Innovation in Government: How to Change Things Up (and Make it Stick)

Posted on by Mike Adams

In government, we could say that innovation is invention that solves a problem or meets a need — in the community or within an organization undertaking the work. Big changes make government agencies more effective, prepared and useful, and they touch all aspects of agency operations — from IT to employee morale to digital services and more. In recent years, federal agencies such as the Census Bureau, General Services Administration, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Housing and Urban Development, and Office of Personnel Management have launched innovations labs, innovation libraries, and other innovation-focused resources and programs. Cities and states have as well, such as through Philadelphia’s Technology and Innovation group within the city’s Office of Innovation and Technology (OIT). Being innovative is not easy, of course: It requires a little bravery and lots of planning. But local and federal agencies are creating the space and resources to launch innovations that will, in the future, become standard operations. In this guide, we share case studies and best practices regarding some of government’s most pressing issues — workforce, customer experience and data use, to name a few — and we hear from government experts who know a thing or two about helping innovative initiatives succeed.

Analytics Innovations Draw a Complete Data Picture

“Spreadsheets are structured things: They have clearly defined lines, cleanly labelled columns, and rules that govern what goes where. Government analytic programs have become skilled at working within those parameters, even if it means spending hours manually manipulating data to fit. Spreadsheets are 30-year-old desktop technology. But other data exists, doesn’t it? The world is full of PDF documents, audio and video files, social media posts and other ‘messy’ data sources — the unstructured data that most agencies overlook. And most agency analytics programs are fragmented and overly manual. Recent innovations seek to change this.”

Read more insights from Alteryx’s Solutions Marketing Director for the Public Sector, Andy MacIsaac.

Driving Innovation to the Edge

“Across government, innovation is happening at the edge. By leveraging cloud, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and related technologies, agencies can deliver services more quickly and effectively at the far reaches of operations, whether that’s in the battlefield or on the International Space Station (ISS). At the Red Hat Government Symposium held in late 2022, government and industry leaders discussed how agencies were leveraging these technologies to accelerate mission delivery. Their discussions and examples help illuminate how agencies are adapting to make the most of modern technological opportunities.”

Read more insights from Red Hat’s Government Symposium.

Build an Innovative Ecosystem Through Cloud Architecture

“In data transformation and innovation, it helps to view things through a different lens. Within the data ecosystem are three core pillars for transformation: people, processes and technology. Simple, singular data platforms should work with an architecture that breaks down information silos rather than creates them. That facility comes through in qualities such as data mesh or a decentralized data architecture that’s organized by business domain and operates through self-service. The architectural design also must help strengthen system security. That’s enormously important for federal data.”

Read more insights from Snowflake’s Chief Technology Officer for the Global Public Sector, Winston Chang.

Overcoming Challenges With Observability

“As agencies take steps to innovate — such as expanding reliance on the cloud and adding new apps, integrations, and automations — their IT ecosystems become more complex. There are more places where things can go wrong and more pressure to fix them quickly. The task of monitoring these complex systems gets more complicated, too. ‘The question is, how do I know there’s an issue?’ said Brian Mikkelsen of Datadog. ‘Is it when the tickets start flowing, when complaints increase, when your leadership team asks why something isn’t working?’ None of those options are ideal. Datadog’s application performance management platform provides a real-time window into the digital environment, identifying performance and security issues quickly. Its ‘full stack’ 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.”

Read more insights from Datadog’s Vice President and General Manager, Brian Mikkelsen.

Download the full GovLoop Guide for more insights from these digital transformation leaders and additional government interviews, historical perspectives and industry research.

Building a DevSecOps Culture

Posted on by Rich Savage

As software becomes more sophisticated, it plays an increasingly important role in all aspects of government operations. However, given the complexity and intertwined nature of modern software, any vulnerability could have wide-ranging consequences, which makes security of vital importance. The federal government has taken notice. A number of recent policy directives address issues related to the software supply chain, and key agencies are leading a governmentwide effort to promote secure software development, including the Executive Order on Transforming Federal Customer Experience and Service Delivery to Rebuild Trust and the Executive Order on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity. Learn how you can implement DevSecOps to support your journey to secure, innovative software in Carahsoft’s Innovation in Government® report.

The Mindset Shift that Enables DevSecOps

“In an ideal world, technology and processes support team members’ ability to deliver on their particular talents. Before agencies implement DevSecOps methodologies, they should identify where their processes are getting bottlenecked and forcing people to either work around them or fundamentally change their behavior. Instead, we want to make it easy for employees to do the right thing. The goal is to enable people to focus on what they do best — regardless of where they operate in the stack or the tools they are using — so that agencies can build and deploy secure, modern apps.”

Read more insights from Alex Barbato, Public Sector Solutions Engineer at VMware.

How Generative AI Improves Software Security

“Generative AI tools are becoming increasingly prevalent, providing interactive experiences that captivate the public’s imagination. These tools are accessible to anyone, offering a unique opportunity to engage and explore the creative possibilities enabled by AI technology. The technology doesn’t just train a model to recognize patterns. It can create things that are easy to understand: images, text, even videos. Sometimes the results are hilariously wrong, but other times the results are quite impressive, such as clear, concise answers to complex questions. Generative pre-trained transformer (GPT) technology, such as ChatGPT, has opened the doors for everyone to be an evaluator because the output is accessible and easy to critique.”

Read more insights from Robert Larkin, Senior Solutions Architect at Veracode.

Open Source is at the Heart of Software Innovation

“Embedding security into applications from the start is essential for streamlining and strengthening the entire development life cycle. Securing the software supply chain is a related effort that is of vast importance to government operations. Beyond securing individual applications, the ultimate goal is to build security into the pipeline itself. At each step and every handoff, we must be able to verify who has touched the software and who did what to ensure that the end result is what we intended to build and that nothing malicious has been injected along the way.”

Read more insights from Chris Mays, Staff Specialist Solutions Architect at Red Hat.

DevSecOps Needs Tool Diversity and Collaboration

“As DevSecOps methodologies and software factories grow in prevalence, agencies are recognizing that software development is a team sport — inside the agency, across departments and with external stakeholders. It touches many different teams, but getting everyone on the same page with tooling can be difficult. Different teams prefer different tools, and that makes collaboration hard. Modern software development brings security practices forward in the timeline while reducing duplication of efforts and improving real-time accountability. Success hinges on removing blockers, creating visibility and making sure collaboration is happening at every stage. In addition, encouraging input from different areas of the organization from the beginning and throughout development is vital for innovation.”

