Make Invisible Talent Visible

Posted on by Kelley Steven-Waiss

With strengthening and empowering the Federal workforce as a key tenant of the President’s Management Agenda, the critical need for people with cybersecurity skills and an aging workforce, now is the time for government to re-evaluate how it looks at the skills of employees. Moving to a data-driven talent strategy allows agencies to match the right people to the right work at the right time which also enhances that employee’s experience and engagement with their work.

Progression not Promotion

The first step is realizing that skills are not a title. For too long, career success has meant moving up GS levels or in title. A change in title does not necessarily mean being exposed to new experiences, gaining new skills or even gaining responsibility. The growth that comes with new challenges is what keeps employees fulfilled. That can happen when employees move into positions across an organization. Sideways needs to be the new up – not just for the growth of employees but for the mission achievement of government.

Keep Talent in Government

People enter public service because they have a tie to the mission. They want to work for that organization with a line of sight toward that mission. They do not leave because they stopped believing in the mission, they leave because they have not been given an opportunity to grow and develop. Research shows that one third of millennials and Gen Z workers leave a job because they did not see an opportunity to grow their career.

Talent sharing across agencies is a concept whose time has come. Government employees need to see career path options outside of their current organization. Where can their skills make an impact in another office or agency? Seeing a growth path will keep the talent within the government ecosystem rather than losing them to good commercial companies.

Diversify the Workforce You Already Have

A data-driven approach can go a long way in driving out bias and growing equity. Across government there are many opportunities for people to get involved in steering committees, pop-up projects and short-term initiatives. However, getting involved requires employees to be informed. We assume that people will seek out these opportunities. Employees only network with people they know – this limits what they are exposed to. Employees miss opportunities every day that are tailor made for their skills and career goals.

A data-driven approach automates the ability to engage. Opportunities can be pushed to employees that meet specific skills and capability criteria. Those employees can then engage with the opportunity through a digital workflow allowing them to quickly and easily break into a new network within the organization. No longer are we dependent on who we know. Now technology becomes a proactive, enabling force in finding the best fit based on skills, not position or education.

Personalize the Journey

Studies show that 94% of employees will stay with an organization longer if they feel it is invested in them. Providing a dynamic career path backed by training and mentoring opportunities is a way to demonstrate commitment to an employee.

A one size fits all training program ends up fitting no one. Employees have come to expect a personalized experience from all of the brands they interact with – whether that is music or movie recommendations or reminders to order more toilet paper. Data-driven organizations can offer that same experience by feeding employees programs and trainings that people actually want to participate in and learn from.

For organizations, knowing the growth areas for employees allows for more targeted efforts in offering reskilling and upskilling opportunities to the people who will most quickly benefit from the training.

ServiceNow is proud to support organizations ready to make the leap to a data-driven skills-based model. Our recent webinar showed how to move away from spreadsheets and emails and begin managing skills in an automated way that works for everyone – HR, agency leaders, supervisors and employees. View the full session here to learn how to transform how you hire, reward and grow your team.

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.

Maximizing Service by Engaging Employees as Customers

Posted on by Tiffany Goddard

At the end of 2021, the Executive Order on Transforming Federal Customer Experience and Service Delivery to Rebuild Trust in Government stated, “Our Government must recommit to being ‘of the people, by the people, [and] for the people’ in order to solve the complex 21st century challenges our Nation faces. Government must be held accountable for designing and delivering services with a focus on the actual experience of the people whom it is meant to serve.” Panelists at Carahsoft’s 2023 Government Customer Experience and Engagement Summit agreed that this mission begins with an organization’s employee experience.

A New Approach in Customer Experience Over Time

With the recent introduction of mandates and the new executive order, Government agencies have increased momentum to move customer experience (CX) from being a standalone initiative to weaving it into every facet of daily operations. Jill Leighton, Vice President of Public Sector Strategy and Solutions at Qualtrics, said that today, agencies are not just singularly improving a particular service or touch point. Now, they are taking that insight and implementing it into policymaking, strategic planning, reporting success and designing programs, while also learning where to invest and prioritize.

