When Government agencies collaborate across jurisdictions, contractors and technology environments, the hard part is rarely deciding whether teams need to share information. The harder question is how to share the right information without exposing too much.
I’m Samar Shah, a Customer Success Partner at Clovity, an Atlassian Platinum Solutions Partner and Atlassian’s 2026 Partner of the Year for Government. We build and manage Atlassian environments for State and Federal agencies, from platform administration to cloud migrations. Exalate is the connector we bring in when an agency needs its Jira instance to stay in sync with a contractor’s instance, or another agency’s, without opening direct access on either side.
Atlassian, Exalate and Carahsoft hosted a webinar called Enabling Interagency Collaboration Across the Atlassian Ecosystem. Christophe De Beule from Exalate led the technical demo, while I joined from the client perspective. What stood out most was not just what the tool can do, but what agencies need to resolve before they are ready to discuss sync tools at all.
Data Access Comes Before Anything Else
The first question is almost always the same: who gets to see the data?
Security and compliance conversations happen before anyone starts discussing connectors, field mappings, or automation rules. Every agency I work with treats data exposure as the starting point, because the goal is not just to connect systems. The goal is to connect them responsibly.
Why Two Agencies May Not Want to Share Jira Access
I hear a version of this concern on almost every joint infrastructure project. Imagine two State departments of transportation working on a shared bridge project. Each team runs its own Jira Data Center instance, and neither agency wants the other logging in directly.
That hesitation makes sense. Vendor data, internal comments, procurement notes and agency-specific workflows may all live inside the same instance. Even when two agencies are working toward the same outcome, not every detail is meant to leave the system of record.
In practice, the sync that gets built is usually much narrower than people expect. A JQL-based trigger can identify only specific ticket types moving into a specific status, and only those tickets are shared. Everything else stays untouched.
The Demo Moment That Changes the Conversation
One of the most practical moments in the demo came when Exalate handled a mismatch between systems. In a contractor-agency scenario, the agency’s ticket type did not exist on the contractor’s board. Exalate mapped it to the closest available type automatically, and the sync continued without forcing either side to redesign its workflow.
The reporter field works similarly. By default, the other side can see a shared account instead of the individual working the ticket. If the agency wants something more precise, that field can point to a specific proxy account. Either way, no one has to expose an individual’s identity to a system they do not access.
That is usually the moment the conversation shifts from “Why do we need this?” to “What else can it do?”
Migrating to Cloud on Different Timelines
Cloud migration adds another layer of complexity. Agencies rarely move at the same pace. One team may be ready to migrate, while another needs to keep running Jira Data Center for operational, security or budget reasons.
In the demo, Christophe showed a Jira Cloud-to-Jira Data Center connection that carried epics, child issues and the links between them. Bulk sync also moved existing tickets over in one pass, so neither side had to rebuild what the other already had.
What Changes Once the Sync Is Live
The value shows up in the daily work, not just in high-level dashboards. Comments flow both ways in real time, so agencies do not wait on defect updates or approval confirmations. Teams stay aligned without logging into each other’s tenants, which helps keep ATO reviews cleaner on both sides.
The bigger change is what stops happening. Teams no longer need a standing meeting just to ask what is happening with a P1 ticket. A manager can check the synced ticket instead of pinging someone directly. On a migration project, no one has to keep a person tied up manually shadowing work while one agency moves to cloud and another continues running Data Center.
Timeline and Budget Expectations
For an ongoing ticket sync, four to six weeks is typical, depending on custom fields, status mappings and governance requirements. A full migration, especially one involving thousands of tickets, usually takes months.
Most of the setup happens through Groovy scripting on Exalate’s side. Christophe estimated that well under one percent of use cases require anything beyond that scripting. If your agency already has a systems integrator on the project, that team can usually own the mapping work.
Where Agencies Should Start
Start with the security conversation before the vendor conversation. Agency leadership should agree on what can leave the instance, what must remain internal and which business events should trigger a sync. Once those boundaries are clear, the tooling conversation becomes much more productive.
If your agency is trying to sync Jira across departments, contractors, or migration timelines, the right first question is not “Which connector should we use?” It is “What information are we comfortable sharing, and under what conditions?” Once that answer is clear, the path to responsible interagency collaboration gets much easier.
Exalate’s connector is available on the Atlassian Marketplace and you can view the webinar discussed above here, if you want the fuller picture.
Carahsoft Technology Corp. is The Trusted Government IT Solutions Provider, supporting Public Sector organizations across Federal, State and Local Government agencies and Education and Healthcare markets. As the Master Government Aggregator for our vendor partners, including Clovity, we deliver solutions for Geospatial, Cybersecurity, MultiCloud, DevSecOps, Artificial Intelligence, Customer Experience and Engagement, Open Source and more. Working with resellers, systems integrators and consultants, our sales and marketing teams provide industry leading IT products, services and training through hundreds of contract vehicles. Explore the Carahsoft Blog to learn more about the latest trends in Government technology markets and solutions, as well as Carahsoft’s ecosystem of partner thought-leaders.
