we wanted to bring in technologies that really brought data to our key officials to make good decisions on behalf of our residents in North Carolina, then we were going to have to build things quickly. And the only way you can do that is in the cloud.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the AWS Executive Summit at re:Invent:

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the AWS Executive Summit at re:Invent. Neither Accenture PLC, the sponsor of theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE