Okta and ServiceNow: Modernizing Public Sector Operations

Posted on by Matt Egan

Federal, state, and local agencies and educational institutions are facing a surge in targeted cyberattacks. With increasing return-to-office mandates, they face further challenges balancing security with the need to deliver frictionless experiences for users and systems, both within and beyond the premises of agencies and campuses. Public sector organizations can lean further on industry partners to help them modernize operations to improve cybersecurity, support distributed workforces and users, remain compliant with audit and policy mandates, and, ultimately, better serve the public.

Roadblocks to Modernization

To modernize operations, agencies and institutions need to transition from legacy systems to cloud-based tools. Creating collaborative, seamless, and secure work environments that not only attract and retain top talent but also comply with key audit and policy mandates is necessary.

But building this kind of robust environment that can securely support mission-critical work isn’t easy.

Okta ServiceNow Modernizing Public Sector Operations Blog Embedded Image 2023

For one, as the public sector implements cloud-based tools that deliver modern, continuous digital services, they must also ensure the new technology works seamlessly alongside existing processes. And securing work environments both in-office and remotely has never been more challenging, with a 40% increase in cyberattacks against government and public service organizations from Q2 2023 to Q3 2023. Unfortunately, busy IT teams’ resources are too often spent completing manual work instead of implementing changes needed to focus on the high-value work that propels their missions.

How Okta and ServiceNow Solutions Help With Modernization and Automation

Okta and ServiceNow solutions enable agencies and institutions to overcome these obstacles by providing tools that enhance security, modernize operations, comply with strategic policies, and improve service delivery to meet critical mission goals.

Together, Okta and ServiceNow help with:

Identity and access management: A centralized Identity solution offers a complete view of users and phishing-resistant authentication to protect accounts from cyberattacks and least-privilege access. This gives users just the right access at the right time for the right purposes.
User lifecycle and workflow automation: Advanced algorithms and customizable templates streamline onboarding and offboarding for IT teams, reducing time-consuming work, eliminating manual, repetitive tasks, and increasing productivity.
Compliance and policy oversight: Detailed logs and refined reporting capabilities perform automated compliance checks, and policy enforcement mechanisms help reduce the risk of non-compliance.
No-code automation: No-code/low-code automation enables IT teams to quickly launch modern services while still adhering to Zero Trust integrations.
Risk management and monitoring: Advanced analytics and real-time reporting enable continuous visibility of all systems, improving service availability and accelerating incident response that can better protect the sensitive information of public sector organizations.
System integration: API management and middleware tools enable seamless integration with automated data exchange to improve communication and reduce errors.

Why Okta and ServiceNow are Better Together

These solutions combine ServiceNow’s expertise in policy and compliance management and internal and vendor risk management with Okta’s expertise in Identity and access management, such as single sign-on (SSO) and multi-factor authentication (MFA).

More specifically, with a rich, bidirectional integration, Okta and ServiceNow work seamlessly together, empowering public sector organizations to modernize and automate their services to support their evolving missions with:

Okta Integration Network (OIN)
ServiceNow Security Incident Module
StateRAMP Ready authorization
FedRAMP High authorization
Department of Defense Impact Level (IL) 4 and IL5 workloads

Contact our team today to learn more about about how, together, Okta and ServiceNow provide the public sector with an open, future-ready platform to automate, secure, orchestrate, and simplify their workflows.

People Plus Technology: Building a Resilient Federal Cyber Workforce

Posted on by Alex Whitworth

Filling cyber jobs in Federal agencies is complicated – it requires competing with industry salaries, retaining existing talent and navigating the Federal hiring process. It’s a far-reaching challenge that affects every agency – the administration knows that, the Office of Personnel Management knows that, and agency technology and human resources leaders know that. And federal C suite leaders realize how the government recruits, hires and retains people for cyber jobs has to change. In partnership with FNN, our Federal Cyber Workforce guide takes a look at what the government is doing to tackle this problem on a sweeping federal level and also on a more agency-specific level. We also get industry perspective on the technologies that affect cyber workforce resiliency. We hope it provides some guidance and help as your agency works to beef up its cybersecurity, both through investments in people and technology.

3 Key Rallying Points for a Resilient Cybersecurity Team

“Agencies are currently operating in a high-threat environment, but that doesn’t mean they can’t implement a reasonable amount of information assurance. It may not be perfect, but it doesn’t have to be. The idea is to make it so that adversaries have to work extremely hard to penetrate the infrastructure. The adversaries are good, but agencies can be better with a resilient cybersecurity team, said Mark Bowling, chief risk, security and information security officer for ExtraHop. The key to achieving this is to have a risk reduction perspective.”