Read more insights from Ben Straub, Head of Public Sector at Atlassian.

Observability Speeds Zero Trust and Application Security

“In response to increasing cyberthreats, the government is speeding up the move to zero trust. This security model assumes that every user, request, application and non-human entity is not to be trusted until its identity can be verified. Zero trust principles require a layered defense that is more effective when rooted in observability. To develop an architecture that validates and revalidates every entity on the network, it is necessary to know what those entities are, how they’re communicating and how they typically behave so we can recognize deviations. Zero trust and observability technologies work together to create a more secure and resilient network environment by assuming that all requests for access are untrusted and continuously monitoring the network to detect and respond to potential threats.”

Read more insights from Willie Hicks, Public Sector Chief Technologist at Dynatrace.

The Role of a Service Mesh in Zero Trust Success

“For large companies and government agencies, it’s safe to assume that a committed attacker is already inside their networks. Executive Order 14028 mandates that every federal agency develop a Zero Trust architecture because it is the most effective approach to mitigating what attackers can do once they’ve made their way inside. What does Zero Trust look like at runtime? One of the key considerations is identity-based segmentation, which involves conducting five policy checks for every request in the system: encrypted connection between service endpoints, service authentication, service-to-service authorization, end user authentication, and end user-to-resource authorization.”

Read more insights from Zack Butcher, Founding Engineer at Tetrate and co-author of the NIST SP 800-200 series and SP 800-207A.

AI and the Journey to Secure Software Development

“By automating and optimizing DevSecOps workflows, we can still shift security left while relieving developers from the burden of some complex remediation. It begins with a workflow that leverages fully automated security scanning to rapidly identify vulnerabilities as well as providing suggested remediation for vulnerabilities and on-demand remediation training to educate developers on what they are getting into. The rapid evolution of artificial intelligence is making new advances possible. The opportunities go well beyond AI-assisted code creation. AI features are being expanded across the entire software development life cycle. When it comes to security, having AI assist by making code functionality clear or explaining a vulnerability in detail reduces the time required to remediate risk.”

Read more insights from Joel Krooswyk, Federal CTO at GitLab.

Scaling App Development While Meeting Security Standards

“The dream for any software development team is constant, stable releases. The faster teams get the work they’ve created into production, the faster the agency can derive value from that work. When app development is stymied by cumbersome security reviews and stability testing and by the need to wait for a deployment window, innovation is stifled and the return on investment is delayed. If agencies want to have efficient, value-driving software development teams, those teams must be able to move with agility. A trustworthy, scalable DevOps pipeline that brings together testing and security in a seamless way allows teams to push out new apps and improvements quickly so government employees and citizens can have a seamless digital experience and the most up-to-date tools and information.”

Read more insights from Kyle Tobener, Head of Security and IT at Copado.

Join us in-person for our must-attend DevSecOps Conference—an exciting day of exhibits, speaking sessions, and networking events. We look forward to showcasing new DevSecOps updates from our supporting panels featuring government, systems integrators, and industry thought leaders.

Download the full Innovation in Government® report for more insights from DevSecOps thought leaders and additional industry research from FCW.

Partnerships for Public Sector Solutions

Posted on by Mike McCalip

Systems integrators have evolved to simplify and streamline the process of deploying complex solutions to complex agency challenges. SIs have years of experience working with agencies on the kinds of systems that have many moving parts. Therefore, they have a clear understanding of agency missions and know how to navigate the government’s procurement process. However, SIs don’t work alone. They thrive by partnering with companies that have transformative new approaches for addressing the government’s needs, such as providing innovative digital services, supporting a hybrid workforce and protecting government networks from cyberthreats. In a recent report, research firm Quadintel states that the global systems integration market was valued at $327 billion in 2021 “and is anticipated to grow with a healthy growth rate of more than 13% over the forecast period 2022-2028.” SIs are well-suited to helping agencies make that shift in thinking. Learn how Sis can help your agency thrive by partnering with innovative companies in Carahsoft’s Innovation in Government® report.

The Power of Embracing a Partner Mindset

“Success for integrators and their partners is delivering secure solutions that provide meaningful and impactful mission outcomes. Leidos invests heavily in testing and building relevant solutions for public-sector customers to ensure that innovative technologies are cost-effective, resilient, compliant with government requirements and best positioned to solve mission problems. Investing in a continuous innovation cycle is critical. Leidos and Red Hat recognize that we are in the business of continuous modernization. When Red Hat and other key partners offer innovative new solutions, our partnerships enable us to move fast in testing and proving that the technology works and can scale to meet the government’s needs. Leidos leverages innovative technology to drive great mission outcomes in our Aviation Security Product business unit (Security Enterprise Solutions). By using cloud-native AI/ML modeling solutions, Leidos had been able to achieve significant performance gains in our process for developing algorithms for security detection products, ultimately improving travelers’ experiences at airports.”

Read more insights from Peter O’Donoghue, CTO of the Civil Group at Leidos, and Adam Clater, chief architect of the North America Public Sector at Red Hat.

A Collaboration That Far Exceeds the Sum of its Parts

“In 2020 KMPG and ServiceNow recognized that a large and newly formed Defense Department agency was facing a number of challenges in its efforts to transform its business, consolidate systems and processes, and modernize its technology. We began having conversations with the executive leadership and department heads across different lines of business to gain a clear understanding of their mission, current challenges and desired outcomes. As the ServiceNow program was being established at the agency, the customer required a robust governance and platform team to ensure utilization of development best practices and policy generation, platform management activities (e.g., upgrades) and a secure, scalable, federated development model. This technical rigor and governance structure supported the creation of a stable environment in which application development teams could configure and deploy new, unique applications rapidly.”

Read more insights from Kyle McKendrick, senior enterprise account executive at ServiceNow, and Daniel Gruber specialist managing director at KPMG.

Driving Modernization with Deep Strategic Partnerships

“In response to the challenges agencies face, Leidos has been focused on building deep strategic partnerships that help us create at-scale solutions for our government customers. These partnerships are characterized by a commitment to open lines of communication and transparency in terms of strategy and investments. We also operate in what we describe as a badgeless environment in which experts from different companies work side-by-side to engineer new capabilities and solutions.”

Read more insights from Derrick Pledger, senior vice president and CIO at Leidos.

Why Success in Zero Trust Requires a Team Effort

“Zero trust focuses on the connection between users and the data, applications, networks and systems they want to access. In zero trust architectures, new administrative tools continually evaluate whether allowing an individual user to have a certain level of access privileges is the right thing to do. The approach gives agencies much more flexibility as they modernize because they can make decisions at a granular level that enable them to secure data and entire IT ecosystems.”

