HHS to pit AI vendors against each other in parallel pilots
Gettyimages.com/Greggory DiSalvo
By
Nick Wakeman
The Health and Human Services Department wants real operational data across multiple platforms before finalizing its enterprise acquisition approach.
The Department of Health and Human Services wants to launch a series of artificial intelligence pilots as it moves toward an enterprise-wide AI strategy.
A new solicitation released Friday describes the effort as a short-term, firm-fixed price vehicle that would give groups of HHS users unlimited access to advanced AI models, tools and features.
The HHS AI Power User Advanced Models and Features Pilot would have individual efforts of up to 1,000 users each, but the solicitation offers the option of growing that number to 10,000.
The pilot program is designed to generate the data HHS needs to develop its longer term acquisition strategy.
"The pilot is intended to generate operational evidence that cannot be obtained from paper market research alone," according to the statement of objectives.
HHS wants to learn how users interact with frontier AI tools, which workflows those tools touch, and what governance and security requirements emerge in practice. The agency wants this kind of information before it commits to a larger enterprise contract, which could include blanket purchase agreements and enterprise license agreements.
The department is targeting premium reasoning models, long-context workflows, agentic capabilities, coding and data analysis tools, API integration paths, and administrative controls.
HHS also wants access to new AI models and features at the same time as commercial users. The solicitation requires vendors to disclose any gaps in meeting that standard, along with the cause and a timeline for closing it.
HHS plans to run parallel pilots across multiple vendors and compare results before finalizing its enterprise strategy.
The solicitation also calls for developing AI consumption measurement frameworks — including what it terms as AI Consumption Unit normalization methodologies — that would give HHS a vendor-agnostic way to measure and compare AI usage as it heads toward larger procurement decisions.
Proposals are due Thursday, July 2.