Page 30 - FCW, January/February 2021

CONTRACT LEADERSHIP
Speeding Modernization with Fhelp from ITES contracts
ederal agencies have gotten the Forward march toward advanced prevention, detection, message: IT modernization innovation response and prediction capabilities
is critical. Without modern infrastructure and tools, it’s much more difficult to meet mission requirements and citizen demands. But in today’s world, it’s not enough. Agencies committed to innovation, cybersecurity and meeting the pace of change are moving to the next level, embracing technologies and processes that will allow them to meet changing mission requirements, better serve citizens, remain fully secure and keep costs under control.
A report from Accenture bears this out, finding that the most forward-thinking agencies invest in innovation, and that those agencies are most likely to see higher levels of citizen satisfaction with government services.
As agencies move ahead with modernization and innovation, many are turning to the Army’s Information Technology Enterprise Solutions (ITES) family of contracts for both products and services. In FY 2020 alone, nearly three percent of Defense Department IT contract spending flowed through an ITES contract. That’s because its flexible terms and e-commerce capabilities make buying easy for users, said Christopher Cornillie, a federal market analyst with Bloomberg Government.
Innovation can take many forms. Here are some of the most important. Adaptive security: Security is
and always will be a top priority for federal agencies. An adaptive approach to security is one that provides
the flexibility to change security responses and processes to keep pace with current threats. “Traditional security models run on a framework
of preventing problems that we know exist and remediating things when they happen,” explained Matt Richbourg,
a solutions architect and security expert at CDW•G. “Adaptive security looks at your security model not just
as prophylactics and remediation of known threats, but as an ongoing process where you are monitoring the traffic moving across your network, what it’s doing and how it’s doing it.
So instead of taking an aspirin when you get a headache, now someone
is constantly monitoring your temperature to react as soon as you
get sick.”
Treating risk, trust and security as a continuous and adaptive process requires continuous, pervasive monitoring and visibility at every layer of the stack: network, endpoints, applications, user activity and system interactions. It may require more
that can work together to protect against changing threats.
Citizen digital identity: More citizens than ever are digital natives, relying on technology to interact with government. One of the best ways to provide that experience securely is by providing a digital identity for each citizen based on validated credentials and attributes. Providing that digital identity and verification securely is
a challenge that federal agencies are ready to take on. It’s a big priority in government today, with the pending bipartisan Improving Digital Identity Act of 2020, which would establish
a government-wide approach to improving digital identity, expected
to pass sometime this year. NIST also is expected to develop a standards framework for digital identity verification. An effective digital identity framework would be secure and trustworthy enough that agencies know that only authorized citizens are accessing services and information, and citizens trust that they are interacting with legitimate government resources, and that their personal information is fully protected.
Multichannel citizen engagement:
Citizens increasingly want to access government services and sites on
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