Read more insights from Mark Bowling, Chief Risk, Security and Information Security Officer at ExtraHop.

Do not Wait for a Breach: Why to Adopt Proactive Approach to Cyber Resilience

“When most people talk about cyber resilience, they’re referring to post-breach recovery — the means, methods and speed with which an organization can get its systems and services back online after a cyber incident. But Felipe Fernandez, federal chief technology officer at Fortinet, views resiliency more holistically. His advice? Agencies need to take a proactive stance on cyber resilience and include not only recovery from breaches but also when their planning for non-malicious threats and other operational disruptions, including those associated with cloud-based services.”

Read more insights from Felipe Fernandez, Federal Chief Technology Officer at Fortinet.

Proactively Improve Digital Employee Experience Though Automation

“Digital modernization and the adoption of collaboration tools is supposed to make work easier, especially in a hybrid environment. Employees want the flexibility to be productive in whatever manner best suits them. Unresolved technology issues can impede productivity. In its latest survey of industry employees and IT professionals, Ivanti found that 49% of employees are frustrated with the tools they use and 26% are considering leaving their jobs because of that. Employee experience is a top priority in government right now, and employees are internal customers of an agency’s IT services. By improving their experience your agency can realize gains in productivity and retention.”

Read more insights from Mareike Fondufe, Product Marketing Director at Ivanti.

Download the full Expert Edition for more insights from these cyber workforce leaders and additional government interviews, historical perspectives and industry research.

5 Essential Applications of AI Technology in Education

Posted on by Tim Boltz

When growing up and sitting through math class, students often heard teachers say that students should not rely on a calculator to do their math for them. After all, they would never have a calculator in their pockets. Today, that statement could not be farther from the truth. Now, many students have an entire computer in their pockets with a calculator just a click of a button away. The growth of artificial intelligence (AI) has increased exponentially within the last few decades, and students and educators alike must embrace the latest in AI and education technology to keep up with the pace.

In all learning environments, students and teachers rely on modern technologies to enhance their experiences to be as informational, productive and efficient as possible. In recent years, hybrid learning and collaborative digital spaces became essential components of education for both K-12 and higher education organizations. With this development, education technology has evolved and expanded to include new and more advanced AI systems inside and outside the classroom.

The needs of students are always changing, and educators must constantly adapt to progressive ways of teaching and learn different technologies or platforms that can assist with their daily lessons. With the implementation of AI and numerous benefits of digital learning, all students and instructors can achieve a more wholistic and innovative education. These five topics demonstrate how AI is an essential tool in the learning process for various types of learners across K-12 and higher education.

Communication

Innovative trends in education technology have made it possible for students and staff to stay connected, whether through remote online learning or collaborative learning in the classroom. AI tools like SMS bots, predictive technology and ChatGPT can assist students in tasks such as navigating their school’s learning platforms, researching and preparing information for assignments and getting real-time answers to their questions. AI can also help teachers and professors orchestrate discussion points between students and guide next steps within small group collaborative projects.^[¹^]

Automation

For teachers, implementing AI can help automate repetitive daily tasks like grading tests and quizzes, and catching minor mistakes within written essays. This way they have more freedom and time to focus on in-depth feedback, creating comprehensive lesson plans and spending one-on-one time with their students. Additionally, AI tools can give students instant feedback on their work, allowing them to be more independent in identifying inaccuracies and recognizing successful projects.^[²^]

Immersive Learning

Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) are becoming increasingly more popular in students’ everyday lives, so using these technologies as a learning tool is familiar and compelling for them to gain valuable experiences in the classroom. Immersive technologies can simulate real-world scenarios for students to gain hands-on experience with low risk, like medical simulations and technical experiments. It also can allow students to break the barrier between their physical space and complex concepts like observing the planets up close or enlarging and examining something microscopic.^[³^]Not only do AR and VR create expansive opportunities for students to view and understand concepts in new and captivating ways, but they also create an additional, interactive and collaborative avenue of learning for students who may not be as responsive to traditional tools like textbooks and study guides.^[⁴^]

Data-Driven Results

Throughout a student’s education, data is continually collected to better understand and predict their developing needs and most effective learning strategies. AI technologies can quickly and automatically analyze and report on this data, allowing teachers and professors to evaluate trends in an individual student’s or an entire class’s performance. Empowered with this knowledge, educators can tailor their lesson plans and take a more proactive approach to supporting students’ needs, ultimately increasing academic improvement for all.^[⁵^]