Untapped Resources

Using the best resources and constantly staying on top of innovation is an undertaking for any agency. Employees can be the most underutilized asset for organizations, so it is important for agencies to understand what employees need for peak performance. An immense amount of change has happened throughout the pandemic in working environments, and organizations need to take full advantage of the newer talent capacity and building opportunities within teams and employee talent pools. Additionally, agencies can unlock insights from employee and CX satisfaction through data gathering tools like conversational analytics, natural language processing and machine learning.

Artificial Intelligence in CX

Ironically, the possibilities presented by AI technology are critical to a human-centered CX strategy, Leighton said. With the implementation of AI, agencies are able to automate data analysis in various formats, perform automatic cataloging categorization and background filtering. For example, employees on the front lines of call centers can benefit from weekly, even daily summary reports showing the customer’s most pressing problems, their satisfaction levels and other aspects of their experiences. Using AI for the purpose of collecting qualitative and experience data, call operators can gain valuable insight into how to improve their human-centered CX approach and learn how to personalize each interaction they have. Additionally, using that data to optimize efficiency will improve service delivery. These solutions help move employees away from manual processes so they may focus more on interactions with customers.

What Is Impacting the Work Force?

Many aspects of Government operations can be difficult to navigate. Panelists referenced a general talent shortage, lack of funding and outdated solutions as barriers for the CX workforce. One panelist said they encounter homegrown identity and access management solutions and piecemeal fixes throughout their organization’s CX efforts, which makes it challenging to provide a seamless experience for customers and employees. Another problem CX professionals face is increased expectations from those consuming Government services.

Ron Vickery, Area Vice President of Customer and Industry Workflows, Government Health and Higher Education at ServiceNow, expressed, “We are putting employees in a really tough situation if we are not empowering them to deliver against that expectation. So, I think that, across the board, is a big trend; rising expectations of the way service should be received and making sure that we have empowered these employees to deliver that level of service.”

Translating the Employee Experience to Customer Experience

Government agencies must prepare employees to provide excellence service with a mission-driven mindset as well as proper resources and technology to deliver it. Benefits such as flexibility in the workplace, operational efficiency, training and easy access to tools and resources can attract new talent as well as retain existing employees. If they feel supported by and invested in their agency, workers will be more inclined to provide the quality of service expected by their leadership.

Nicky French, Customer Service Branch Manager for the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), said that the TSA’s security mission presents a unique challenge as this agency must balance national cybersecurity with customer experience. She stated, “Our officers in the front lines have to enforce rules, and sometimes that can come across as a little more militant than we would like. So, we try to make sure that the officers are professional and polite. We spend a lot of time just level setting what customer service means.”

Employees need to know that their organization pays attention to their needs. When positive change is made, employees know their voice is valued and has an impact. Addressing challenges within operations enables employees to make a difference and move their agency’s CX mission forward.

Read the previous blog and check back soon to read the rest of Carahsoft’s insights from CX industry thought leaders at the summit.

To learn more about the latest in the CX landscape and how Carahsoft’s industry-leading partners can support your Customer Experience initiatives, please visit our resource hub to access all on demand recordings and information from the 2023 Government Customer Experience and Engagement Summit.

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.

The Best of What’s New in Government Customer Experience

Posted on by The Carahsoft Team

State and local governments faced a perfect storm of challenges at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Pandemic response is now driving a more serious commitment to usability, accessibility and equity of government digital services. City and county officials ranked improving constituent experience and engagement as a top priority, trailing only cybersecurity, in the Center for Digital Government’s (CDG) 2021 Digital Cities and Counties surveys. And states ranked expanding and improving access to services as their top priority in CDG’s most recent Digital States Survey conducted in late 2020. Learn how your agency or municipality can adapt to this new environment, including taking advantage of COVID relief funds, modernizing IT infrastructure and expanding broadband in Carahsoft’s Innovation in Government® report.

Empathy Is Key to Exceptional Experience

“Migrating to cloud-based solutions should be a priority for organizations that are still using on-premises systems. As we’ve seen during the pandemic, cloud-native services let organizations respond, support remote work, scale and add new capabilities much more quickly during crisis situations. Gone are the days of hoping the next emergency doesn’t exceed your on-premises or hosted hardware’s capacity. AI and ML use cases will vary by organization, but the end goal is those who are able to use self-service can do so easily, those who opt out or have more complex needs can reach a representative, and representatives have the context they need to engage and resolve issues with empathy.”

