Task 4 · Enterprise Compensation Solution (4A–4I) · 36C77626Q0191

The survey data warehouse — in the cloud.

In this engagement the cloud has one job: be the salary-survey data warehouse. It stores VHA's licensed survey library, holds VHA's employee extracts in a secured enclave, runs the benchmarking and locality analysis on top of them, and serves the result to VHA HR. This is the evaluator's tour of that platform — the surveys it holds (served live from AWS right now), how the data flows end to end, and how it's deployed and secured. The working tools — ingesting survey files and running pay determinations — live inside the live platform, one click away.

This is the showcase — the working platform is live. Sign in (or explore as guest) to operate it: ingest a survey file to the cloud store, run and save a pay determination, and walk the audit trail.

Launch the live platform

Enterprise Compensation Solution

running today: aws us-east-1 (commercial) · at award: aws-govcloud-us · multi-AZ

Healthy · health check 0s ago

Environment

AWS GovCloud (US) — at award

Infrastructure

FedRAMP High (inherited)

Encryption

FIPS 140-2

Federal data

Not in product

Employee data

BAA-scoped enclave

Authorization

VA ATO · 20x track

Survey data store

11salary surveys stored

~1Mprovider records

15occupations benchmarked

16metro markets

15facilities localized

BAAenclave · VHA extracts

Licensed survey data, encrypted at rest (FIPS 140-2). VHA employee extracts held separately in the BAA-scoped enclave — no Federal PII in this store.

Platform activity

Live

Geographic differentials recomputed · 152 facilities8s ago

SullivanCotter survey file normalized · 4,210 rows47s ago

Pay determination · RN · San Francisco VAMC1m ago

Job-architecture catalog v2026.2 published3m ago

Benchmark report exported · XLSX6m ago

User signed in · role-scoped session · HR Specialist12m ago

Audit lineage snapshot sealed24m ago

What we do, end to end

The salary-survey data lifecycle

From a purchased survey to a defensible, localized pay recommendation. Steps marked Live now are running today on real AWS; the rest are the production workflow HSG performs across the contract.

Survey identified & purchased

At awardTask 1

HSG licenses the ~50 commercial surveys (SullivanCotter, MGMA, AMGA, ECRI, Mercer) that price VHA's occupations, plus the free BLS public anchor.

Loaded to the cloud data store

Live nowTask 4

Each survey lands in the cloud (Amazon S3), normalized and version-tagged — the survey data store shown below, served live from S3.

VHA employee data → BAA enclave

BAA enclaveTask 2

VHA workforce extracts are received into a separate, FIPS 140-2-encrypted, BAA-scoped enclave — never co-mingled with the commercial survey product.

Submitted to survey vendors on VHA's behalf

At awardTask 2

HSG participates in the surveys for 152+ facilities — provider agreements, a submission calendar, and the data each publisher requires.

Survey results received & purchased

At awardTask 3

Published market results return from each vendor and are ingested for analysis.

Normalized & job-matched

Live nowTask 4

Survey files are reformatted to a common schema and each VHA occupation is crosswalked to its benchmark jobs with confidence scoring.

Benchmarked

Live nowTask 2

P10–P90, compa-ratio, market index, and range penetration are computed — live in the Pay Workbench, on market data served from S3.

Localized to each facility

Live nowTask 3

Geographic cost-of-labor differentials are applied per duty station — the §7451 locality factor, computed live.

Served to VHA HR

Live nowTasks 4–5

Dashboards, exportable survey packets, the job-architecture catalog, and an immutable audit trail — delivered through this platform.

What the cloud is for

The survey data store

This is the platform's core job: hold VHA's licensed salary-survey library and serve the analysis on top of it. The list below is fetched live from the real S3-backed store — not a static table. Every survey purchased under Task 1 lands here, normalized and version-tagged; VHA's own employee extracts stay separate in the BAA-scoped enclave.

11 survey sources · encrypted at rest (FIPS 140-2)

connecting to S3…

SullivanCotter

Purchased

Physician Compensation & Productivity Survey

Anchors §7431 physician Market Pay panels by specialty and tier.

≈215,400 physicians · 541 organizations

Annual (mid-year)

loaded

SullivanCotter

Purchased

Advanced Practice Provider (APP) Survey

Benchmarks NP/PA/CRNA and clinical-pharmacist hybrid special rates.

≈190,000 APPs

Annual

loaded

SullivanCotter

Purchased

Manager & Executive Compensation Survey

Nurse Manager (Nurse IV–V) and Health System leadership benchmarking.

≈2,500 organizations

Annual

loaded

MGMA

Purchased

Provider Compensation & Productivity Report

Second market reference for §7431 panels; blends with SullivanCotter.

≈350,000 providers · 60,000 practices

Annual

loaded

AMGA

Purchased

Medical Group Compensation & Productivity Survey

Third leg of the three-survey blend used for FMV defensibility.

≈190,000 providers · 459 groups

Annual

loaded

ADA Health Policy Institute

Subscription

Survey of Dental Practice / Dental Compensation

Benchmarks VA Dental Service §7431 pay.

National dental practitioner panel

Annual

loaded

ECRI (formerly Total Compensation Solutions)

Purchased

Clinical & Allied Health / Technician Wage Survey

Primary source for Title 38 Hybrid Special Salary Rate (SSR) requests.

