-: My name is Paolo del Vecchio
and I work for the federal government,
the US Department of Health and Human Services,
where I work at a Mental Health and Addictions agency,
addressing concerns of mental illness
and substance use across the country.
We work on everything from looking
at ways we can lower the amount
of homelessness across the United States,
the number of people living
with mental health and addictions
in our streets and in our shelters,
to looking at issues of criminal justice
in mental health involvement.
We know far too many people in our jails and prisons
with mental illness and with addictions as well.
We do a major focus looking at ways
that we can improve mental health care delivery,
having better trained mental health and addiction staff
around the country providing needed care
and support for people,
'cause frankly far too few people get the care
that they need today.
Job that I have right now is administrative,
and so I support the operations angle
for the federal agency.
So I assist with things ranging from information technology,
looking at ways technology can improve our work,
to looking at issues of travel
and purchasing and continuity of operations.
So this is planning and preparation
in case there's a disaster, either man made or natural,
how are we gonna continue operations
to ensure that we're continuing to help people
with mental illness and addictions across the country?
So that involves helping to ensure
that we have the technology, we have the services,
we have the personnel in place,
so that if we have to move out of our building,
to our other facilities,
can we tell the work to make sure
that we continue the good work
that the American public has trusted us with?
So the kind of things I'm working on could range
from looking at how do we ensure the health and safety
of the staff that work in our agency
to looking at issues
of investigating fraud and abuse issues,
to looking at how we can improve the kind
of computer technologies that we use in our agency
to make sure that we pursue our mission.