Read more insights from Meghan Good, vice president and director of the Cyber Accelerator at Leidos.

How Multi-Domain Operations Accelerate Modernization

“By design, multi-domain operations must involve a broad range of partners to achieve the desired mission outcomes, particularly as threats continue to rapidly evolve. Making such a shift allows military and civilian agencies to far more rapidly add new capabilities to individual systems. The approach also enhances agencies’ ability to partner with industry to harness the power of cross-domain, cross-agency and even cross-company digital synergies.”

Read more insights from Chad Haferbier, vice president of multi-domain operations solutions at Leidos.

Balancing Speed and Security with SecDevOps

“As one of the largest systems integrators, Leidos understands the government’s mission domain and individual agencies’ unique challenges. We also know where they are in their evolution. Some are still easing toward agile and SecDevOps, whereas others have fully embraced those approaches. Our partners in the commercial world are some of the fastest, most forward-leaning technologists.”

Read more insights from Paul Burnette, vice president and director of the Software Accelerator at Leidos.

Download the full Innovation in Government® report for more insights from SI cloud thought leaders and additional industry research from FCW.

Higher Education All-In on Cloud-First

Posted on by Tim Boltz

Is digital transformation in higher education possible without the cloud? Not likely. When that transformation is viewed as a journey, not a destination, the essential role of cloud-based resources as enabling and empowering infrastructure comes sharply into focus. Institutional performance, operational efficiencies, student success — the primary goals of digital transformation in higher education today — are only possible with the agility and scalability of cloud-based computing and resources.

Without a clear strategy in place, digital transformation and cloud migration can start to look like a game of whack-a-mole. As teams weigh where cloud solutions will take them next, understanding and articulating the need to include data-intensive computing, security, reporting, and analysis is imperative. That’s all the more true as students increasingly demand a level of personalization and engagement that can only be delivered through a robust analytics and data infrastructure. Download the guide to learn how to grow beyond today’s analytics programs and to mature them for endemic management and strategy.

Cloud Budgets Keep Growing

“‘As higher education institutions continue to pivot toward continuous modernization practices, the SaaS segment of the cloud is likely to see the most investment,’ noted Damien Eversmann, Chief Architect for Education at Red Hat. ‘Cloud resources provide the agility and flexibility needed to support the culture of change that continuous modernization demands. As long as security practices are properly maintained, cloud adoption is one of the best tools for academic institutions to stay ahead of the curve.’ All cloud categories are expected to see growth in 2023, according to Gartner, with the most significant anticipated growth in Cloud Management and Security Services and Cloud Application Infrastructure Services (PaaS).”

Read more insights from Damien Eversmann, Chief Architect for Education at Red Hat.

Accelerate Agility and Integrate Data

“Today, higher education IT professionals refer to “the new normal” when discussing the many modes of learning, research, and other day-to-day hybrid work now possible thanks to cloud computing. The monumental movement and general acceptance of the cloud within higher education happened nearly overnight, after years of hesitance and reluctance on the part of higher ed leaders who sought greater on-site control over data and operations. That reluctance transformed to trust as cloud-based operations proved their mettle, and institutions by and large today embrace a new way of working through the ongoing and continuous change of digital transformation. “That’s probably the biggest change — that change is the constant,” said Bill Greeves, an industry advisor for SAP who supports the organization’s education customers. As a former CIO and deputy county manager for Wake County, N.C., Greeves saw firsthand the overnight transformation to cloud-based workloads to keep government and citizen services up and running at the onset and throughout the pandemic.”

Read more insights from Bill Greeves, Industry Advisor for SAP.

Essentials for Navigating Cloud Implementations

“While the mission of higher education has never changed, the means of fulfilling that mission continue to swiftly evolve, particularly as a result of cloud computing technology and the migration of workloads, applications, storage — pretty much everything — to the cloud. Higher education research, in particular, enjoys many benefits from the cloud, including rapid provisioning of data and applications, or abstraction, which ensures non-technical users can readily deploy cloud resources and quickly get back to the real task at hand: research. Cloud is at the heart of institutions’ ongoing march to digital transformation, but that’s not all: Prompted by the pandemic, many colleges and universities have also embraced the rapid adoption of cloud capabilities in support of remote work and collaboration.”

Read more insights from Hunter Ely, Security Strategist at Palo Alto Networks, and Mathew Lamb, Manager, Pre-Sales Cloud Native Solutions at Palo Alto Networks.

Download the full report for more insights from these from these higher ed Cloud leaders as well as additional perspectives and industry research.

Unpacking Digital Transformation

Posted on by Bethany Blackwell

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—and deliver on them.

Supercharge Your Agency Service Management

“Using 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 — whether through guided prompts, artificial intelligence or other methods — 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.”

Read more insights from Adaptavist’s Phill Fox, Principal Customer Success Advocate, and Atlassian’s Sandra Trumbull, Enterprise Solutions Advocate.

How Agencies Are Driving Innovation to the Edge

“Not 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. ‘We’re 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,’ 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 — and those might not have all the infrastructure of a traditional base. ‘Edge technologies enable you to deploy to that location that you need to accomplish that mission without a huge footprint,’ Beauchamp said.”

Read more insights from Red Hat’s Government Symposium.

Data, Data Everywhere, but Not a Byte to Eat

“The 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’s condition is. ‘We often find, especially in the government, in excess of 50% of the data hasn’t been touched for as much as five years,’ he explained. ‘And we also find that about 20% of the data, you couldn’t talk to if you had to.’ Commvault calls that “orphan data,” and it’s 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 ‘pennies to the dollar vs. thousands of dollars in storage costs,’ he said.”

Read more insights from Commvault’s Richard Breakiron, Senior Director for Strategic Initiatives for the Federal Sector.

Build a Functional Ecosystem Through Cloud Architecture

“While technology is at the core of a total agency transformation, Chang advised against having it ‘dragging process and then dragging people along.’ The process and the people need to move along with the technology instead of clinging to its shirttails. ‘One thing I would offer as a piece of advice, having done multiple transformations in the Federal Government, is invest in upskilling your people,’ said Chang. ‘If your people can’t use the technology — no matter how great the technology is — the organization as a whole does not move forward.’ For federal environments, he urged technology upskilling to improve employees’ data literacy, analytics awareness and coding abilities — or at least to provide a basic familiarity with those activities.”

