Fighting for Digital Transformation in the Government Sector
DevOps and digital transformation for government entities can mean addressing policy and security-driven roadblocks.
When a software vendor lands a government contract it often leads to ongoing business, but it also means working with a customer who may have a laundry list of conditions that must be met. In many ways, providing DevOps, cloud, and digital transformation services to government agencies is comparable to working with enterprises that run on legacy systems. The differences between private and public sectors include everchanging policies and stipulations that dictate what can be implemented. Parties on both sides of this equation are discussing ways to help government entities update their systems while operating within policy constraints.
Private industry naturally adopts some innovations faster than government and without as much red tape, says Claire Bailey, director of federal, state and local mainframe solutions for mainframe software provider Compuware. The nature of the data that government touches complicates how it is handled. For example, when services such as Google Cloud first emerged, she says, the government sector’s security demands meant taking a bit of a wait-and-see stance. “When you bring new business technology strategies to government,” Bailey, says, “government is going to ask, ‘Will that work for the needs that we have?’”
Prior to her current role, Bailey was the CTO for the State of Arkansas. She says government organizations are interested in increasing efficiency through unified frameworks and other improvements. These days the technology requirements of government agencies might accelerate that demand. For instance, software vendors may now face a shorter cycle to fulfill contracts that in the past allowed for more time. “No longer can a technology group say they will deliver a new system in two to three years,” Bailey says.
Part of the accelerated demand comes from citizens expecting more automation and streamlined services from government, she says. “The majority of people today don’t want to walk into a government office just to conduct business.”
Policies at the federal level can also usher in new technology and methodologies at state and local agencies. The Affordable Care Act, Bailey says, led to many state governments adopting agile practices to keep up with the then-new legislation. “Requirements were changing weekly if not daily,” she says. “You had to be agile.”
Developers who serve the governement space should prepare to work at a greater scale than some private sector projects, says Michael Torres, principal product manager with Truss. His company offers digital transformation services to clients such as HealthCare.gov, the Department of Defense, and the Department of Veteran Affairs.
Torres says there are functional differences that make such projects more difficult with the government. “It’s not just that government software is not user-centered,” he says.