Personalized Learning

Student’s learning styles can vary depending on many factors. For example, some students learn best through more visual and interactive experiences, while others may learn best through memorization and flashcards. Analyzing data collected by AI can help teachers be more informed and prepared educators for different kinds of learners. By applying the insights gathered from AI algorithms, educators can create personalized tracks for individual students, including aspects like adjusting the types of content, working with their comfortability, tailoring to their pace of learning and understanding their comprehension of learning objectives.^[⁶^] Additionally, AI technologies can help teachers plan, schedule and produce suggested lesson ideas more efficiently so they can target instruction and reduce the time it takes to create activities that best support each student.^[⁵^]

As AI becomes more common in education, maintaining academic integrity and validity within assignments of any kind will remain top of mind for educators. While earlier AI systems are designed to help students achieve academic success, newer AI systems are intended to empower teachers to optimize the use of artificial intelligence for students and encourage positive, ethical engagement with AI technologies.^[⁷^] Fostering trust among educators to cultivate the most prosperous learning environment through the implementation of AI can further personal, social and educational growth for all students.

Explore Carahsoft’s education technology solutions to learn how your organization can work together with our top innovative EdTech vendors to bridge the digital divide and meet the demands of modern education.

Resources:

[1] Office of Ed Tech. “AI and the Future of Teaching and Learning: New Interactions, New Choices.” Medium, https://medium.com/ai-and-the-future-of-teaching-and-learning/ai-and-the-future-of-teaching-and-learning-new-interactions-new-choices-c726bcf03012

[2] Shonubi, Olufemi. “Council Post: AI in the Classroom: Pros, Cons and the Role of Edtech Companies.” https://www.forbes.com/sites/theyec/2023/02/21/ai-in-the-classroom-pros-cons-and-the-role-of-edtech-companies/?sh=2cb4a227feb4

[3] Dick, Ellysse. “The Promise of Immersive Learning: Augmented and Virtual Reality’s Potential in Education.” Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. https://itif.org/publications/2021/08/30/promise-immersive-learning-augmented-and-virtual-reality-potential/

[4] Dani, Vishal. “How Augmented Reality Creates Interactive and Engaging Classrooms.” Kitaboo, https://kitaboo.com/augmented-reality-creates-interactive-and-engaging-classrooms/

[5] Gururaj, Tejasri. “10 Examples of Artificial Intelligence Improving Education.” Interesting Engineering, https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/examples-how-artificial-intelligence-improving-education

[6] Dani, Vishal. “9 Trends in Education Technology That Will Have a Major Impact.” Kitaboo, https://kitaboo.com/trends-in-education-technology/

[7] Office of Ed Tech. “AI and the Future of Teaching and Learning: Engaging Educators.” Medium, https://medium.com/ai-and-the-future-of-teaching-and-learning/ai-and-the-future-of-teaching-and-learning-engaging-educators-141e90c5e29f

Why AppExchange Use Offers Agencies Untapped Opportunity

Posted on by Bethany Blackwell

In our first Insider’s Guide, we’re pulling back the curtain on the world’s largest cloud app marketplace, the Salesforce AppExchange, to offer a look at what it is, how it works and how it can provide value to agencies in extending their investment in the Salesforce platform. With the government’s increased focus on improving service delivery — particularly public-facing services per the presidential administration executive order on customer service — taking advantage of possible software-as-a-service integrations with the Salesforce customer relationship management platform makes logical sense. Download the guide to learn how AppExchange helps organizations increase productivity, eliminate risk and save time.

Nintex DocGen for Document Creation, Automation and Management

“A great example would be voter registration cards. Every year, you need to update it. We make it really easy to go out and maintain it with our solution and not have to go into code to make updates. It becomes easy to create, easy to maintain going forward and not having to spend budget on development cycles or development resources to build these solutions. The alternative is to write and maintain custom Apex code, which requires an advanced skill set and takes more time. This is a faster way to develop it and an easier way to maintain it.”

Read more insights from Steve Witt, Director of Public Sector at Nintex.

FormAssembly for Secure Online Forms

“Specifically, we’re the most secure and compliant platform in the entire marketplace. That is how we go to market, that’s what we pride ourselves on: being good stewards of our data, being thought leaders in that space. Government organizations should use us because, doubling down on the security and compliancy, we’re tailored for highly sensitive data. We’re built for that. We hold the distinction of being the only FedRAMP-ready platform on the marketplace in this category. We also hold SOC 2, ISO 27001, PCI DSS and GDPR compliance. And really, what that means for our customers and partners is that we’re experts in this space, and that will mitigate any risk and collecting data for your organization, whether it’s here in the United States or abroad.”

Read more insights from Paul Lazatin, Director of Partnerships at FormAssembly.