Read more insights from Snowflake’s Winston Chang, Chief Technology Officer for the Global Public Sector.

How Open Source Database Technology Can Support Transformation

“Modernizing your applications and services without modernizing the underlying database is like buying a new car but installing your old engine. You’re just holding yourself back. That’s 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.”

Read more insights from EDB’s Jeremy Wilson, CTO of North America Public Sector.

Transforming With Visibility and Agility

“Staff working their way through a digital transformation, such as a cloud migration, will need new skillsets. They’re going to use new services and capabilities — and none of them will be the same, Shopp said. SolarWinds helps users build knowledge, intelligence, configuration smarts and cloud awareness, he explained. ‘Intelligence in a box,’ as Shopp called it, is codified into SolarWinds products and helps agency employees monitor workloads. ‘When it comes to understanding your infrastructure and your workloads, no matter where they reside — on premises, the cloud or hybrid — we’ve got you covered,’ Shopp said.”

Read more insights from SolarWinds’ Brandon Shopp, Group Vice President of Product.

Observability Made Simple

“The task of monitoring these complex systems gets more complicated, too. ‘The question is, how do I know there’s an issue?’ said Brian Mikkelsen of Datadog. ‘Is it when the tickets start flowing, when complaints increase, when your leadership team asks why something isn’t working?’ None of those options is ideal. Datadog’s application performance management platform provides a real-time window into the digital environment, identifying performance and security issues — quickly. Its ‘full stack’ 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.”

Read more insights from DataDog’s 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.

Making the Most of MultiCloud

Posted on by Will Jones

Experts make a clear distinction between hybrid and multicloud environments. The General Services Administration’s MultiCloud and Hybrid Cloud Guide notes that a multicloud architecture reflects the deliberate integration of services from multiple cloud service providers. By contrast, a hybrid architecture integrates public cloud, private cloud and on-premises infrastructure.

In a recent pulse survey of FCW readers, 49% of respondents said their agencies rely on hybrid cloud environments that combine public and private clouds with on-premises systems, and 39% said their cloud environments were based on private clouds. Only 8% identified themselves as multicloud. Multicloud environments are the natural evolution of the government’s move to the cloud. As technologies become more targeted and sophisticated, it is clear that a single product cannot meet all agency needs. Multicloud represents a highly individualized, fluid approach to capitalizing on everything cloud has to offer. Regardless of where they are on their journeys, agencies continue to benefit from advances in cloud technology. That’s because the same spirit of innovation that gave rise to the cloud is giving rise to new solutions for securing and managing cloud environments. Learn how your agency can determine an optimal cloud strategy in Carahsoft’s Innovation in Government® report.

How the Mission Drives MultiCloud Success

“For government agencies, security is a key consideration when adopting cloud technologies. The latest solutions can actually help agencies improve their security posture because of the specialized and deep focus that cloud providers bring to their mission of providing scalable and secure compute, network and storage infrastructure. At Google, we take a defense-in-depth approach to security and have over 1,000 professionals whose sole job is to ensure the security of our customers’ data and systems. They have made it their mission to prevent bad actors — whether people, companies or nation-states — from accessing customers’ data.”

Read more insights from Scott Frohman, Head of Defense Programs at Google Cloud.

Choosing the Right Cloud Tool for the Job

“Adding multicloud environments into an agency’s IT portfolio does come with challenges. In particular, it can create complexity for security teams that must protect the agency’s identities, devices, data, applications and infrastructure. Traditional cybersecurity tools weren’t designed for multicloud environments, and it can be difficult to transition from existing tools to platform-specific and cloud-native ones, but doing so is essential for taking full advantage of cloud’s market-leading security capabilities.”

Read more insights from Jason Payne, CTO at Microsoft Federal.

Seamlessly Embracing a MultiCloud Environment

“Choosing the right cloud solutions can be a daunting task, but knowing what steps to take can significantly streamline the process. Agencies should begin by clearly identifying their business and functional requirements and considering their security needs. Doing so will make it possible to evaluate which cloud service provider (CSP) is positioned to offer the best capabilities for the best cost. Throughout the process, agencies should keep in mind that enterprise data is their single most important asset.”

Read more insights from James Donlon, Director of Solution Engineering for Government and Education at Oracle.

The Move to MultiCloud by Default

“Automation is essential for multicloud management. Agencies can begin by automating activities and sharpening their skills in their own data centers. Once government IT professionals work with a platform to automate activities in the data center, they can then automate deployments to various clouds and make the process as efficient as possible. When automation is done correctly, agencies also give themselves the ability to move workloads smoothly between environments, whether they want to bring a workload back into the data center or move it to another cloud. The fact that the workload was built on an automation platform means agencies are already a step ahead when it comes to getting that deployment done and reaping the benefits of a multicloud environment.”

Read more insights from Adam Clater, Chief Architect of the North America Public Sector at Red Hat.

A Smarter Approach to Cloud Adoption

“The cloud-smart strategy is to migrate then modernize most workloads because the speed of cloud adoption and the consolidation of operating constructs is crucial. Such an approach also reduces costs, migration manpower and training burdens. In fact, most workloads can move to the optimized cloud of choice as-is if the right abstraction and workload management capabilities are employed. Once applications are in the cloud, they are easier to modernize.”

Read more insights from Jeremiah Sanders, Senior Transformation Strategist at VMware.

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

The Open Source Revolution in Government

Posted on by Natalie Gregory

Open source technology accounts for a significant portion of most modern applications, with some estimates going as high as 90%, and it is the foundation of many mainstream technologies. Its strength lies in the fact that a vibrant ecosystem of developers contribute to and continually improve the underlying code, which keeps the software dynamic and responsive to changing needs. Enterprise open source software further augments these community-driven projects by providing enterprise-grade support and scalability, while retaining the innovation and flexibility driven by the open source development model. By providing the best of both worlds, such solutions represent a powerful arsenal of tools for addressing government’s most pressing challenges. In a recent pulse survey of FCW readers, 93% of respondents said they were using open source technology. And more than half of respondents to FCW’s survey see open source as an integral resource for strengthening cybersecurity. That number reflects a positive trend toward a better understanding of open source software’s intrinsic approach to security. The power of enterprise open source technologies lies in a combination of collaboration, transparency and industry expertise. As agencies expand their use of such technologies, they maximize their ability to achieve mission success in the most secure, agile and innovative way possible. Learn how the combined power of community-driven innovation and industry-leading technical support is expanding the government’s capacity for transformation in Carahsoft’s Innovation in Government® report.

