TTS’s demand has grown ‘significantly’ during the pandemic, Anil Cheriyan says

As federal coronavirus response efforts stretch on, the General Services Administration‘s Technology Transformation Services team is playing a crucial role in assisting agencies across the government with their digital technology needs.

TTS Director Anil Cheriyan recently joined FedScoop for a videoconference call to describe his team’s work with other federal agencies during the pandemic and how it’s expanded in recent weeks.

“The demand for our services has really grown significantly,” Cheriyan said in the interview. “A lot of the agencies that we serve are now beginning to face a significant amount of change on their own in terms of digital adoption, their own working from home, teleworking, as well as needing to put out a lot of information.”

Teams like 18F, the Centers of Excellence and the Presidential Innovation Fellows (PIFs) that are already embedded with agencies “are getting a lot of demand directly from the agencies themselves.” On top of that, TTS’s platform teams — like those that run the secure single-sign-on portal Login.gov and the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Platform (FedRAMP) — are playing critical roles in providing services that agencies can use to stay secure and operational while conducting business remotely.

For instance, TTS’s Login.gov team assisted the Small Business Administration with the creation of the web portal for the Paycheck Protection Program, which administers loans to small businesses to keep their workers employed during the financial downturn. Cheriyan said there were some “initial bumps in the road, as you can imagine” but stressed the importance of the program and the speed at which SBA and TTS had to move to deliver “well over $300 billion in such a short period of time and authenticating who the people are” using it.

Cheriyan goes on to share more of the accomplishments TTS has made recently — such as the PIFs’ help in creating telehealth.hhs.gov — and what’s next for key programs like the IT modernization Centers of Excellence and the development of an artificial intelligence community of practice.

Make sure to watch the video above to see what else Cheriyan said about TTS’s leadership during the coronavirus and what it’s accomplishing as it rises to the occasion.

“This is the time for our teams to really shine,” he said.