Overview of the HHS FY 2023 Budget Request

The HHS budget request focuses on future pandemic preparedness, health research and development, public health system modernization, and boosting mental health programs.

Specific investments and priorities include:

• Investing $81.7B over five years in pandemic preparedness and biodefense across HHS public health agencies to enable an agile, coordinated, and comprehensive public health response to future threats.
• Strengthening behavioral health with $20.8B for a wide range of behavioral health programs for substance use disorders, mental health, and the behavioral health workforce.
• Funding the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) with $5B for federal research and development initially focused on cancer and other diseases such as diabetes and dementia.
• Providing $9.9B to build public health system capacity at CDC and at state and local levels to improve immunization programs, expand public health infrastructure, and modernize public health data collection.
• Guaranteeing stable funding for the Indian Health Service by shifting it from discretionary to mandatory funding.
• Expanding access to affordable, high-quality early childcare and learning with $20.2B for HHS’s early care and education programs, including $7.6B for the Child Care and Development Block Grant and $12.2B for the Head Start program to prepare young children for kindergarten.

Specific to IT, HHS is requesting $7.8B, which is a 1.2% increase over FY 2021. Highlights of the HHS IT budget request include:

• $818M to support cybersecurity efforts, a 36.8% increase over FY 2021 levels.
• $3.0B for CMS IT investments to support Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, the federal insurance exchange, and program integrity efforts.
• HHS investments containing the most development modernization and enhancement funding include the CMS Federally Facilitated Exchange (FFE) ($151M) and the CMS Medicaid and CHIP Business Information and Solutions (MACBIS) ($93M).
• Top increasing programs include CMS Federally Facilitated Exchange (FFE) (+$55M) and HHS Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions (+$45M).

HHS department-level IT priorities include supporting operating divisions with shared services, oversight, and data sharing initiatives. Additionally, continuing technology modernization, optimizing the IT organization, enhancing interoperability, improving IT management, boosting program integrity and strengthening cybersecurity, all of which will require contractor support.