Read more insights from Genesys’ Senior Solution Consultant for U.S. Public Sector, Christina Angel.

Digital Workflows That Empower Constituents

“Constituents are looking for a consumer-grade experience when they interact with their state and local governments. They expect government services to meet them where they are — meaning they want omni-channel 24/7 services in a seamless delivery format. They want answers in real time, as well as tools to help them find answers themselves. A great workflow allows rapid delivery of government services with intelligent case routing and automation. It reduces costs by enabling self-service, proactively answering common questions and providing automated service responses. Finally, it provides a single system of government engagement that supports digital transformation efforts to improve overall customer experience.”

Read more insights from ServiceNow’s Global Head of State, Local and Regional Government Solutions, Tom Yeatts, and CTO/Chief Architect of State and Local Government and Higher Education, Chris Dilley.

Modernizing Document Workflows to Improve Service and Equity

“The resident experience has a number of components. The first is engagement. Experiences should be immersive and intuitive and on par with user experiences in private sector companies. The second element is efficiency. The experience on the backend should be as functional as it is beautiful, meaning it reduces errors, optimizes workflows, automates processes and quickly delivers tangible value for the agency. The third aspect is effectiveness. Agencies must be able to measure and evaluate, almost in real time, how effectively they are engaging users and realizing a return on investment, and then adjust accordingly. The final component is trust. Organizations must demonstrate that they can protect mission-critical workflows and satisfy rigorous government and industry standards.”

Read more insights from DocuSign’s Vice President and Global Head of Industries, Michael (MJ) Jackson.

Reinventing the Customer Journey

“It’s listening to people and the frontline employees who serve them. Designers and CX professionals cannot always sit down with customers, but reviewing data through the right platform can make them feel like they are. You need the right technology — including “listening” tools, predictive intelligence, analytics and full closed-loop actioning capabilities — to gain a holistic understanding of your residents’ experiences and take the right actions that drive meaningful impact. Don’t overlook employee experience. Engaged employees are 4.6 times more likely to be customer-centric compared to disengaged employees. Part of engagement is feeling heard and valued. Always-on collaboration tools, where employees can submit and comment on ideas and feedback related to the resident experience, put the people closest to residents at the heart of your CX program and help you build a more resident-centric culture.”

Read more insights from Qualtrics’ Government Industry Advisor, Jill Leyden.

Adapting to New Customer Behaviors and Expectations

“A digital experience platform is an integrated set of technologies that supports the composition, management, delivery and optimization of contextualized digital experiences. It supports modernization efforts by providing a broad set of solutions for engaging constituents online. The digital world offers many possible touchpoints for residents. Trying to independently solve for each desired touchpoint can lead to a scrambled web of conflicting technologies, but taking a tech-first monolithic approach will lead to disappointing engagement. A digital experience platform offers proven patterns for providing meaningful engagement, while also allowing flexibility to architect each touchpoint according to the organization’s preferences.”

Read more insights from Acquia’s Digital Transformation Leader for Public Sector, Joshua Smith.

Video Teleconferencing Puts Humans at the Center of Interactions

“We’re seeing a lot of success with court applications. One great example is the Texas judiciary, which announced in February 2021 that more than 2,000 state judges had hosted a combined total of more than one million virtual hearings via Zoom since the pandemic began in March 2020. We anticipate courts and justice systems will continue to leverage videoconferencing in lieu of, or in combination with, in-person hearings due to the benefits it brings to witnesses, judges, jurors and other participants. In the social work realm, video teleconferencing helps increase access and care between in-person visits.”

Read more insights from Zoom’s Head of U.S. State and Local Government, Jennifer Chang.

