Page 15 - FCW, August 2021

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Agencies must find ways to leverage the skills and interests of innovators and then manage the risks that come with trying new approaches.
2.5% of the Defense Department’s 3.2 million employees are innovators, that means 80,000 people could be creating paths to what’s new and possible.
Agencies must find ways to leverage the skills and interests of those innovators and then manage the risks that come with trying new approaches. They must be able to rapidly test, experiment, iterate and change direction if one of those innovative opportunities doesn’t pan out — and keep testing until they
discover something that works.
Many people are working hard to solve
problems in government. They should take the time to occasionally get outside their offices or agencies to see how others are tackling the same challenges. During the pandemic, conferences
and other opportunities to share ideas within our professional networks were put on hold, which stalled many forms of collaboration. Therefore, innovative
thinkers in government and industry need to proactively reach out to colleagues who are also thinking about challenges a little differently.
Just as they do in their multi-cloud environments, agencies should have a mix of best-of-breed approaches to problem- solving and innovation.
Sean Maday is a cloud engineering manager at Google.
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