Page 34 - FCW, May/June 2018

IT TRANSFORMATION
Mapping the
route to IT transformation
Agencies must be strategic about transforming IT while staying on top of daily operational needs
Steve Harris
Senior Vice President and General Manager, Dell EMC Federal
involves conducting a thorough inventory of existing investments and how they align with the mission. Agencies need to know everything that’s on their networks and quantify the technical debt represented by legacy IT. And then they need to develop a plan to eliminate underutilized software and less-than-optimal processes.
The ongoing nature of digital transformation requires a workload-by- workload analysis of how an agency is going to deliver capabilities to its end
users. As they are making those decisions, agencies should avoid thinking of cloud technology as the destination when it’s really just an operating model. Instead, they must take the time to understand the best way to handle each workload because a hosted cloud environment might not be the optimal choice. No single cloud solution
is appropriate for all situations. In short, successful transformation relies on a keen understanding of a multi-cloud strategy.
IT strategic plans also require well- executed communication strategies through multiple channels to engage with employees and bring their activities in alignment with the agency’s goals.
The need for a cyber
culture change
Likewise, an agency cannot have a good cyber posture without changing the way employees understand and engage with technology. When an agency has priorities that take a lot of investment — in terms of downtime, user experience or a big proportion of the budget — officials must explain that IT transformation will reduce technical debt and increase the resources available to support initiatives that
AGENCIES HAVE long-standing IT environments that support broad-based, complex missions.
So when it comes to IT transformation, they do not have the luxury of building a new infrastructure from the ground up — especially one that capitalizes on today’s capabilities and protects against today’s threats. Instead, they must keep their existing IT systems running so that they can remain open for business even as they seek to transform that environment.
Achieving the transformative goal of
full adoption of IT as a service requires planning and prioritization. Officials should start by identifying apps and services that best align with their mission- critical requirements. Then they need to create a one- to three-year strategic plan that transforms how they host the highest priority applications and workloads while adjusting the resources devoted to less critical IT.
Keeping cloud in perspective
Another part of the mapping process
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