Phyllis Epps

Phyllis Epps serves as a key procurement leader within the Office of the Chief Procurement Officer at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, where she drives strategic acquisition initiatives aligned with the agency’s mission to advance equitable housing, community development, and healthy living environments. She oversees the procurement of technology-enabled solutions critical to modernizing grant management systems and enhancing data-driven program delivery, with a primary focus on custom software development and digital infrastructure modernization. Her work ensures that HUD’s technical capabilities support efficient service delivery across federal, state, and local housing programs. Epps cultivates collaborative relationships with a diverse ecosystem of vendors specializing in custom computer programming services, partnering primarily with firms capable of delivering secure, scalable, and interoperable software solutions for complex public housing systems. While no single contractor dominates her portfolio, she consistently engages both large-capability IT integrators and small business innovators to meet evolving technical demands, fostering competitive, performance-based contracting environments that prioritize innovation and compliance with federal acquisition regulations. Her procurement strategy reflects a balanced commitment to socioeconomic goals, with approximately half of her acquisitions structured as total small business set-asides under FAR 19.5, demonstrating a deliberate effort to expand opportunities for small businesses in the federal IT space. She does not favor specific socioeconomic categories like 8(a), HUBZone, or SDVOSB over others, but instead prioritizes broad-based small business participation to strengthen market diversity and resilience in HUD’s technology supply chain. Epps’s domain expertise centers on NAICS 541511—Custom Computer Programming Services—where she procures end-to-end software development, system integration, data analytics platforms, and digital workflow automation tools. Her acquisitions support the modernization of HUD’s grant management, housing eligibility verification, and public housing performance tracking systems, requiring deep technical proficiency in secure cloud-native architectures, API-driven interoperability, and compliance with federal data standards such as those outlined in OMB A-130 and NIST guidelines.