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

Teaming Up on Emerging Technologies

Posted on by The Carahsoft Team

In recent years, agencies’ growing need for IT modernization has prompted their biggest suppliers — federal systems integrators (FSIs) — to look for innovative ways to meet that need. FSIs’ deep working knowledge of government operations gives them a distinct advantage, but to provide all the expertise an agency needs on a contract, FSIs have always partnered with subcontractors. Now they are broadening their reach by seeking out cutting-edge companies that can help them develop solutions that incorporate the latest innovations in technology and strategy. Those “greater than the sum of their parts” solutions have a profound impact on agencies’ ability to meet mission-critical demands in a wide range of areas. In a recent survey of FCW readers, only 19% said they always know about the latest technologies. Adopting those technologies requires acquisition processes that are fast and flexible. 75% of respondents said their agencies rely on FSIs for complex IT projects. Many agencies are turning to agile methodologies, either on their own or with contractors, to develop and deliver solutions incrementally rather than taking years to launch a complete system. How can FSIs continue to meet these needs by partnering with innovative tech companies and small businesses? Read the latest insights from industry thought leaders in emerging technology in Carahsoft’s Innovation in Government^® report.

A Risk-Adaptive Approach to Data Security

“Protecting data in today’s heterogeneous, highly dynamic IT environments is one of the biggest cybersecurity challenges agencies face, especially now that data is potentially being stored and touched by many people, devices, apps, services and systems. That’s why a strong data protection strategy goes well beyond encryption to incorporate zero trust principles. Rapidly changing IT environments and continuously evolving cyber threats require proactive, high-performing cybersecurity solutions that can adapt on the fly and constantly answer questions about what’s happening to data in terms of who, when, where, what and how. It is essential to create a platform in which tools and analytics can be integrated quickly to respond to current threats. In other words, rather than hundreds of best-of-breed solutions stitched together, agencies require a comprehensive, integrated solution.”

Read more insights from Cloudera’s Senior Director of Global Alliances, Jenn Azzolina, and Raytheon Intelligence and Spaces’s CTO of Cybersecurity and Special Missions, Michael Daly.

Eliminating the Boundaries to Health Care

“The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the reality that our health care system is not a system at all but a series of disconnected providers who struggle to coordinate with one another and support patients on their health journeys. The first generation of health IT was not built around patients. A patient is a different person in every medical system he or she encounters; hence, continuity of care across providers is filled with barriers. The same challenges are pervasive in federal, state and local government health agencies. Even when data comes into a system in a timely manner, it’s often unstructured and cannot be reconciled with the existing record. That puts a heavier burden on doctors, who have to build their own mental model of what a particular patient needs.”

Read more insights from Perspecta’s Chief Medical Information Officer, Shane McNamee, M.D. and Red Hat’s Field CTO for Federal Health, Ben Cushing.

A Framework for Achieving Data Intelligence

“Highly adaptive adversaries confront the U.S. and its allies in every domain: air, sea, space, land and cyber. The aircraft, satellites, ships and ground vehicles that military forces operate collect an abundance of information, but processing and analyzing that amount of data can be daunting, especially given the multiple levels of security in which systems must operate. The Defense Department is pursuing a new way of warfighting based on a concept called joint all-domain operations. By synchronizing major systems and crucial data, DOD provides a complete picture of the battlespace and empowers warfighters to quickly make decisions that drive action so they can disrupt and overwhelm adversaries in seconds versus minutes when seconds really matter. There’s a new asset helping DOD and its allies realize this vision of the future battlespace: data.”

Read more insights from Collibra’s Senior Vice President for Public Sector, Aileen Black, and Lockheed Martin’s Vice President, Mike Baylor.

Partnering to Modernize the Customer Experience

“Working together allows ServiceNow and GDIT to respond to newly emerging capabilities very quickly. Because of its deep understanding of government agencies’ business operations, culture and processes, GDIT can support ServiceNow’s ability to deliver value in new ways. In one example, GDIT saw increasing demand from government customers for solutions authorized at the FedRAMP High level and helped ServiceNow meet this capability. The company now has an offering on Microsoft’s Azure cloud that has been authorized at FedRAMP High and the Defense Department’s Impact Level 5. In another example, GDIT uses insights from initiatives for large federal agencies, such as robotic process automation (RPA) solutions, to drive investments in leading-edge capabilities that have the best chance of achieving the desired outcomes.”