WalkMe for No-Code Digital Adoption

“What makes us unique is that we have the ability to overlay on any enterprise application in the tech stack, commercial off-the-shelf (COTS), government off-the-shelf (GOTS) or custom-built. By doing so, we’re able to create better user experiences, drive employee productivity and monitor digital adoption on any enterprise application that’s being deployed out to the federal government, whether those applications are internal to employees or externally facing for taxpayers and constituents.”

Read more insights from Carl Wright, Director of Public Sector of Federal Sales at WalkMe.

Odaseva for Enterprise Data Protection

“Many federal and state organizations have questions that need answers when it comes to managing their Salesforce data. How do Salesforce users archive data that is no longer needed? How do they comply with regulations such as those from the National Institute of Standards and Technology or in the California Consumer Privacy Act? That’s why we at Odaseva consider the data management lifecycle. Odaseva helps organizations comply with the strictest data regulations and guard against data failure — all with precise control on a field-tested platform to scale with ease. And we deliver this with the strongest data security features that exceed the requirements of even the most complex, highly regulated businesses in the world.”

Read more insights from Matt Carstensen, Senior Solutions Engineer at Odaseva.

Conga Apps for Contract and Workflow Management

“Conga offers a flexible platform and set of solutions built natively on top of Salesforce that address a broad set of needs for federal, state and local government entities. Our products include Composer, the number one downloaded application on Salesforce’s AppExchange. Conga Composer allows public sector customers to automate document generation to get work done faster and easier in Salesforce. Users can create documents with dynamic data from Salesforce in the correct template, then send it, store it and trigger the next business process. Conga Sign is a modern and highly secure e-signature solution. We now offer a FedRAMP-certified version of our e-signature solution, which is getting quite a bit of attention.”

Read more insights from Eric Daggett, Vice President of Sales for Public Sector at Conga.

Download the full Insider’s Guide for more insights from these AppExchange leaders and additional interviews, research and infographics.

AvePoint Adds Governance, Management, Data Protection and Migration Support for Microsoft Power Platform

Posted on by The Carahsoft Team

Carahsoft partner AvePoint Public Sector recently announced its support for the governance, management, migration and data protection of Microsoft Power Platform environments. As more organizations adopt Power Platform to automate processes, build digital solutions, analyze data and create virtual agents, IT leaders need strategies that support their unique governance, security and compliance requirements.

AvePoint’s support for Power Platform helps organizations:

Provide scalable management and governance: Access management and risk assessments allow organizations to quickly drive impactful collaboration and sustainable Power Platform adoption. Best practices and productivity can be achieved through automated governance and policies, enforcing proper control of data access and functionality.
Protect critical workspaces, apps and flows: AvePoint’s automated backup for Power BI workspaces, Power Apps and flows makes it seamless to avoid accidental data deletion, user error or ransomware. This way, organizations can ensure they’re protected, compliant and prepared for business continuity when using Power Platform.
Seamlessly migrate data: Building on AvePoint’s award-winning migration capabilities, organizations can now migrate apps from an environment within the same tenant or between tenants – giving organizations more opportunities to successfully use Power Platform.

AvePoint and Microsoft Integration Blog Embedded Image 2023

Some organizations are already taking advantage of the AvePoint’s Power Platform support. “AvePoint’s support for Power Platform has helped us empower employees to safely build solutions that will enhance their work,” Mike Fettner, Principal Office 365 Engineering at Regeneron, said. “As an organization, this allows us to continue taking smart risks because we know robust governance solutions will put the right guardrails in place, and data protection will ensure none of our data or workflows are lost.”

Register today to join AvePoint and Microsoft for Power Platform Workshop: A Framework to Manage and Govern Power Platform at Scale, coming to a city near you later this Spring.

Connecting Customers with AvePoint and Industry Solutions

It has never been easier to count on Carahsoft and AvePoint. We can help your agency with:

Quick quote turnaround and smart spending
Industry-expert cloud computing product recommendations
24/7 live assistance to get you up and running faster

Contact a member of the Carahsoft and AvePoint Public Sector team today and discover how we can support your organization.

3 Ways to Address Developers’ Productivity Concerns

Posted on by Barry Duplantis

From modernizing software development to creating Zero Trust cybersecurity architectures, the federal government has ambitious plans for 2023. But those plans will only reach fruition by removing the barriers that get in the way of developer productivity.

Government agencies have made great strides to bring IT teams, including developers, closer together over the past few years. For example, they’ve made significant investments in software development factories that are rooted in DevOps cultures. And the Department of Defense clearly recognizes the benefits of collaboration between cybersecurity and development teams, making it a core facet of the agency’s software modernization strategy.

But as a recent Mattermost survey discovered, more must be done to break down communication and collaboration barriers that inhibit developer productivity.

