Coach of the Quarter - Kade Stanzilis

Kade understands team members’ expertise and encourages learning from each other. She guides fellow programmers and checkers and empowers them to fully address tasks. This enables each associate to contribute their thoughts and experience to complete projects.

Kade demonstrates superior leadership and a high level of professionalism in all areas of work. She focuses on finding or creating opportunities for associates’ growth. Kade recognizes when an associate needs to be challenged with a new task to promote skill development, critical thinking skills, and problem-solving abilities. She monitors the associate's progress every step of the way, mentoring and guiding them as needed to enable their development.

Team of the Quarter - Data Warehouse Migration Team

The Data Warehouse Migration Team supports company-wide operations by storing and supplying data required by all areas of Palmetto GBA. This team transitioned from a data warehouse utilizing fifteen databases to a warehouse that only allowed one database to hold 50TB of data. This replacement had to be done swiftly and accurately to continue to provide uninterrupted high-quality data, reporting, and systems critical to the company's operations. During the migration, the team handled the new system migration as well as their normal workload.

The team completed the migration to meet critical requirements in a short amount of time while also redesigning the systems and database architecture to support the new environment. This new environment required the team to tackle many complex changes to the existing environment, including:

• Redesign, test, and deploy thousands of scripts to meet the new system's design and architecture
• Convert all databases to a single database design and architecture
• Redesign and configure the backup and recovery process to secure critical data for the company
• Move over 60,000 tables and 50TB of data from the old system to the new system

This team completed this transition within the timeframe needed for 912 Audit compliance experiencing little to no issues after the old warehouse was decommissioned.

Team members: Terry Austin, Rita Childress, Phillip Creamer, Davin Davis, Ann Gainey, Mieorka Lites, Charles Offutt, Nathaniel Prophet, Paige Sable, Brett Schwartz, Mike Stafford, Kade Stanzilis, Reginald Tolbert, Danail Wilkins, Yubo Zou.

Contractor Team Member (Special Mention): Melody Rush

Management Team Members: Rick Altobello, Steven Ash, Mary Alice Barth, and Sarah Brewer

Process Improvement of the Quarter – Webport Pass-Through Authentication Project

The Webport Pass-Through Authentication Project improved the process for internal users logging in to their applications and staying logged in. Now when a user accesses the Webport, they don’t have to log in to any of their applications separately or log back in after 15 minutes of inactivity. Users now click on their application of choice on Webport and they are authenticated. This Single Sign-on (SSO) functionality was originally implemented in September 2019. In 2021, two additional primary applications were upgraded with SSO functionality; Competitive Bidding Implementation Contract (CBIC) applications and Edit Management System (EMS)/ Cognitive Medical Review System (CMRS). This improvement consolidates CMS’ authentication security requirements and added additional optimizations allowing all the Webport applications users access by using their accepted Windows credentials.

The original process was rolled out to nearly all of the applications on Webport in 2019. This latest process improvement adds these two applications and was implemented during September 2021. It saved over 7,410 login hours annually with significant savings. This process reduced Webport.Admin password reset requests due to lockouts from 945 annually to zero. The process also ensures adherence to CMS authentication guidelines as passwords are changed every 30 days and cannot be re-used for two years.

Team members: John G. Beckham, Venu Gopal Boppa, Yunus Chhipa, Pradeeptha Gali, Arvind Gunda, Carol Harper, Stephanie Lesesne, Daniel Navis, Preeti Pal, Satish Palakurthi, Sushma Sikhakolli, Scott Strange, Melissa C. Thompson, Santhosh Kumar Thota, and Ramya Smitha Vaddempudi.

Contractor Team member (Special Mention): Amukta Jambula, Vishvada Ganapati, and Sherri Hunter.

Management Team Member: Derek Roberts

Associate of the Quarter: Jagadish Vattikuti

Jagadish has immense knowledge of Java and newer technologies. He used these new technologies to implement many process improvements including the revised Review Choice Demonstration (RCD) dashboard and the new Edit Management System batch context. These improvements provide better response time for users and retry logic for batch jobs to reduce timeliness issues. The results include substantial improvements for end-users and enhanced production support. Jagadish is a hard worker and goes over and beyond to provide knowledge transfer to the development team and educate them on the new technologies used. He also helps to direct and support the developers and testers to make sure their work items are understood and completed correctly.