Read more insights from ServiceNow’s Vice President of Solution Consulting, Anto Tossounian, and GDIT’s Vice President of Federal Civilian, Brian Fogg.

Constructing a Next-Generation Data Architecture

“The conversation about data should start and stop with the mission impact and how quality data can improve decision-making and customer services. Once they have a clear understanding of their internal and external data assets — what data they have and how it can be used, along with the owners and sources of that data — agencies can progress toward intuitive AI-driven data catalogs. In addition, agencies should encourage a data-savvy culture across all layers of the organization and continually improve their data so that they can take advantage of modern applications. The volumes of government data would overwhelm any on-premises system, so moving to the cloud is essential for building a modern data architecture. However, simply lifting existing datasets into the cloud doesn’t solve the problem. People will work the way their data is organized, so rather than build data silos and create siloed workforces, agencies must combine data to empower their employees.”

Read more insights from Snowflake’s Chief Federal Technologist, Nicholas Speece, and Deloitte’s Principal of Strategy and Analytics, Vishal Kapur.

A Faster Route to Secure Cloud Adoption for DOD

“Three substantive challenges have made it difficult for Defense Department agencies to adopt cloud technology. First is the complex and lengthy procurement process to obtain cloud services. Second are the networking and security challenges to establish a cloud environment and connection. Third is the costly challenge of refactoring applications for a specific cloud environment. The partnership between DISA’s milCloud 2.0 contract, General Dynamics Information Technology (GDIT) and VMware effectively eliminates all three of these challenges. A native, on-demand milCloud 2.0 VMware environment dramatically simplifies migrations, lowers the risk of cloud adoption by eliminating the refactoring of applications and workloads, and allows users to leverage familiar VMware solutions for a consistent operating model across their enterprise.”

Read more insights from VMware’s Vice President of Federal Sales, Bill Rowan, and GDIT’s Partner Accounts Director for milCloud 2.0, Brian Whitenight.

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

How Government Agencies Can Get the Most Out of the Cloud

Posted on by Hayri Tarhan

Rationalizing Your Workloads

The thought of moving everything—forklifting all workloads—to the cloud can be pretty daunting. Instead, government agencies should consider a Cloud Smart policy, a measured approach that takes workloads and rationalizes technology—simplifying and modernizing the enterprise while moving capabilities, rather just relocating existing complexity to the cloud.

This approach requires planning. Organizations need good data management and visibility across the enterprise as they move workloads or parts of workloads into the cloud while other parts remain on premises. What constitutes an enterprise service may be split between one or more cloud services as well as an on-premises footprint. In addition, cloud platforms are always evolving. As they acquire additional capabilities, agencies can reevaluate workloads they initially planned to have remain on premises.

Knowing What the Cloud Can Do for You

A successful cloud strategy depends on really understanding what the cloud can do for you. Five years ago, everyone believed that the cloud was simply hosting: you get the same things in the cloud as in the data center. However, the reality is that the cloud provides dynamic workloads that can grow and scale to your needs. It is constantly patched and updated—and professionally secured. In the federal government, they follow a FedRAMP or DISA authorization, which provides tremendous capability and convenience.

Agencies moving into the cloud usually want to adopt 4-6 major platforms for capabilities: Infrastructure-as-a-Service, HR, IT CRM, and maybe an engagement layer or marketing or finance. As those platforms grow and mature, customers can consider moving additional workloads from on premises.

Improving Usability without Re-engineering

The cloud environment can provide real benefits to customers. ServiceNow has a large federal healthcare customer with more than 50 different HR systems. Each HR organization had its own budget and mandate to operate as it wanted. But the customer found it challenging just to answer simple questions—like how many employees work for the agency—since information was spread out across dozens of systems.

When ServiceNow came in, they left the systems of record in place and put a workflow on top of them—to integrate and surface that data through a single engagement layer. Now the customer can get answers to questions and also easily orchestrate use cases like employee onboarding or a name change after an employee gets married. The new solution provides great functionality without needing to re-architect the backend systems.

ServiceNow also created a standardization process for getting information into each HR system—without re-engineering and enduring the accompanying growing pains. Our platform has a configuration management database that allows us to map data from various systems of record into a common data model. Then we can easily report on it, present it to different users in different ways, and effectively liberate it to the organization.