For Unblocking Workflows: The 2023 Guide to Developer Productivity, 300 software developers were surveyed to find out what’s keeping them from being as productive as possible, and what can be done to accelerate productivity. Their responses showed that although organizations have tried to build more collaborative development cultures, there’s still some work to be done in certain areas.

Let’s dig into some of the challenges—and what you, as a government IT professional, can do to address them.

“Poor communication across teams” is a big productivity challenge

Poor communication practices are the biggest obstacles to productivity and collaboration, with 29% of survey respondents citing “poor communication across teams” as an inhibitor. Their biggest issues are around “lack of process and documentation” (27%) and “lack of clarity around project prioritization” (25%).

General-purpose collaboration platforms that other teams use aren’t helping. Thirty-seven percent of respondents said there are “too many distractions from non-developers” using those tools while 25% said they “don’t fit their workflows well.”

“Information spread across too many tools” (46%) and lack of integration with other tools” (45%) are making it tough to collaborate and find information

Having to work with different tools is also making it difficult for developers to collaborate. Indeed, the developers surveyed said that information silos were among their biggest concerns.

These silos are making it frustrating for developers to find what they need when they need it. Thirty-two percent of respondents said they spend 3 to 5 hours per week hunting down information while 18% spent 6 to 8 hours.

Remote work “somewhat improves collaboration” but continues to be a source of tension among some developers

Remote work might be the norm, but developers aren’t entirely taken with it. Forty-three percent of respondents stated that remote work “somewhat improves collaboration” while 33% believe it makes collaboration worse.

That number is down from our 2021 survey, where more than half of respondents said that remote work was a net gain. The fact that the number has fallen is likely a reflection of the deterioration of communications practices and lack of integration, both of which contribute to poor project clarity.

What government agencies can do to improve developer productivity

Our survey respondents sent a clear message: Give us tools and processes that allow us to collaborate more effectively, break up information silos, and share knowledge easily. There are three things you can do to satisfy these needs.

Invest in software built for developer workflows.

Since open source is easily customizable, it’s simple to integrate different development tools. This will make it easier for developers to share code and resources, manage workflows, and communicate with each other without interference from other teams.

Create a central repository for knowledge sharing.

Having a “single source of truth” that developers can refer to when looking for information can save enormous time. Invest in a repository that pulls information from different teams and tools. Provide developers with greater visibility and access to the information they need to do their jobs more efficiently.

Automate information sharing and workflow management.

Automatically input new information into the repository once it’s received so developers don’t have to look for it. Automate workflow processes, too, by using a system that automatically checks off tasks when they’re done, alerts developers when it’s their time to work on a project, and more. Help your developers spend less time focusing on these tasks and more time building applications.

The success of accelerated investments in software factories and modernization initiatives in 2023 will depend in large part on developers’ abilities to be productive. Right now, there are obstacles getting in the way of that productivity. But you can eliminate those obstacles by improving collaboration and information sharing.

Want to learn more about developers’ productivity concerns and what you can do to address them? Check out Unblocking Workflows: The 2023 Guide to Developer Productivity.

The Best of What’s New in Automation

Posted on by The Carahsoft Team

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the conversation surrounding automation in government featured a lot of skepticism. For some, automation seemed too difficult or risky to implement. For others, it represented a threat to human workers. And for many, change in general is hard to embrace because it means leaving behind the familiar and venturing toward the unknown. But when COVID-19 infection rates skyrocketed, and when programs like unemployment insurance (UI) faced unprecedented spikes in demand, governments felt compelled to consider and adopt technologies they may have once resisted. And so, in 2022, the dialogue on automation has a much different tone. The focus has shifted toward identifying opportunities, challenges and best practices so that agencies can figure out where automation fits best. Learn how your agency or municipality can take full advantage of the growing momentum behind automation in Carahsoft’s Innovation in Government® report.

Modernizing Expense and Payment Management

“When you have an automated system, if someone is about to do something that is noncompliant, the system flags them. Depending on how an organization sets policy, the system can stop the employee completely or allow the spend to proceed but with a warning that the behavior is out of compliance and will be flagged. That impacts how people make their buying decisions. As part of auditing overall, AI, ML and other technologies also work together to detect abnormal or potentially fraudulent behavior. Continual noncompliant behavior is tracked, marked and reported on. In terms of decision-making, intelligent automated solutions give organizations actionable data—sometimes for the first time ever. Organizations can see where they are in their cash flow, their debts, and so on and use that data to make decisions that drive the business outcomes they need.”

Read more insights from SAP Concur’s senior director for state and local government, Jim McClurkin.