Why Open Source is a Mission-Critical Foundation

“Open source transforms the way agencies manage hybrid and multi-cloud environments. The most critical technology in the cloud, across all providers, is Linux. Everything is built on top of that foundation — both the infrastructure of the cloud and cloud offerings. Given the right partner, the promise of Linux is that it provides a consistent technology layer for agencies across all footprints, including multiple cloud providers, on-premises data centers and edge environments. From that foundation, agencies and their partners can build portable architectures that leverage other open source technologies. Portability gives organizations the ability to use the same architectures, underlying technologies, monitoring and security solutions, and human skills to manage mission-critical capabilities across all footprints.”

Read more insights from Christopher Smith, Vice President and General Manager of the North America Public Sector at Red Hat.

How Open Source is Expanding its Mission Reach

“The real power of open source technologies was revealed when they cracked the code on being highly powered, mission-specific, distributed systems. That’s how we are able to get insights out of data by being able to hold it and query it. Today, open source innovation is being accelerated by the cloud, and the conversation is still changing, with people now demanding that their open source companies be cloud-first platforms. Along the way, the open source technologies that start in the community and then receive a boost of commercial innovation have matured. The most powerful ones are expanding their ability to address more of the government’s mission needs. They are staying interoperable and keeping the data interchange non-proprietary, which is important for government agencies.”

Read more insights from David Erickson, Senior Director of Solutions Architecture at Elastic.

The Open Source Community’s Commitment to Security

“A central tenet of software development is visibility and traceability from start to finish so that a developer can follow the code through development, testing, building and security compliance, and then into the final production environment. Along the way, there are some key activities that boost collaboration and positive outcomes, starting with early code previews, where developers can spin up an application for stakeholders to review. Other activities include documented code reviews by peers to ensure the code is well written and efficient. In addition, DevOps components such as open source, infrastructure as code, Kubernetes as a deployment mechanism, automated testing, and better platforms and capabilities have helped developers move away from building ecosystems and instead focus on innovation.”

Read more insights from Joel Krooswyk, Federal CTO at GitLab.

The Limitless Potential of an Open Source Database

“One of the most important elements of any database migration is ensuring that proper planning and due diligence have been performed to ensure a smooth and successful deployment. In addition, there are some key considerations agencies should keep in mind when moving to open source databases. It is essential to start with a clear understanding of the business case and objectives for adopting an open source approach. Agencies also need to decide how the database should function and what it should do to support their digital transformation. Then they must choose the optimal method to deploy the database.”

Read more insights from Jeremy A. Wilson, CTO of the North America Public Sector at EDB.

Modernizing Digital Services with Open Source

“A composable, open source digital experience platform (DXP) enables agencies to overcome those challenges. Open source technology is continuously contributed to by a community of developers to reflect a wide array of needs across organizations in varying industries and of varying sizes. A composable approach allows agencies to assemble a number of solutions for a fast, efficient system that is tailored to their needs. When agencies combine a composable DXP with open source technology, they have access to best-of-breed software and the ability to customize the assembly to suit their requirements. An enterprise DXP will enable agencies to achieve a 360-degree view of how constituents are engaging with their digital services and gain valuable data to understand how to enhance their experience. Finally, a composable, open source DXP provides a proactive approach to protecting against security and compliance vulnerabilities.”

Read more insights from Tami Pearlstein, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Acquia.

Creating Secure Open Source Repositories

“Protecting the software supply chain requires looking at every single thing that might come into an agency’s environment. To understand that level of visibility, I like to use the analogy of a refrigerator. All the ingredients necessary to make a cake or pie are in the refrigerator. We know they are of good quality, and other teams can use them instead of having to find their own. At Sonatype, our software equivalent of a refrigerator is the Nexus Repository Manager. A second aspect of our offering, called Lifecycle, allows us to evaluate the open source components in repositories at every stage of the software development life cycle. One piece of software can download a thousand other components. How do we know if one of those components is malicious?”

Read more insights from Maury Cupitt, Regional Vice President of Sales Engineering at Sonatype.

Better Data Flows for a Better Customer Experience

“A more responsive and personalized customer experience isn’t much different from the initial problem set that gave birth to Apache Kafka. When people interact with agencies, they want those agencies to know who they are and how they’ve interacted in the past. They don’t want to be asked for their Social Security number three times on the same phone call. They also expect that the information or service they receive will be the same whether they are accessing it over the phone, via a mobile app and on a website. To elevate the quality of their service, agencies must be able to stream information in a low-friction way so different systems are consistent with one another and up-to-date at all times, regardless of the communication channel an individual uses. President Joe Biden’s executive order about transforming the federal customer experience is based on this capability. The most successful companies across industries have figured out how to do it, and for the most part, they’ve done it with open source software.”

Read more insights from Jason Schick, General Manager of Confluent US Public Sector.

An Open Source Approach to Data Analytics

“For the past 40 years, agencies have used data warehouses to collect and analyze their data. Although those warehouses worked well, they were limited in what they could do. For instance, they could only handle structured data, but by some estimates, 90% of agencies’ data is unstructured and in the form of text, images, audio, video and the like. Furthermore, proprietary data warehouses can show agencies what has happened in the past but can’t predict what might happen in the future. To achieve the government’s goal of evidence-based decision-making, agencies need to be able to tap into all their data and predict what might come next.”

Read more insights from Howard Levenson, Regional Vice President at Databricks.

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

A Guide to Building Constituent Engagement

Posted on by Tiffany Goddard

In the past two years it seems like every function that could be done remotely was, and state and local agencies scrambled to ramp up digital services. Although organizations stepped up to the challenge in impressive ways, the situation was chaotic. Two of the experts we interviewed for this guide described elements of digital outreach as “the Wild West.” But now that the initial rush has passed, it’s time to look at how those community engagement initiatives contribute to the larger project of connecting — and building trust — with constituents. Although governments offer more ways than ever for constituents to engage, there’s still work to do. In this guide, leaders from state and local agencies share their challenges, solutions and recommendations for reaching residents in a digital and hybrid world, and industry experts offer their thoughts on the current landscape. Download the guide to learn how to improve accessibility, reach constituents and address various digital divides.

In San Francisco, Accessibility Means Better Engagement for Everyone

“Understand that accessibility helps everyone. Don’t assume you know who’s disabled, or what accessibility resources they’re using. Recognize that there are people whose impairment may be less apparent but who still benefit from accessibility measures. ‘It’s not a separate thing for a separate group of people,’ Kaplan said. Build accessibility into the whole organization. Don’t confine the work of accessibility to an office like MOD. Agencies need to develop their own internal expertise to deal with the more predictable accessibility issues in their work. Save the experts for when something complex comes along.”