Deploying Laptop Configurations

Another customer, a federal government healthcare organization, needed to scale up their work-from-home capabilities during the pandemic. They had to ship 225,000 laptops to employees, but each one had a particular configuration: specific patch and security levels. The organization also needed to track the laptops and figure out how each element was performing at any point in time. ServiceNow helped them rapidly deploy these capabilities and enjoy true visibility into their assets—even though different parts of the organization recorded the tracking of their laptops in different ways.

Tracking PPE for Returning to Work

ServiceNow helped another large government organization track personal protective equipment (PPE) as employees prepared to return to the workplace. Over a handful of weeks, we built a return-to-workplace set of applications that allowed them to track PPE and conduct check-ins with their employees. This information was reported to executives in a dashboard, allowing them to see their organization’s situation in terms of health, return to work status, and PPE inventory levels necessary to maintain operations.

Integrating New Technologies

No government organization wants to be the first to adopt an emerging technology—or the last. Most agencies would prefer a measured approach in evaluating these technologies, but cloud vendors innovate at a rapid rate, updating their platforms on a regular basis and adopting new technologies. Agencies should remain aware of this evolution so they can take advantage of the latest innovations.

Visit our website to learn more about the GovForward: Multicloud Series and FedRAMP through our additional resources.

CIO Perspectives: A New Vision for the Government Workplace

Posted on by The Carahsoft Team

In the early days of the COVID-19 crisis, most government chief information officers (CIOs) focused on fundamental questions related to transitioning to remote work and virtual environments while still maintaining services and meeting citizens’ needs. Over time, however, they realized that in responding to the crisis, agencies were crafting a new model for agency operations. In many cases, it was indeed possible to carry out the business of agencies in a virtual environment. Employees could stay engaged, work processes often were streamlined and digital services proved their worth. In part, the goal of this new model is to improve operational resiliency for the next crisis, but the new model also is geared toward transformation — helping agencies adopt more efficient and effective processes that deliver better services. Read more from CIOs within both Federal and state government on the lessons learned from the transition to telework and their goals for the future in “CIO Perspectives: A New Vision for the Government Workplace,” a guide created by GovLoop and Carahsoft featuring insights from the following technology leaders.

Creating a Roadmap to Resilience

“Resiliency means having the ability to rapidly resume delivery of services after a disruptive event and to continue operating in that new environment as long as needed. True resiliency goes beyond simply creating redundant capabilities that can ensure the availability of data and systems. It’s about taking a holistic approach to the people, processes, and systems involved in delivering services and ensuring that all three aspects are addressed as part of a continuity strategy. The ServiceNow platform is designed to help agencies create digital workflows that connect people, processes and systems. The platform is supported by a single data model and common application logic that makes it easy to automate processes and update those processes when requirements change.”

Read more insights from ServiceNow’s Chief Technology Officer of Global Government, Bob Osborn.

The Virtual Environment’s Key Attributes

“For many government employees, one of the biggest challenges of the remote work situation has been to continue effectively delivering on their mission critical operations. Virtual environments have become mainstream and indispensable for a variety of use cases, whether it’s large virtual gatherings, training sessions or meetings. It has been a paradigm shift, and if agencies can get it right, virtual environments could play a bigger role than ever even after the current crisis, reducing the need for travel, costs of large physical events, and providing more flexibility and reach… Whatever the situation, remote work has demonstrated that a virtual environment is not just a fallback plan, but a valuable option for agencies even in normal working conditions.”

Read more insights from Adobe Connect’s Senior Enablement Manager, Alistair Lee, and Product Evangelist, Peter Ryce.

Seeing Clearly With Network Visibility

“Government IT networks are increasingly difficult to manage. Citizens want digital services that are equal to the private sector’s. Cybersecurity risks, meanwhile, are multiplying daily. And the volume of data is growing faster than ever. The COVID-19 pandemic complicated this situation further for federal agencies. Whether they’re civilian or defense, these networks have been under unprecedented strain as most government employees have been working from home. Network visibility can help agencies see all these challenges clearly and solve them. Using the right tools, agencies can continuously monitor their networks’ performances and security.”