Having an Automation-First Mindset

“Some executives don’t realize how much repetitive work their teams do until we talk to their staff and then show them the power of the possible. The best ideas for automation come from the people doing the work, so simple education is the best way to prepare employees. We partner with organizations to help educate their end users and show them what’s possible. It’s also helpful to use terms like “digital employee” or “digital workforce” rather than the term “bot,” which isn’t always well received. People understand they can have a digital assistant right on their desktop. Adoption is important because state and local governments need digital workers to address their current and future workforce needs, just like the private sector.”

Read more insights from UiPath’s vice president of sales for state, local and education (SLED), Phil Calzadilla.

Getting Intelligent Automation Right

“We’ve seen the most success where there’s initially enough investment to have an impact and get the organization behind it. Projects that are too small often pass below the visibility of executive leadership and tend to die on the vine. At the same time, projects can’t be more than the organization can chew at one time. The Covered California project started in a discrete area around document processing. Over time, they decided to apply analytics to it, and then improve workflows. Eventually, they added robotics to move the data to various systems. It became this very large but modular step-by-step layering in of different levels of automation. All of this resulted in an incredibly robust automation system that handles 50 million records a year and 300,000 processes per month, but it was done judiciously.”

Read more insights from Kofax’s vice president of public sector and federal sales, Jeremy Hogg.

Preparing For a New Wave of Automation

“Based on trends in the federal government, I expect both state and local governments to continue adopting the cloud over the next five to 10 years. As organizations consider new deployments in the cloud, it would be great to start with automation from the beginning. Instead of making it an after-the-fact approach, bake it into the solution from the start. Also, don’t be afraid to try new tools, and don’t be afraid to accept that you might need to get some training for your team. These are new skills, and enablement is valuable from the beginning.”

Read more insights from Cloudera’s principal solutions engineer, Ian Brooks.

Download the full Innovation in Government® report for more insights from these cybersecurity thought leaders and additional industry research from GovTech.

Why Knowledge Management is the Next Best Step for Your Agency

Posted on by Samuel Nadarajan

The Field of Knowledge Management

As government agencies grow in size and workload capacity, it becomes more important to track ideas and information within the workplace. Working with disorganized and unattainable information impedes work flow, causes hesitancy, and precipitates the loss of ideas. The key solution for combatting workplace disarray is an effective knowledge management strategy—the discipline of creating, organizing, documenting, structuring, and teaching accessible information. While implementing organizational strategies may not be a priority for every agency, it is imperative to ensure work processes run efficiently. Agencies save time, money, and resources by investing in knowledge management.

Workplace Problems & Management Solutions

Several issues arise for agencies without proper knowledge management that can result in miscommunication, poor workflow management, and inaccessibility across teams. The two most prevalent issues are the absence of planning and inadequate training. Fortunately, there are solutions that can improve efficiency, workplace progress and team organization.

The first barrier to workplace progress is the lack of planning and notetaking. Without proper notetaking during meetings, important information is not captured accurately. This information is then exchanged between multiple parties and stakeholders where it may be passed along incorrectly. Sharing inaccurate information wastes time and effort. Instead, meeting organizers should create detailed, relevant notes and make them immediately accessible for all involved parties. By distributing meeting notes while the topic is still clear in everyone’s memory, organizers can reduce misinterpretation from secondhand information and bring clarity to the topic.

The second barrier to workplace progress is inefficient team training. Oftentimes, teams have unspoken norms and internal standards that are not formally passed on to new employees. New team members cannot always pick up on these norms, especially while they are adjusting to a new environment. Prepared training materials help new employees onboard and adapt more quickly to a team environment. With a standardized training process, new hires will effectively learn team stratagem with an equivalent level of comprehension.

Improving Cybersecurity in Software Development using Knowledge Management

Effective knowledge management encourages teams to record and actively monitor risks to avoid jeopardizing goals or projects. Software development teams have a variety of standards to follow. Knowledge management best practices will document team standards and testing protocols to ensure code is written consistently, efficiently, and securely. By implementing effective knowledge management strategies, agencies can achieve compliance by ensuring software meets legal and cybersecurity standards.

Knowledge management is vital to accomplishing software development and cybersecurity goals. This includes enforcing security parameters, ensuring that software is legally compliant, and generating high level conversations and planned processes. For example, if high level conversations and security training are enforced throughout an agency, the chance of an unsuspecting employee breaching security by engaging with spam is diminished.

A Successful Communication Process

Knowledge management strategies are useful in various agencies and disciplines, such as government processes, workplace strategies, job tooling, or question and answer forums. Utilizing knowledge management assists employees by organizing resources into a single, available location and ensuring that information and resources are secure, accessible, and easy to understand. While knowledge management workflows vary between companies, a few core steps should guide how managers approach the process.

