Three Insights from Government Trailblazers
By Kevin Paschuck
I was recently asked to give my perspective on how cloud is impacting government IT in Government Business Council’s “Forecasting Cloud’s Future: Conversations with Federal, State, and Local Technology Leaders on Cloud-Driven Digital Transformation.”
This request was quite timely; for the past couple months, I have been observing a phenomenon I call the digital dilemma — a call-to-action for departments, agencies, and their community of contractors to shift their focus from maintaining legacy IT systems to investing in innovation. As the rate of technological innovation continues to increase, people expect timely, targeted services that are available 24/7 from the tap of a phone, whether they are engaging as customers, employees, volunteers, or citizens.
This kind of agile IT innovation is in stark contrast to the complexity prevalent across many government and government contractor IT systems. Frameworks are frequently patchworked together due to limited budget, sudden changes in administration or direction, more multifaceted service demands, mergers resulting from an increasingly competitive landscape, and more. As the government community tries to keep pace with private sector expectations using traditional public sector infrastructure, this tends to worsen costly, convoluted models. Last year, the GAO found that over 75% of IT budget was allocated to legacy system maintenance — up 2% from the previous year’s report. It’s near impossible to deliver new, innovative services when 75%+ of the budget goes to keeping dated infrastructure limping along.
This is the digital dilemma: The gap is growing between where organizations are forcing themselves to prioritize resources and where they should be prioritizing resources.
However, there are a few examples of departments and agencies that are recognizing and addressing this gap, included in Government Business Council’s “Forecasting Cloud’s Future” report. While reading through the experiences of these trailblazers, I noticed three recurrent themes that can provide valuable insights for others exploring this digital phenomenon for their own organizations.
1. Government is starting to trust cloud’s security potential.
“Cloud can be an enabler of security,” said Jennifer Kron, Deputy CIO of the U.S. Intelligence Community. “We’ve long said the cloud environment can be seen as secure as or more secure than the traditional environment if it’s properly managed and designed.”
Kron’s comments demonstrate an important change in perspective — IDG’s InfoWorld recently found that the “cloud has the most confidence in on-demand security, and that confidence is highest among IT professionals (78%).” I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve had to answer the question “Is cloud secure?” The answer is yes, reflecting this change in belief across IT professionals. A few top reasons why come to mind:
Trust is part of technology’s core competency:
In Government Business Council’s report, Maria Roat, CIO at the U.S. Small Business Administration, notes that cloud service providers (CSP) are “much better at providing security in their environments than the federal government is.”
In May 2014, Salesforce became the first CSP to obtain FedRAMP Authority to Operate for both software as a service (SaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS). This past March, we were granted a Provisional Authorization for Information Impact Level 2 and Impact Level 4 from Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA). Read more about these government compliance certifications and authorizations, as well as several others we’re proud to maintain, here.
Innovation and security go hand in hand:
Security is all about being proactive. Keeping pace with the latest
technology mitigates risk as updates frequently address gaps identified by
hackers, helping users benefit from collective experience.
Cloud’s agile nature lends itself to proactive security, allowing central IT to
easily push updates to users without conducting extensive hardware
installations, coordinating software distributions, or disrupting day-to-day
operations. Salesforce follows this strategy with three automated updates
each year that keep both systems and applications up to date in a user
friendly fashion. As a result, our customers are empowered to take
advantage of the latest innovations, whether those are for mission-critical
tools or security purposes. Salesforce is committed to ensuring and
continuously improving the security and performance of our cloud.
Visibility is security’s twin sister:
Cloud offers all kinds of visibility not possible with traditional technology
and communication channels. Event Monitoring allows IT teams to see who
is accessing what information, when, and how. Platform Encryption natively
encrypts sensitive data and personal identification information without
requiring investment in additional hardware or software. Cloud offers
thorough visibility, capturing the insight that’s lost in email chains, thumb
drive storage, and more.
As leaders across the government landscape understand and internalize these cloud security truths, it will be easier for the industry as a whole to shift to more efficient, productive models. Which brings me to insight #2,
2. Cloud is key to moving to an easy and open governing model.
Remember Econ 101, where you learned the difference between shifting along a supply curve to find a better balance of your existing resource capacity, and a shift in the supply curve itself after you discovered gold or some other resource that suddenly enabled you to leapfrog the competition? Cloud is that shift of the IT supply curve.
“The cost factor is a big deal,” said Maria Roat, CIO at the U.S. Small Business Administration, in the report. “Shifting from a capex to opex model, not having to pay for hardware all the time, not having to pay for software upgrades, cutting down on labor requirements — I’m already seeing its effect in the work we’re doing in our inventory.”
Learn more about how to turn today’s digital dilemma into mission opportunity:
Read Government Business Council’s “Forecasting Cloud’s Future” report.
Download nowSee how cloud trailblazers like the City and County of Denver are modernizing mission services. Read press release
Learn more about our out-of-the-box cloud services at salesforce.com
CSPs like Salesforce can manage these expenses on your behalf, bringing a level of ease and proficiency to address today’s dynamic mission landscape. We also open our cloud platform to a vast partner ecosystem, giving both government professional and technical services breadth and depth.
“The difference is that when we experience a problem, there are maybe one or two staff members who can address it. The provider has a thousand engineers who are on it within seconds. You can’t replicate that,” said Jack Belcher, CIO for Arlington County in Virginia, when asked about potential technical issues with cloud deployments. Capital expenses, such as acquiring the subject matter expertise Belcher speaks of, time and money poured into maintaining a physical data center, or any other number of costs place an avoidable burden on today’s government IT budget — budget that could be used to develop applications, engagement tools, or other innovations that transform the mission.
3. Want to make more room for innovation? Cloud is key there, too.
When budget is able to be reprioritized to focus on the mission itself — as opposed to the work about the mission — departments and agencies are able to invest in innovative tools that engage more people in a better service experience. Belcher shared how he and his team are “experimenting with how cloud-based voice activation technologies can transform service delivery; we’re streaming board meetings and commission meetings — whether it’s about where we’re putting a new building or what’s going on with immigration policies, citizens can take part in the conversation.” Cloud makes service faster and easier — key criteria for turning the digital dilemma into mission opportunity.
Like Belcher, I’ve seen our customers use our platform to engage more citizens in the mission (see the advancements the City and County of Denver made by modernizing their 311 system on Salesforce), develop operating models that are literally data-driven, develop custom apps and then distribute them enterprise wide in a shared-service model, and redefine culture by redefining tools and operating models to foster a more collaborative environment. Cloud makes it easy for citizens, staff, volunteers, or any partner in the mission to engage and deliver, making the department or agency’s impact on the day-to-day real and relevant.
To learn more about how Salesforce helps departments, agencies, and their community of government contractors address the digital dilemma with our out-of-the-box cloud services, visit us at salesforce.com/solutions/industries/government.
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As COO and Senior Vice President Enterprise Sales of Salesforce’s North America Public Sector Business Unit, Kevin Paschuck is responsible for the strategy, execution, and success of Sales, Marketing, Solutions Engineering, and Business Development for Federal Government, State & Local Government, Aerospace & Defense, and Commercial System Integrator markets.