Read more insights from Deborah Kaplan, Deputy Director of Programmatic Access in the San Francisco Mayor’s Office on Disability.

How Automation Supports Better Community Engagement

“It might seem obvious, but the goal of constituent engagement is to get services to the people who need them and to include resident voices on policies that affect them. But often state and local government workers spend too much of their time wrangling incompatible systems, struggling to get data, and meeting reporting requirements. And while they’re doing that, they’re not serving the community. One way to lighten the burden is to automate time-consuming, repetitive processes. Another strategy is to provide platforms where people and processes can work together seamlessly.”

Read more insights from Craeg Strong, Chief Technology Officer at Ariel Partners.

Social Media Gives an Oklahoma Agency Its Voice

“In 2020, the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation adopted a unique—and often delightfully irreverent—approach to its use of social media. In lieu of the dry language so typical of government communications, the agency uses Twitter, Facebook, TikTok and Instagram to reach constituents through a mix of quirky humor, fun facts, and attractive photos and videos. The digital outreach works, and it’s a model for other agencies. The agency depends on communicating with and growing its target audience because it receives no state tax appropriations and is funded entirely by hunting and fishing licenses.”

Read more insights from the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation’s Communication and Education Supervisor, Kelly Adams, and Communication and Education Specialist, Smokey Solis.

A Trust-Engagement Model: Intuitive, Sequenced and Service-oriented

“Democratized analytics is the technological capability that enables data workers of various technical skill levels to leverage data and share its insights with other employees of various skill levels. Put simply, it’s analytics accessible for and inclusive to all. Unified analytics is technology that allows data workers to perform the entire analytic life cycle in one place. From data prep and blend, which identifies and combines data for descriptive, predictive and prescriptive analytics, to machine learning, an advanced form of AI that gets smarter over time — unified analytics allows a range of data transformation processes to be done in a single location, no matter the data source or type. No-code/low-code analytics is analytics that does not require coding skills to prep, clean, analyze and share data. And we’re not talking spreadsheets here.”

Read more insights from Alteryx’s Director of Solutions Marketing for the Public Sector, Andy MacIsaac.

Let’s Get Back to Basics for Collaboration

“Leveraging data can lead to more sequenced services, more graceful engagement, and the best outcomes for constituents. An optimal sequence, with natural steps between services, is cost-effective for both the user and agencies. That’s Red Hat’s focus as it works with agencies to implement open hybrid cloud approaches that integrate data, modernize system components and transform legacy systems. Cloud-based datasets that are accessible to agency personnel can help significantly. In recent years, Red Hat assisted the Tennessee Department of Human Services modernize to deliver better constituent experiences. The department wanted to improve the continuity of platforms, set open standards, and use adaptive, flexible, and broadly accessible technologies.”

Read more insights from Kevin Tunks of Red Hat.

(Contact-Free) Human Touch Helps Transform a Riverscape

“The city of Middletown, Connecticut, is focused on a decades-old goal: to revitalize and redevelop the riverfront. The underused Harbor Park area along the Connecticut River has great potential for residential, commercial and recreational use. But in the past, the city struggled to get feedback about the project from many stakeholders and constituents. That created a problem: How could the city design a community space without the input of the community? The Return to the Riverbend campaign, launched in fall 2021, yielded community input that the city used to create a master plan, released the following summer, for a new riverfront area.”

Read more insights from Brianna Skowera, Director of Information Systems for Middletown, Connecticut.

The Link Between Experience and Trust

“Think about a recent online interaction. Maybe you were buying something or applying for something. How did the experience make you feel? A great online experience is simple, fast and reliable. And when that great experience is consistent, it builds trust. That’s why it’s crucial to understand the link between government service and trust, said Dean Scontras, Vice President of State, Local and Education at Okta. ‘State and local agencies are modernizing their technology and transforming the way they serve their residents,’ Scontras said. Identity and access management (IAM) are critical infrastructure for digital services.”

Read more insights from Dean Scontras, Vice President for State, Local and Education at Okta.

North Carolina Breaks Down the Digital Divide

“Think of ‘digital divide,’ and it’s likely that a lack of access to internet connectivity and/or devices comes to mind. That’s certainly part of it. But the North Carolina Division of Broadband and Digital Equity adds another aspect: digital literacy. What good is a connected smartphone if you don’t know how to use it? Annette Taylor, Director of the division’s Office of Digital Equity and Literacy, understands. Her 72-year-old mother has a computer but is reluctant to use the internet. That became problematic during the pandemic when a digital pay stub was the only way she could see how much ‘COVID pay’ she was earning from her temporarily shuttered employer.”

Read more insights from Annette Taylor, Director, Office of Digital Equity and Literacy at the North Carolina Division of Broadband and Digital Equity.

How Voice Recognition Can Improve Constituent Satisfaction

“Today, every government organization needs to be where the public is — and that means being everywhere. Meeting customers on voice, digital, and messaging channels, and providing a consistent, contextual, convenient experience across every one. In one case, Nuance worked with a government agency that was struggling to handle incoming calls. They answered less than half, with the others getting a busy signal or a message asking them to call back later. Using Nuance’s solutions, they’re now able to answer all their incoming calls, and nearly half are handled within the interactive voice response (IVR) system. ‘Citizens are calling in, getting the information they need, and never talking with a customer service rep,’ Brodsky said.”

Read more insights from Nuance Communications’ Regional Vice President, Government Sales, Russell Brodsky; Senior Principal, Industry Solutions Marketing and Strategy, Vance Clipson; and Director of Professional Services, Joseph Solt.

San Antonio Deepens Trust With Constituents

“Let’s say you launch a constituent engagement initiative and within one year you see a significant rise across various metrics: website hits, comments received and event registrations. Do you call it a success? For Alanna Reed, San Antonio’s Director of Communications and Engagement, numbers tell only part of the story. San Antonio launched an initiative called SASpeakUp in 2015 to gather better input on the city’s budget and its services. Although the city held public meetings for that purpose, city officials noticed that the same people were attending all of them. Through SASpeakUp, they provided numerous channels for input, including a website, social media and in-person meetups.”

Read more insights from Dean Scontras, Vice President for State, Local and Education at Okta.

Download the full GovLoop Guide for more insights from these state and local government thought leaders and additional government interviews, historical perspectives and industry research on the future of data.