First, managers should determine what problems exist due to a lack of thorough communication. When diagnosing the issue one should ask the following questions: Is there information that is inaccessible? Is there information that’s only passed by word of mouth that should be written down? Is there information that is not articulated clearly?

Second, managers should guide their team to standardize the process of capturing and consolidating information for future reference. This information can manifest itself in the form of training guides or manuscripts. When consolidating information, meeting organizers should consider what information is most relevant to capture and incorporate into organizational strategies. Then, agencies should ensure that all information is kept in a central location to be accessed and shared by all relevant parties.

Third, managers must continually reevaluate and optimize current knowledge management strategies to ensure that problems are effectively solved. If issues persist, agencies must identify the related hurdles and revise their strategy.

Making the Right Decision for Your Agency

By implementing knowledge management processes, agencies can save time, money, and resources. Through recorded information, monitoring workplace processes, and accessible notes, knowledge management methods improve communication and team building.

Atlassian Secure Knowledge Management

Atlassian helps government agencies improve their ITIS, ITSM and service desk processes with knowledge management solutions. Atlassian can help improve your agency’s knowledge management security by hosting an open and connected platform directly tied to your work, serving as a centralized, organized and searchable knowledge hub, and delivering enterprise-grade security for knowledge management. Learn more about secure knowledge management with Atlassian or schedule a demo with an Atlassian expert for live product training!

Making the Most of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act

Posted on by Phoebe Nerdahl

Breaking funding barriers to invest in infrastructure and more

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) provides a historic $973B investment into America’s growing backlog of infrastructure needs. For decades, roads, bridges, water and wastewater networks, ports, and electrical grids have all lacked the funds needed to repair them. Besides addressing these critical infrastructure needs, the IIJA also includes $550B of new investments addressing critical, forward-thinking priorities such as digital equity, cybersecurity, and resiliency. This historic bill will help federal, state, and local government agencies address some of their community’s most critical needs.

There’s a great deal to look forward to in the IIJA, but it is also more complex than the other recent stimulus bills, such as the CARES Act and ARPA. As we all begin to unpack the benefits contained in it, one thing is for sure—it’s going to take time and effort for agencies involved to build and efficiently administer the new programs outlined. This will be a big undertaking, but agencies can lessen the load by ensuring their systems are leveraging modern tools that enable automation, speed, and agility.

3 steps to prepare your agency for the IIJA

Agency project management needs are about to explode. Federal agencies like the Department of the Interior or Department of Transportation will need to build processes and applications for receiving proposals, awarding discretionary funds, and tracking results. Meanwhile, state and local governments are going to need to manage most of the infrastructure projects themselves. Workflows, permits, inspections, contractors, and resource allocation will all be part of the process. That’s a lot to keep an eye on. For your agency maximize this once-in-a-generation investment, you’ll want modern technology solutions that bring together the agility, efficiency, and security you need to make it happen.

Replace outdated project management tools

How often do you find yourself hunting down details on a project’s status or trying to figure out why a project that was due yesterday is still delayed? How often are you updating quad charts or exporting data to a spreadsheet in order to sort and filter for answers? If the answer is “every week,” a project management tool update might be in order.

Agile project management tools help coordinate work in real-time and give you a bird’s-eye view of a project so you always know how things are going. They also allow you to dive in and see progress and problems on the ground, letting you resolve bottlenecks before they affect larger portions of a project. The insights and automation delivered by a modern project management tool can also lead to smoother, more efficient workflows.

Use an ESM approach with internal service workflows

An Enterprise Service Management (ESM) approach can save vast amounts of time within internal service workflows. Leveraging IT solutions to make workplace services from all departments more accessible and instantaneous can transform workplace efficiency. Forms with automatic routing and signatures, easy-to-set-up self-services with integrated knowledge guides, and efficient issue resolution can all become simple, intelligent online processes. This relieves the staff burden of phone support, filling in spreadsheets, and email overload. You can also use an ESM approach to ensure audit-ready communication trails are in place no matter how large a project is. Once your agency is up to speed, you can then expand ESM workflows to more efficiently engage with citizens.

Build in cybersecurity and verification best practices…right from the start

You already know security is crucial for agencies. Make sure it’s a top priority by using DevSecOps tools and methodologies when building new applications. DevSecOps takes the best practices of general DevOps, and adds security verification as an active, integrated part of the development process. A DevSecOps approach makes security a shared responsibility throughout an application’s lifecycle. This means building in security best practices from day one and having processes in place to update that security as standards change. It’s always simple to transition from waterfall to agile, but you don’t have to do it alone. You can find everything from hardened containers to Team Playbooks that can help your agency or program shift left.