Read more insights from Gigamon’s Vice President of Public Sector, Dennis Reiley.

The 5 Elements of Government Digital Transformation

“Advanced operations through competencies such as Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) is about looking at transformation from an operational perspective. How well does a new digital service meet enterprise requirements for performance, reliability and security? …organizations should establish an enterprise-level minimum viable product (MVP) that lays out key requirements that all products must meet. In advising agencies going through an open transformation, Red Hat is not pushing a solution. Instead, these five elements are designed to help agencies think about the key decision areas they must address.”

Read more insights from Red Hat’s Digital Transformations Architect (DoD/IC), Dmitry Didovicher.

Unified Endpoint Security: Bringing Order to Chaos

“In cybersecurity, organizations create chaos with the best of intentions. Their goal is to make incremental gains in security by implementing new solutions that make up for the deficits of older ones and adding new controls to compensate for the limits of existing ones. To make matters worse, the IT environment itself has grown more complex, creating new attack vectors that malicious actors can exploit. Clearly, agencies need to reduce the chaos and improve security. But they also need to ensure their cyber strategy does not hinder employee productivity. Those competing needs were more apparent than ever when gubernatorial mandates in response to the COVID-19 crisis required thousands of employees to begin working from home, some using their own devices. How could agencies protect applications and data without creating new obstacles for employees? “

Read more insights from Blackberry’s Senior Vice President and Chief Information Security Officer, John McClurg.

Identity Access Management in the Telework Era

“Nationwide, agencies have embraced telework during the COVID-19 pandemic. While most agencies have rapidly transitioned to remote work, it hasn’t been without challenges. Many agencies couldn’t provide remote access to systems except email when the crisis first hit and as a result, workers couldn’t access many of the systems they use daily. At the same time, threat actors haven’t been sitting still, and attacks such as phishing and spear phishing are on the rise. Now, traditional network-oriented security isn’t sufficient with users accessing resources from more locations and devices than before. That is why identity and access management (IAM) is critical to helping agencies navigate this new normal. IAM covers the policies and tools ensuring the correct people have the appropriate access to organizational resources. “

Read more insights from Okta’s Senior Marketing Manager, Kelsey Nelson.

Election Security Is About More Than Voting Machines

“Conversations around election cybersecurity have gone mainstream. Much of those discussions focus largely on voting machines and known security flaws that hackers can use to compromise the technology. But that’s only a fraction of the larger issue…Today, as a pandemic rages across the globe, government agencies are exploring alternatives to in-person voting to promote social distancing. Even still, cybersecurity must remain an integral part of the conversation. “

Read more insights from Rapid7’s Research Director, Tod Beardsley.

How to Meet the IT Management Challenges of Remote Work

“Throughout the COVID-19 crisis, government agencies have learned two basic lessons about remote work. First, the experience has diminished doubts about whether employees could work effectively and efficiently outside the office. Second, it’s made IT leaders aware they need a better strategy for managing this remote environment… More than anything, the experience of remote work has taught IT managers to think in new ways about the enterprise.”

Read more insights from SolarWind’s Vice President of Product Strategy, Brandon Shopp.

Download the full GovLoop Guide for more insights from these telework and cybersecurity thought leaders and additional interviews and perspectives from government CIOs at FDIC, GSA, NRC, NSF, and the states of Colorado and Delaware.

Designing a Better Digital Experience

Posted on by The Carahsoft Team

The government’s ability to offer meaningful digital engagements has long trailed behind that of the private sector. In the American Customer Satisfaction Index’s “Federal Government Report 2019,” citizen satisfaction with federal services fell for the second consecutive year — to 68.1 on a 100-point scale. Despite this, lawmakers and agency leaders of all levels are making efforts to improve the digital experience for government customers. In a recent FCW survey, 61% of participants said their agencies have already begun modernizing websites, 58% are digitizing forms, 51% are implementing e-signatures and 26% have begun providing personalized content. Learn the latest insights from industry thought leaders in Digital Experience in Carahsoft’s Innovation in Government® report. Continue reading →