Best Practices for Implementing DevSecOps

Posted on by The Carahsoft Team

It’s not surprising that the development, security and operations approach to building software is the darling of IT teams across the government. It’s essential given the current mandate that agencies move toward zero trust environments. Having secure software is fundamental, and DevSecOps helps agencies get there and deliver user-tailored applications faster. Less clear is the best path for implementing DevSecOps. That’s in part because the missions and goals of agencies vary. No matter where your agency is on adopting DevSecOps, it’s critical to realize that — like most things IT — moving to a methodology for software that integrates development, security and operations is not just a matter of making the right technology choices. There’s a major people and workflow component that requires people teaming up and collaborating in new ways. Download the guide to learn how the lessons learned by federal agency and industry experts will help you as your agency embraces DevSecOps.

5 Essential Ingredients to Make DevSecOps the Heart of Your Agency’s Digital Transformation

“There’s no denying the value of a development, security, operations approach to creating software and applications. Here’s why: ‘The government is building better quality software. They are getting it deployed faster. Security teams are involved in the beginning, middle and end — every step along the way,’ said Adam Clater. But beyond the blending of an agency’s development, security and operations teams, what are those must-haves to make DevSecOps succeed and drive digital transformation? Clater identified five critical elements necessary to DevSecOps and establishing a continuous integration and continuous deployment pipeline. That CI/CD pipeline serves as the agile workflow conduit for DevSecOps, he said.”

Read more insights from Adam Clater, Chief Architect for North America Public Sector at Red Hat.

How Effective DevSecOps Enables More Secure Software Development

“The legacy model of software development is one of the biggest roadblocks to delivering secure applications at the speed that modern consumers and citizens expect. Taking a manual approach to security after the initial development build can leave teams with a remediation timeline measure in weeks, if not months. That’s why it’s important for federal agencies to adopt a development, security and operations (DevSecOps) approach, which weaves security into every step of software development from design to build and beyond. Unifying development and security processes while also automating scanning throughout the application lifecycle — not just during development — can help agencies deliver more secure software faster and at a lower cost, better positioning themselves to adopt a zero trust architecture.”

Read more insights from Ted Rutsch, Federal Sales Manager at Invicti Security.

Embracing DevSecOps Requires a Mindset Shift and Simple (Not Simplistic) Tools

“DevSecOps — development, security and operations — is the new standard for delivering secure software at the pace that customers and citizens expect from their government today. This is accomplished by integrating security with development and operations teams at the start of the process. But despite its focus on delivering technology-enabled solutions that ensure security is considered from the very beginning rather than an afterthought, what often gets lost in the shuffle is that technology is only one component. DevSecOps requires a mindset shift that revolves around people and processes just as much as technology.”

Read more insights from Joe Bleich, Director of Sales at Datadog.

Lesson Plan for Accelerating Adoption of DevSecOps in Your Agency

“DevSecOps teams have a reputation for being able to ship secure software quickly, and that has a lot to do with software being assembled from open source libraries and not built from scratch. A recent Gartner report shows 70% of software is built using open source packages, and an average of 75% of these packages have vulnerabilities at any point in time. Teams that don’t prioritize continuous visibility on their security posture are at risk. And they could be building on top of vulnerable systems with unresolved day zero vulnerabilities. But it’s possible to mitigate the risk by leaning into continuous transparency throughout the development stack.”

Read more insights from Atlassian’s Senior Designer, Nupur Aggarwal, and Senior Product Manager, Andrew Pankevicius.

How to Structure a Successful Software Factory

“One of the best ways government can begin to facilitate this mindset shift is to cultivate the right leadership. Oti said the first step is to hire leadership based off capabilities rather than career field. It doesn’t matter if a software development team is led by an engineer, data scientist or program manager. What matters is that person has the vision and skill sets to lead a cross-functional team. If delivering high-quality software is the highest priority for a development team, then a proven ability to deliver needs to be the highest priority in choosing its leadership. And because DevSecOps requires the integration of multiple (traditionally stove-piped) job functions, cross-disciplinary empathy and understanding is also an important metric in gauging potential leadership for a development team. Degrees and seniority are irrelevant, Oti said. In the Air Force, successful software development teams are led by officers, enlisted Airmen, civilians and even contractors.”

Read more insights from Enrique Oti, Chief Technology Officer at Second Front Systems.

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

Harnessing the Power of Cloud Technology

Posted on by The Carahsoft Team

During the pandemic, government employees shifted to remote work, and the demand for digital services skyrocketed. To meet those needs, agencies turned to the cloud. The experience gave them a taste of how essential the technology is to modernization efforts. In a recent survey of FCW readers, 87% of respondents agreed with the statement that cloud technology is a foundation for modernization at their agencies. The shift to cloud-based systems often requires a corresponding shift in budgets, employee skill sets and IT management techniques. When asked what steps would enable broader use of cloud technology at their agencies, 79% of FCW respondents said revamping their approach to managing a mix of on-premises and cloud-based systems. One solution is hybrid environments, which blend in-house legacy systems with cloud services, while multi-cloud environments are spread across many cloud platforms and providers. Hybrid environments will likely be the reality for most agencies. In a recent NASCIO survey, 89% of respondents said hybrid cloud was their ideal cloud state. Learn how your agency can determine an optimal cloud strategy in Carahsoft’s Innovation in Government® report.

Cloud’s Unprecedented Capacity for Innovation

“To make data-driven decisions, an agency needs to be able to access its data without concern for capacity constraints based on recent storage and compute contracts. Public cloud services can offer unprecedented scale and speed, and a cloud provider like Google can help government ingest data, and compute as necessary to answer complex analytics questions in real time. Some of our customers have stored tens of petabytes of data in Google Cloud’s serverless, cost-effective multi-cloud data warehouse, BigQuery. Analysts decide what questions they should ask and BigQuery will determine how much computing is necessary to consume it on demand – all without having to manage or configure the underlying infrastructure and services.”

Read more insights from Google’s Head of Customer Engineering for Federal Civilian Agencies, Andy Murphy.

Why Cloud is the Best Path for Modernization

“Accommodating demands to boost engagement while enabling remote collaboration is a complex challenge. At Microsoft, we think about collaboration as an operating model of people, places and processes, and we’re developing capabilities based on the recognition that each dimension has its own nuances, strengths and weaknesses. For example, when cloud technology is combined with the zero trust-based security approach required by the executive order, it facilitates collaboration among government employees by granting access and participation based on identity, physical location and/or the device they’re using.”

