Page 50 - FCW, March/April 2021

FCWPerspectives tenancies for each military service. But
countless smaller projects will need to be scrutinized, participants said.
“There have been a number of tools specifically related to dealing with a health pandemic that there’s not a clear home for,” one executive said. Although active use of some of those solutions will likely end in the com- ing months, “I’m hoping that the next administration takes a look at what are the digital tools and digital health infrastructure we need to put in place for if and when this happens again.... And our team is not set up to maintain some of these tools forever.”
Others pointed to the need to reas- sess dramatically expanded virtual desktop licenses and extra bandwidth. The agencies that were able to use software-defined wide-area networks and other infrastructure-as-a-service solutions “are saving a lot more money,” one official noted, which could give others the evidence they need to make similar moves. Gov- ernment should have vendors take over low-level legacy infrastructure, “replace it with modern technology and move to an as-a-service solution,” that official said. “And then that way you have the ability to expand a con- tract based on your needs as an agen- cy or a service.”
More important than any specific system, however, is ensuring that agen- cy employees who have been scattered and stretched are set up to succeed.
“I think it’s really going to be inter- esting to see how this translates in the future because we have proven that, to a certain extent, knowledge workers are capable of getting a job done out- side a physical office,” one participant said. “There are tools that can make their lives better, and there are tools that can make security better. So when it comes down to being able to attract talent and keep talent to help the gov- ernment,” the old approach of issuing a laptop and VPN access should give way to “modern technology with secu-
rity that sits in line in the cloud and you can quickly get to anything.”
Several officials agreed that a better location-agnostic user experience will be crucial to retaining employees and that there are opportunities to broaden the talent pool if agencies will adapt. “We were originally told that no hiring could happen until after the pandemic because you had to come in and give your oath in person and fill out all this paperwork,” one participant said. Those obstacles were overcome with videoconferencing and digital signa- tures. However, most agencies are not yet able to build teams without regard to physical location.
“You need to have a remote work- force, and you can tap into a bigger talent pool,” that official said. It takes a modern IT environment and delib- erate management changes to virtu- alize the work environment, but “this is a good opportunity for agencies to think about the expanded talent pool they can get, particularly from the West Coast, if they’re willing to let people work remotely.”
An argument for agile modernization
The roundtable participants noted that multiyear funding remains one of the biggest obstacles to foundational IT modernization (the discussion took place before the most recent relief bill provided $1 billion for the Technology Modernization Fund), but they also said 2020 demonstrated the value of rapid and incremental improvements.
Traditionally, one official said, IT modernization has been “looked at as this big five- or 10-year program. And what happened \[during the pandemic\], because it had to happen, is that we were able to modernize in pieces. And I think what we should be learning from this is not only the specific technolo- gies that assisted, but the fact that you can modernize in pieces. You can find technologies that can help in both the near term and long term. It’s amazing to see it in action.” n
Participants
Artie Chin
Chief Digital Services Officer, Department of Housing and Urban Development
Danny Connelly
Chief Information Security Officer, Americas, Zscaler
Allen Hill
Deputy Assistant Commissioner for Category Management, General Services Administration
Pamela Isom
Deputy CIO for Architecture, Engineering,Technology and Innovation, Department of Energy
Wanda Jones-Heath
Chief Information Security Officer, Department of the Air Force
Mark Montgomery
Executive Director, Cyberspace Solarium Commission
Katie Olson
Deputy Director, Defense Digital Service
Jose Padin
Director of Pre-Sales Engineering, U.S. Public Sector, Zscaler
Maria Roat
Deputy Federal CIO, Office of Management and Budget
Francisco Salguero
CIO, Federal Communications Commission
Sid Sripada
Director, Cloud Adoption and Infrastructure Optimization, Centers of Excellence, General Services Administration
Courtney Winship
Deputy Chief Data Officer, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services
Note: FCW Editor-in-ChiefTroy
K. Schneider led the roundtable discussion.The Feb. 18 gathering was underwritten by Zscaler, but both
the substance of the discussion and the recap on these pages are strictly editorial products. Neither Zscaler nor any of the roundtable participants had input beyond their Feb. 18 comments.
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March/April 2021 FCW.COM