New Tools, New Methods:
Technology Modernization in Government
April 13, 2021
Event Highlights
As in the private sector, government agencies are finding that the secure delivery of key citizen services and benefits requires digitization — and requires institutions to modernize their technological infrastructure. Information must be accessible and delivered safely across silos and to constituents. Technological innovations such as cloud platforms and AI enable governments to do the work necessary to ensure resilient societies.
This virtual roundtable convened a cross-section of government agency leaders who shared how technology enables them to be more impactful in executing their missions and their learnings in the process.
PARTICIPANTS
Justin Abold-LaBreche, Co-Director, Enterprise Digitalization and Case Management, Internal Revenue Service
Ron Bewtra, Chief Technology Officer, U.S. Department of Justice
Beth Killoran, Deputy Chief Information Officer, U.S. General Services Administration
Natesh Manikoth, Chief Data Officer, Federal Aviation Administration
Tim Paydos, Vice President and Global General Manager, Government Industry, IBM
Ervan D. Rodgers, Chief Information Officer, State of Ohio
Harrison Smith, Co-Director, Enterprise Digitalization and Case Management, Internal Revenue Service
Alan Thompson, Acting Chief Information Officer, U.S. House of Representatives
Raj Thuppal, Chief Digital Officer, Transport Canada
Lourens Visser, Chief Information Officer, Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations, The Netherlands
MODERATED BY
Matthew Schettenhelm, Litigation & Government Analyst, Bloomberg Intelligence
Click here to view the video of the full discussion.
Here’s what they had to say:
Government agencies have made great strides over the past year to modernize their technology and increase resiliency. Many organizations had begun their digital transformation before the pandemic and found that their technology investments served them well as they provided new services or worked in new ways. Others adopted new digital collaborative, communications, and data management technology at lightning speed. As Tim Paydos, Vice President and Global General Manager, Government Industry, IBM noted, “Now digital transformation is necessary. It’s no longer extracurricular. Every agency we’re speaking with is working on it. So now we’re all about emerging stronger, more agile, more resilient with more flexibility and really trying to eliminate the fragility in government in dealing with these challenges.”
Ervan D. Rodgers, Chief Information Officer, State of Ohio, shared that the State of Ohio benefitted from having started its digital transformation about two and half years ago. “We started a cloud-smart initiative. It was very early on and that has really paid huge dividends because, ultimately, by having a year into that particular program, when the pandemic hit, we were able to scale with regards to the great demand that was taking place. I think the pandemic demand took us all by a great surprise. So, by having that cloud-smart initiative, I was able to be the CIO cloud broker to many of the agencies so that they could provide the services, digital services to many of our citizens that had stay-at-home types of orders. It continues to pay great dividends.”
Natesh Manikoth, Chief Data Officer, Federal Aviation Administration also got an early start with implementing innovative technology, “We started our cloud journey a while ago. We have had cloud services available to our programs since 2017. We have put an enterprise data platform together. So that machine learning AI predictive analytics can drive the decision making within the agency.” From the standpoint of an early adopter, Manikoth was able to share that “It’s not always about the technology. It is other enablers related to the technology, the culture that needs to shift to adopt cloud or any other digital services we do. So, we have invested heavily in that, in building the momentum internally to get people to shift to adopt these things.”
Raj Thuppal, Chief Digital Officer, Transport Canada, has only been in his role for 7 days, and already has a clear vision of what he wants to accomplish. He shared, “We are heavily focused on the oversight modernization because the current services with all site visits, it is paper-based. So, moving toward more of a database, data-driven digital services, where people can get services online. So, that’s driving us to move forward to adopting some of the new technologies, which include cloud for obvious reasons. We are leveraging or we plan to leverage cloud-wide, even including the micro services within the cloud. We have a few projects going on right now for remote robotic process automation to automate a number of processes that we have. So that’s something that’s on the go more from an internal services perspective. And also leveraging AI for decision-making and incorporating AI into many of the tools that we are already using.”
Likewise, Lourens Visser, Chief Information Officer, Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations, The Netherlands, is working energetically to implement the digital transformation of the government of The Netherlands. He explained that his role is “to promote and to foster the use and to optimize the ICT and information services across the government.” His basic mandate is the renewal of the technology landscape; he shares this challenge with many other governments, “So, we have a big issue in the Netherlands with legacy. Many institutions had IT for a long time, but they are using applications for 10, 20 or even 30 years or longer. So cloud is an important part of this program.” A major win was preserving the resiliency of the government during Covid. He noted that swift action enabled “more than 150,000 civil servants within three weeks to be able to use video conferencing.”
While several agencies spoke about a big push, the IRS talked about iterative changes that have high impact and low risk. Harrison Smith, Co-Director, Enterprise Digitalization and Case Management, Internal Revenue Service, explained “We’re not gonna delve into something that immediately touches a sensitive area within the federal government or taxpayer information, because it’s obviously incredibly important that we keep that secure. But maybe there’s opportunities to push in a digitalization or a transformation activity with publicly available information. So, really striking that balance and finding out what’s possible but also doing that in an agile and an incremental way.”
As Justin Abold-LaBreche, Co-Director, Enterprise Digitalization and Case Management, Internal Revenue Service, explains, an incremental approach does not mean a lack of focus. He shared, “We’re a pretty hierarchical organization. And yet here you have Harrison and myself as co-directors of what is probably the largest business and technology transformation. And it speaks to this new energy we have about adopting a really lean, agile approach to putting the taxpayer first and creating the types of services that they need — digital and secure and in the cloud.”
Alan Thompson, Acting Chief Information Officer, U.S. House of Representatives, has had several complex projects to implement over the past year, from enabling remote witnesses for hearings to allowing caucuses and committee members to vote electronically. A major current project is the constituent management system. As he explains, “Several of our members run their own constituent management solution. And this is a way to do, you know, email and text and other types of communications with their constituents. And we really wanna modernize that to be more applications that have a wide and broad ecosystem of both developers and applications and ways to develop other applications using the data within them. And so we’re gonna begin a big push on modernizing our constituent management solution.”
The U.S. General Services Administration is one of the largest government agencies in the world, and also one of the more advanced in its digital transformation. Beth Killoran, Deputy Chief Information Officer, U.S. General Services Administration, shared, “We actually do not own a data center anymore. We actually have over 50% of our applications that are cloud-enabled and we really don’t really do paper-based operations at this point. And so we’re really excited about that.” Killoran explained that the digital transformation continues to have new applications. “So, we have technology that we’re gonna have for smart buildings, for energy efficient vehicles that we have to think about how we take some of that unstructured data into a structured world. In addition to that, as others have mentioned, we have been looking at artificial intelligence and machine learning and how, you know, RPA has already saved us, you know, a significant amount of of labor from our employees so that they can go from that kind of traditional data entry work to more higher value work.”
In addition to his day job, Ron Bewtra, Chief Technology Officer, U.S. Department of Justice, is also co-chair of the CIO Council Innovation Committee. Bewtra shared what he is seeing from this interagency perspective, “There is a lot that I’m also seeing across the government, a lot of enthusiasm. I’m seeing everyone come together and share their best practices from the innovation committee.” Bewtra ended his comments, and the meeting, on a very positive note, “One last comment I’ll make that I’ve been thrilled to see over the last couple years, and I think it has increased over this sort of modern era is this focus on the citizenry, on our workforce, on our greater community. So, we should be thinking about IT not just as something that is done to people but done with people. And that citizen-centric, customer experience-centric approach, has been well adopted inside of the government. And I think for everywhere you see it, you see others raising their hands and moving in that direction.”
This Bloomberg Roundtable was Proudly Sponsored By
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