At long last, Government agencies are getting some real support for their modernization and transformation initiatives. Through the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) and the American Rescue Plan (ARP), Congress is providing significant funding for updating or replacing legacy systems, with a focus on both improving the security of government systems and delivering better services. The opportunity, now, is to make those investments pay off. How can agencies cut delivery times and meet expected outcomes? Download the guide to access worksheets, step-by-step guidelines, government and industry insights, and other resources that can help agencies launch transformation initiatives鈥攁nd deliver on them.
Supercharge Your Agency Service Management
鈥淯sing cloud solutions, organizations can automatically scale up their systems when constituent demand is high and down when demand is lighter. This enables agencies to be more responsive, efficient and constituent-friendly. Most federal agencies are going through a major digital modernization effort, replacing outdated/ legacy systems with cloud-based solutions, said Sandra Trumbull with Atlassian, a software-based company. And self-service 鈥� whether through guided prompts, artificial intelligence or other methods 鈥� is increasingly important because users are more empowered and typically obtain faster responses service teams have fewer headaches, agencies can lower their service costs, and everyone receives a better overall experience.鈥�
Read more insights from Adaptavist鈥檚 Phill Fox, Principal Customer Success Advocate, and Atlassian鈥檚 Sandra Trumbull, Enterprise Solutions Advocate.
How Agencies Are Driving Innovation to the Edge
鈥淣ot so long ago, Air Force communications meant radios that transmitted information about where to go and what was happening. Now, digital input is being delivered directly into the cockpit. 鈥榃e鈥檙e talking about a situation where edge capability expands the envelope of the missions that we can get accomplished and changes the ways in which we can accomplish them,鈥� said Winston Beauchamp, Deputy Chief Information Officer for the Department of the Air Force. Currently, the service uses edge computing in its Agile Combat Employment, a scheme of maneuvers aimed at increasing survivability while generating combat power. If warfighters are under threat at fixed bases, they must move to alternate locations quickly 鈥� and those might not have all the infrastructure of a traditional base. 鈥楨dge technologies enable you to deploy to that location that you need to accomplish that mission without a huge footprint,鈥� Beauchamp said.鈥�
Read more insights from Red Hat鈥檚 Government Symposium.
Data, Data Everywhere, but Not a Byte to Eat
鈥淭he first element of intelligent data management is visibility: Where is agency data located? And directly associated, Breakiron said, is accessibility, knowing how the agency organizes and uses its information, and what the data鈥檚 condition is. 鈥榃e often find, especially in the government, in excess of 50% of the data hasn鈥檛 been touched for as much as five years,鈥� he explained. 鈥楢nd we also find that about 20% of the data, you couldn鈥檛 talk to if you had to.鈥� Commvault calls that 鈥渙rphan data,鈥� and it鈥檚 akin to having a VHS tape but no VHS player with which to view it. An intelligent data management system creates a tiered storage approach that identifies long-ignored information, allowing an archival model for 鈥榩ennies to the dollar vs. thousands of dollars in storage costs,鈥� he said.鈥�
Read more insights from Commvault鈥檚 Richard Breakiron, Senior Director for Strategic Initiatives for the Federal Sector.
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Build a Functional Ecosystem Through Cloud Architecture
鈥淲hile technology is at the core of a total agency transformation, Chang advised against having it 鈥榙ragging process and then dragging people along.鈥� The process and the people need to move along with the technology instead of clinging to its shirttails. 鈥極ne thing I would offer as a piece of advice, having done multiple transformations in the Federal Government, is invest in upskilling your people,鈥� said Chang. 鈥業f your people can鈥檛 use the technology 鈥� no matter how great the technology is 鈥� the organization as a whole does not move forward.鈥� For federal environments, he urged technology upskilling to improve employees鈥� data literacy, analytics awareness and coding abilities 鈥� or at least to provide a basic familiarity with those activities.鈥�
Read more insights from Snowflake鈥檚 Winston Chang, Chief Technology Officer for the Global Public Sector.
How Open Source Database Technology Can Support Transformation
鈥淢odernizing your applications and services without modernizing the underlying database is like buying a new car but installing your old engine. You鈥檙e just holding yourself back. That鈥檚 the experience of Enterprise DB (EDB), which provides tools and services to large organizations adopting PostgreSQL (Postgres), a relational database management system based on open source technology. Like other enterprise-grade, open source systems, Postgres helps organizations avoid the rising licensing costs and vendor lock-in that come with proprietary software, said Jeremy Wilson of EDB. But just as importantly, Postgres is rapidly replacing legacy, proprietary software as a platform for innovation.鈥�
Read more insights from EDB鈥檚 Jeremy Wilson, CTO of North America Public Sector.
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Transforming With Visibility and Agility
鈥淪taff working their way through a digital transformation, such as a cloud migration, will need new skillsets. They鈥檙e going to use new services and capabilities 鈥� and none of them will be the same, Shopp said. SolarWinds helps users build knowledge, intelligence, configuration smarts and cloud awareness, he explained. 鈥業ntelligence in a box,鈥� as Shopp called it, is codified into SolarWinds products and helps agency employees monitor workloads. 鈥榃hen it comes to understanding your infrastructure and your workloads, no matter where they reside 鈥� on premises, the cloud or hybrid 鈥� we鈥檝e got you covered,鈥� Shopp said.鈥�
Read more insights from SolarWinds鈥� Brandon Shopp, Group Vice President of Product.
Observability Made Simple
鈥淭he task of monitoring these complex systems gets more complicated, too. 鈥楾he question is, how do I know there鈥檚 an issue?鈥� said Brian Mikkelsen of Datadog. 鈥業s it when the tickets start flowing, when complaints increase, when your leadership team asks why something isn鈥檛 working?鈥� None of those options is ideal. Datadog鈥檚 application performance management platform provides a real-time window into the digital environment, identifying performance and security issues 鈥� quickly. Its 鈥榝ull stack鈥� hybrid infrastructure capability means everything from the back end to the front end is monitored and reported via infrastructure metrics, application performance traces, and correlated logs.鈥�
Read more insights from DataDog鈥檚 Brian Mikkelsen, Vice President and General Manager.
Download the full GovLoop Guide for more insights from these digital transformation leaders and additional government interviews, historical perspectives and industry research.
