Roberta Charlie

Roberta Charlie serves as a key procurement lead within the Indian Health Service, overseeing acquisitions critical to advancing health equity in American Indian and Alaska Native communities. She manages a specialized portfolio focused on technology-enabled clinical support systems, ensuring that contracting aligns with the agency’s mission to deliver culturally competent, accessible care. Her work centers on securing IT infrastructure, diagnostic tools, and digital health services that enhance provider capacity in remote tribal facilities. As a conduit between clinical needs and federal acquisition policy, she ensures compliance with statutory mandates while prioritizing community-centered solutions. Roberta maintains longstanding partnerships with a select group of contractors deeply embedded in tribal health ecosystems, including McKesson Corporation, Flintco, LLC, The Native American Rehabilitation Association of the Northwest, Tribal Health, LLC, and the Central Oklahoma American Indian Health Council, Inc. These relationships reflect a preference for vendors with proven experience in tribal health delivery, cultural competency, and on-reservation service execution. Her procurement approach emphasizes collaborative, long-term engagements over transactional contracts, fostering trust and continuity in service delivery. She exclusively utilizes the Buy Indian Set-Aside authority under 25 U.S.C. § 1637, directing 100% of eligible acquisitions to qualified Native-owned businesses and tribally controlled organizations. This reflects a deep institutional commitment to sovereign economic development and self-determination, ensuring that federal health dollars circulate within Indigenous communities. Her contracting patterns consistently prioritize Native-owned enterprises, reinforcing the IHS mandate to empower tribal self-governance through procurement. Her technical focus is entirely on NAICS 541519 (Other Computer Related Services), encompassing health information systems, telehealth platforms, electronic medical record integration, data analytics tools, and clinical workflow automation. She specializes in procuring IT services that support remote diagnostics, patient portal deployment, and interoperable health data exchange—all tailored to the unique infrastructure constraints of rural tribal health centers.