≈1,800 hospitals & health systems

Annual

loaded

Mercer

Purchased

Integrated Health Network Compensation Survey

Benchmarks Title 5 health-administration and informatics occupations.

≈1,400 healthcare organizations

Annual

loaded

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

Public / Free

Occupational Employment & Wage Statistics (OEWS)

Statutory anchor for §7451 nurse locality surveys; 30-day facility review on release.

≈1.1M establishments · all U.S. metro areas

Twice yearly (May / national)

loaded

HSG-administered (per facility)

Public / Free

Facility Local Labor-Market Surveys

The §7451 Nurse Locality Pay Survey itself — HSG collects, validates, and reports.

5–12 comparator employers per facility labor market

Annual per facility (§7451 requirement)

loaded

Economic Research Institute (ERI)

Subscription

Geographic Assessor / Salary Assessor

Builds and validates the geographic-differential layer (Task 3).

National geographic-differential model

Quarterly

loaded

Ingest a survey file

Load a purchased survey to the cloud store — in the Admin Console.

Submit to a survey publisher

Generate VHA's data in each publisher's format — Survey Participation.

Run a live pay determination

Localize a market range and save it to the audit trail — in the Pay Workbench.

The 4A–4I pipeline — all nine stages operational

The Pay Workbench runs on stages 4C–4F; the full pipeline carries data from secure ingest to immutable audit lineage.

Phase 1Secure intake

Operational

Commercial Cloud — No Federal Data Stored

AWS GovCloud (US) hosting that inherits FedRAMP High infrastructure authorization. The analytics product serves licensed and public data — never VHA PII.

Capability · GovCloud FedRAMP-High inheritance · FIPS 140-2 encryption · role-based access · SSO

Operational

VHA Employee-Data Ingest (BAA-scoped)

VHA workforce extracts are processed in a separate, FIPS 140-2-encrypted enclave under a Business Associate Agreement — never co-mingled with the analytics product.

Capability · BAA-scoped enclave · PII minimization · schema validation · NIST 800-88 destruction

Phase 2Normalize & match

Operational

Survey-Data Reformatting

Normalize purchased survey files (SullivanCotter, MGMA, ECRI, BLS) into a common schema.

Capability · Publisher-specific parsers · unit & currency normalization · vintage tagging

Operational

Job-Match Crosswalk Engine

Map each VHA occupation to one or more survey benchmark jobs with confidence scoring.

Capability · Many-to-one matching · analyst override · match-confidence audit trail

Phase 3Analyze & localize

Operational

Market Analysis & Percentiles

Compute P10–P90, compa-ratio, market index, and range penetration by occupation.

Capability · Blended multi-survey aging · weighting · reproducible calculations

Operational

Geographic-Differential Application

Apply locality / cost-of-labor differentials by facility labor market (Task 3).

Capability · BLS-anchored indices · per-facility geo factors · §7451 survey workflow

Phase 4Catalog, report & govern

Operational

Job-Architecture Catalog

Versioned catalog of occupations, families, levels, and benchmark crosswalks (Task 5).

Capability · Effective-dated versions · change history · catalog governance

Operational

Reporting & Dashboards

Facility-, VISN-, and occupation-level dashboards and exportable survey reports.

Capability · Self-service filters · export to XLSX/PDF · briefing-ready visuals

Operational

Audit Trail & Data Governance

End-to-end lineage from source survey to published recommendation.

Capability · Immutable lineage · refresh cadence controls · reviewer sign-off

Architecture — built to de-risk the award

Federal data stays out of the product.

The PWS asks for a “widely available service that provides commercially available information but does not collect Federal information.” Ours is built exactly that way — which means far less for the VA to authorize.

Hosted product

Commercial analytics service

Licensed survey + BLS public data, dashboards, pay-setting, exports
AWS GovCloud (US) — inherits FedRAMP High infrastructure authorization
No Federal employee data stored

Scoped & encrypted

Survey-participation pipeline

VHA employee data handled in a separate FIPS 140-2 enclave
Under a Business Associate Agreement — never co-mingled
Destruction per NIST 800-88 · US-based performance

VA boundary

Authorized system of record

Production system completes VA A&A / ATO (Handbook 6500 / Dir. 6517)
Positioning for the FedRAMP 20x Moderate track (FY2026)
Import-ready outputs flow to VA's cloud systems

✓ What the VA does NOT have to stand up

No sprawling new system holding VA PII to authorize
No Federal data living in a contractor-built product
No per-seat license lock-in for the analytics layer

What gets authorized — cleanly

One scoped, encrypted data-handling component, via standard A&A
GovCloud infrastructure controls inherited, not rebuilt
A clear path to FedRAMP 20x Moderate as it opens

Task 4 — do you own it, or is there a licensing fee?

HSG owns the analytics and methodology layer outright — no third-party per-seat fee to the VA for it — hosted in AWS GovCloud (US) and architected so Federal employee data is never stored in the product. Where the VA prefers a commercially-authorized platform of record (the incumbent MarketPay model), HSG integrates it; the production system of record is authorized through VA's A&A / ATO process.

Read the full RFI response

The deployment posture describes how the delivered platform ships. The 4A–4I structure is reconstructed from the Sources Sought. The survey data store is served live from the project's real S3-backed store; the operations console — status, data-store counts, and the live activity stream — illustrates the running platform's operational surface, with production telemetry reflecting the live VA engagement.