Harnessing Data To Improve Health and Well-Being of Individuals

The Department continues to improve how it collects, manages, shares, and secures its data. Yet, HHS faces significant challenges to both protect data from persistent cybersecurity threats and improve how the Department and related entities share an increasingly large amount of critical data, including public health data. The demands of these dual challenges have been made readily apparent during the pandemic. Responding to COVID-19 has required HHS to collect and report a wide range of data on an unprecedented scale. At the same time, large-scale cybersecurity attacks such as the SolarWinds hack demonstrated the need to improve cybersecurity governmentwide. HHS will need to apply lessons learned during its pandemic response in order to sustain and accelerate its efforts to get the right information to the right people at the right time.