Read more insights from Microsoft Federal’s CTO, Jason Payne.

Maximizing Mission Success with the Cloud

“Most agencies operate hybrid environments that combine on-premises systems with cloud platforms and services. However, there are challenges associated with that approach. Hybrid environments require the ability to manage a diverse set of technologies, tools and operating models and to integrate workloads, applications and services across clouds and on-premises systems. A hybrid cloud environment also changes the traditional security boundary and introduces new vulnerabilities related to the nature of off-premises managed services and the unique attributes of cloud, which include ephemeral services and API-driven, software-defined everything. Fortunately, advanced cloud-based cybersecurity solutions are helping agencies move to zero trust architectures by shifting security services from primary data centers to edge locations to enable rapid analysis and a stronger security posture.”

Read more insights from Peraton’s Vice President of Cloud and Application Services, Gary Wang, and Cloud Architect and Expert on Public Cloud Products for the U.S. Public Sector, Bob Ferrari.

How to Build an Open Hybrid Cloud Ecosystem

“When agencies have a strong cloud environment, they can leverage open source solutions to achieve key modernization goals, such as improving digital services and making better use of data. That’s because open source is at the heart of all innovation. For the past 20-plus years, open source has been where leading technologists first experiment with new ideas that often become enterprise products. Companies like Red Hat and cloud providers such as AWS, Microsoft and Google begin new projects by working upstream in the open source community and making broadly shared contributions to the Linux Foundation, the Apache Software Foundation and the Cloud Native Computing Foundation. Red Hat Enterprise Linux, for one, is the world’s leading enterprise Linux platform that is fully built on open source software. The open source community is also contributing to agencies’ ability to comply with the Executive Order on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity and the government’s zero trust security initiatives.”

Read more insights from Red Hat’s North America Cloud GTM Lead, Tres Vance.

Robust Databases for Modern App Development

“Cloud computing has the ability to scale on demand to support modern application development and meet user demands quickly in a secure environment. That’s why we created Atlas for Government, an independent environment of our flagship cloud product MongoDB Atlas. Atlas for Government allows federal, state and local governments to build and iterate faster using a modern database-as-a-service platform. Our innovative approach gives agencies the versatility they need to modernize legacy applications and support the unique requirements and missions of the U.S. government — in a fully managed and secure environment.”

Read more insights from MongoDB’s Sales Director, Jennifer Hayes.

Adopting Zero Trust Data Security in the Cloud

“On the National Association of State CIOs’ 2022 list of its members’ top priorities, cybersecurity is in the first slot, followed by citizen experience. Those two go hand in hand. When a school is hacked and its data stolen, that school will likely be forced to close for days. When a department of corrections is hit with a ransomware attack, it will be in lockdown. And when a public health department’s systems are breached, it will be unable to provide vital services. Those are real-world examples of impacts that are happening across the country, and they illustrate why government agencies can’t wait until tomorrow to address these vulnerabilities. CIOs, chief security officers and IT directors at all levels of government know they need to do something today because they are vulnerable every minute until they do. At Rubrik, we focus on simplifying the protection of data in the cloud while keeping the citizen experience up and running.”

Read more insights from Rubrik’s Vice President and Head of State, Local Government and Education, Jared Vichengrad.

Three Key Goals for Modern IT Environments

“To take full advantage of cloud-based technological advances, agencies must address their legacy IT. In fiscal 2022 to date, the federal government has spent roughly $83 billion on IT, as reported on ITDashboard.gov. A third, or roughly $34 billion, has been spent on the operation and maintenance of legacy IT systems. The rising cost of maintaining legacy IT crowds out investments in newer cloud-based systems that can better serve citizens and federal workers. Mission-critical legacy applications, technologies and services also have many other dependencies that make modernization difficult. Those dependencies exist in the source code and runtime platforms, leveraging specific databases and using data in proprietary formats. Additionally, agencies have unique processes to manage these applications or services and specialized employees. Simply ripping and replacing mission-critical legacy systems is not an option, so successfully modernizing legacy IT requires addressing those issues.”

Read more insights from Micro Focus Government Solution’s Public-Sector CTO, Kevin Hansen.

A Proactive, Automated Approach to Security

“First, cloud dramatically reduces the time it takes to go from the conception of an idea to production. There are no data center build-outs, no equipment purchases, no months-long planning cycles. With cloud, new technologies can be tested almost instantly. Second, cloud providers offer a nearly infinite selection of tools and applications that are readily available on demand. Third, it may not be universally true that cloud costs less, but when it’s managed right, it absolutely should cost less than on-premises systems. Although cloud technology presents agencies with a tremendous opportunity, trying to manage the extended enterprise as it expands into and across the cloud will require a proactive approach to monitoring and security.”

Read more insights from Oracle’s Director of Solution Engineering, James Donlon.

Data Protection in Hybrid Cloud Environments

“Colonial Pipeline’s situation is something of an anomaly because one study showed that 96% of companies with a trusted backup and disaster recovery plan were able to survive ransomware attacks. However, only 31% of organizations test their disaster recovery plans, which is crucial to ensure that agencies understand the steps involved and can respond effectively in a crisis. Therefore, agencies should choose data protection solutions that include the ability to conduct automated disaster recovery rehearsals on a regular basis. The key to any disaster recovery solution is automation. Without automation, a timely wide-scale recovery is not achievable. Agencies should also be aware that many commercial solutions were born in the enterprise data center and run on architectures that do not support autonomous solutions that scale up or down based on the client’s demand.”

Read more insights from Veritas’s Director of Sales Engineering for Public Sector, Mike Malaret.

Providing a True Mac Experience in the Cloud

“People enjoy the Mac experience and are using more and more macOS-based tools, but they often don’t have remote access to Mac hardware for their jobs. As agencies continue to provide support for remote workers, they must consider how to provide access to Macs for the employees who rely on them for development, design or general office use. Some IT teams set up a physical Mac in a data center and create a network to attach to it, but creating remote access to a machine that’s far away makes it hard to fix problems when they arise. Instead, MacStadium has developed purpose-built technologies that create cloud-based Mac desktops. Cloud Access delivers high-performance remote desktop experiences from the MacStadium cloud to any device. And this year, we are adding Orka Workspaces, which enables high-performance desktop access to cloud-hosted macOS resources via a browser from any workstation or device. Those scalable, flexible technologies can be pushed out on demand to achieve a true Mac experience.”

Read more insights from MacStadium’s Senior Vice President and CTO, Chris Chapman.

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