Take advantage of this historic opportunity with Atlassian

Atlassian provides solutions that let you create a new framework based on automation, speed, and agility. We also provide best practices and playbooks for modernizing legacy systems. Whether you’re managing complex projects, building new efficient service workflows, or securely developing new applications, agency teams can work better together to turn this investment opportunity into meaningful outcomes for your communities. To learn more about how we help agencies create agile systems that bring everyone together, contact your Atlassian representative for more information.

Overcome Modernization Resistance with Enterprise Automation and Containers

Posted on by Jason Dudash

Rapid IT advancements are spurring public sector teams to implement emerging technologies that can keep pace with the speed of innovation. For government agencies and systems integrators, changing and modernizing existing systems is an equally important and challenging task. While solutions exist that aid in modernization efforts, many of these appear broad and complex at first glance. It can be overwhelming to not only adopt these technologies, but also to understand what they do and how to use them.

Fortunately, onboarding new technologies isn’t always as complicated as one might think. This rings especially true when pairing interoperable solutions to simplify legacy modernization efforts. Automation and containers provide a combination that can increase team productivity, makes systems easier to operate, and allow organizations to run faster.

Automation and Containers: The Perfect Match

Even on their own, both automation and containers offer many benefits for legacy modernization. Automation is usually thought of as a broad topic, one where existing processes are improved and complexities are reduced. Typically, automation aids in cutting down manual work as it removes the potential for human error by having programs perform repeatable workflows across a variety of environments.

Containers are also envisioned as a way to optimize use of existing hardware, enhancing the features present to provide more capabilities now and into the future. With a platform such as Kubernetes, organizations can run more servers and have more apps in development than what their old systems offered.

When integrated, automation and containers help you realize the best of both worlds by providing organizations with the tools to do more with less and optimize software deployment processes. Automating an operating system that has security flaws allows systems integrators to simply press a button and deploy patches into the field, all within minutes of finding the original flaw.

Both also establish a baseline where programs and applications can work and run the same way even while operating in different environments. Not only are these processes automated, but deployment to support new situations, in areas outside of the core norm or public cloud, can be done while still maintaining consistency. Leveraging automation along with containers creates a foundation for multiple people to share and run enterprise-wide IT automation, centralizing operations and fostering collaborative modernization practices. No longer will existing systems and networks be siloed away from the rest of the organization, as automation and containers together enable connectivity within an existing infrastructure.

Deploying Automation and Containers: Simpler than Ever

As exciting and innovative as emerging technologies can be, solutions are only valuable if they can be operated at their full potential. While automation tools may vary, some are actually surprisingly easy to learn and simple to use—an individual can turn manual processes they do frequently into an automated solution. Now that manual task requires little more than a press of a button. Systems integrators and IT organizations can take that a step further and leverage a platform revolving around automation. The automation platform can then be a foundation for multiple people to share and run automations across an organization. Now as modernization takes place, this platform provides for a centralized common place for automation management and fosters a collaborative practice for process improvement.

Container platforms have been tested and utilized for close to a decade and the setup process has progressively gotten easier along the way. Today, some platforms can operate on any cloud and feature automated installation to get organizations up and running with Kubernetes. Additionally, with industry partnerships between enterprise Kubernetes distributions and different leading cloud providers, a container platform can be ordered ready to go, and operated as a managed service, from Amazon and Microsoft Azure.

Become Cloud-Native with Automation and Containers

IT automation and containers help systems integrators in their journey to become cloud-native, continuing to provide simplicity towards achieving this goal. While valuable additions to any team on their own, together automation and containers provide new ways of improving and accelerating application delivery that help move technology and teams closer to a cloud-native architecture.

For example, teams structured around building software may traditionally be siloed, with many individuals writing code for a single app server – this requires a large integration effort and a high amount of coordination to release software. In a cloud-native system, teams become more agile as they collaborate through the capabilities a container platform provides. Suddenly, deploying code is done within seconds, and automated pipelines release software more quickly than a team of individuals. With an interoperable and flexible platform, solutions can run anywhere and reduce development costs, enabling more time and effort to be spent towards implementing team objectives.

Culture, process, and technology all play a vital role in modern IT solutions. Technology may often receive the limelight, but ultimately, it is the people who work with technology that are the backbone. Automation and containers can ease the resistance many may feel towards modernization initiatives, and help those involved in IT do their jobs better than before. In the shift towards becoming cloud-native, enterprise open source container orchestration platforms make modernization efforts less of an impossible feat and more of an easy-to-reach reality.

Download our eBook, “The Five Elements of DevSecOps Transformation,” to learn more about Red Hat’s insights on people, processes and technology within this space.