Speaking on a briefing call Monday, Jason Miller, deputy director for management at the Office of Management and Budget, told journalists that existing centralized resources, including those from the two agencies, would be made available to government departments.

“It’s important to note that [for] the specific actions that are included here, we are utilizing existing resources,” he said. “These may be existing agency resources, existing capabilities that we can bring to bear, whether that’s from USDS or GSA, including resources from recent legislation to support improvements in service delivery.”

President Biden on Monday signed the executive order, which requires agencies to place user experience at the center of every system and to pilot new online tools and technologies to improve citizens’ interactions with government.

The directive seeks to place the key life events at the center of digital services, in an attempt to redefine citizens’ relationship with the federal government. It mentions several key touchpoints for citizens, which include: retiring, filing your taxes, surviving a disaster, traveling, financing post-secondary education and accessing VA benefits.

The White House has said that it will demand transparency from agencies and that departments use transparent metrics to measure progress made in complying with the order.

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It’s hard to grasp the breadth and depth of decisions federal IT teams had to make to keep their agencies operating as the pandemic shut offices down, and teleworking went from option to necessity.

Arveen Kohli, Consulting Sales Leader, Federal, Dell Technologies

The adoption of cloud technologies certainly helped make the transition possible. It also demonstrated to federal officials just how this kind of environment could work, so it’s understandable that CIOs and CISOs want to build on that momentum.

However, in the rush to stand up cloud-based applications and remote connections for millions of federal workers, federal IT leaders now face a new phase of technology triage: the need to step back and reassess the long-term sustainability of the IT they put in place.

The sudden push to modernize agency infrastructure and implement solutions designed to support a work-from-anywhere workforce has put federal agencies in a strong position. But it also added a lot of ad hoc solutions into their digital environments, many of which may prove costly or problematic to maintain in the long run.

It’s not too soon, however, for IT leaders to confront a few critical questions: First, do they have a clear picture of what they own and what they’ve added? Second, do they have a longer-term view of what a sustainable IT portfolio looks like? And third, do they and their management teams have a roadmap for what’s required to strengthen their agency’s long-term IT resiliency and agility?

Put sustainability above solutions

Federal agencies have come a long way in determining which assets are operating on their networks and who’s using them. But sustainability can’t happen if you don’t continuously know what you have.

Some of the lessons we’ve learned supporting global enterprises include the realization that while most organizations conduct application profiling, or take the time to assess application dependencies, those efforts often don’t get beyond a stack of reports. The critical information they’ve spent time and money gathering in many cases doesn’t get put into practice. Consequently, organizations would be better served by moving towards a platform strategy that provides a real-time view of their operations.

The goal is to understand what percentage of your workloads are ready to move over to a public cloud; which should remain in a hybrid cloud environment; and which set of workloads will be most sustainable financially over time in those environments. Rationalizing applications and solutions may achieve shorter-term efficiencies. But in the long run, adaptability and agility are better achieved by choosing the right platforms.

Let strategy drive technology

Agency IT departments would also benefit from looking beyond their IT application and workload portfolios and reassessing how they operate and deliver services.

When it comes to long-term IT sustainability, it often makes greater sense to have IT departments functioning more as IT service brokers and providers, capable of matching internal and external needs with the most appropriate technologies, rather than as IT systems managers.

Again, the goal is to keep pace with innovation and adapt quickly to changing requirements. An agile IT service provider ecosystem encourages flexibility rather than equipment refreshes and application updates.

Today’s federal CIOs have a lot of options. By operating more as an IT services broker and fostering an ecosystem of providers who are familiar with an agency’s needs, CIOs can keep their options open, test multiple approaches concurrently, and ultimately serve their internal customers and the public more expeditiously. To foster a more sustainable and flexible future, CIOs should establish an operating environment in which strategy drives technology, rather than having technology drive strategy.

Bring people into the platform

Lastly, while financial considerations remain central to the technology decisions that government agencies make, agencies can’t march forward by pursuing a financial metric without also bringing their workforce along in the process.

Just as the strategy needs to drive the technology, agency leaders must pay greater attention to the impact that strategic technology shifts will have on their employees’ workflows and outcomes. As agencies push to gain greater technical agility, they must also ensure their people get the training they need to be successful.

Technology providers routinely talk about the need for creating an enterprise-wide, holistic view of an organization’s IT environment. The organizations that will excel the most will be those whose leaders create an environment in which people are as much a part of the platform as the technology. The success of those organizations and their CIOs, however, will depend in large part on putting long-term IT sustainability ahead of short-term technical solutions.

Learn more about how your organization can build a sustainable technology future from Dell Technologies.

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NCI needs a synchronized plan for modernizing IT and integrating systems with the broader National Institutes of Health and Department of Health and Human Services, but none of the developers on staff have created one for an agency of its size.

Shilling began standing up the DSC four years ago to minimize NCI’s administrative burden by authorizing digital services, measuring their performance and improving business processes. But absent the right talent, gaps in the system architecture have to be addressed on the fly.

“We’re building this as we go, which is really not ideal,” Shilling said during an ATARC event in late November. “I would love to have somebody who really knows how to do all this and did it already, but I don’t.”

Absent an implementation plan, DSC can’t include language in IT contracts requiring vendors to align to its architecture or have its developers use it as a guide for storing data or building application programming interfaces. Auditing components to see if they’re adhering to the architecture or scoring them with a scorecard is obviously impossible, Shilling said.

NCI has about 15,000 desktop computers and 9,000 employees, who still use antiquated email, PDF, Excel and word document systems to move non-scientific information around.

DSC started by targeting groups who hated their systems and supplying them with minimum viable products for dashboards producing data and reports to gain leadership buy-in.

About 50 technical staffers within NCI but outside DSC needed Lean Six Sigma training to learn how to develop digital services with the hundreds of cloud products and multiple cloud environments at their disposal, Shilling said. A DevSecOps team of all NCI development staff was formed to drive system requirements, and slowly a few federal staffers were brought on to coordinate.

“I don’t have a lot of fed staff, so it’s been a struggle for me,” Shilling said. “But we’re doing it.”

Developers have ServiceNow at their disposal for low code and workflow, Palantir Foundry for data aggregation, identity and access management (IAM) from NIH, and cloud IAM, so technology isn’t the issue, Shilling said.

DSC has also been mapping business processes for several years and has a good handle on what’s going on across NCI.

“We don’t really have a solution to replace,” Shilling said. “It’s not like we have a big answer; we mostly have very old systems, even some PowerBuilder, things like that, or people are using Excel and email to share information.”

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The 5th Fleet’s Saildrone Explorer is a 23-foot-long, 16-foot-tall unmanned vessel that uses the wind to propel it through the seas. Solar panels help power AI-enabled computers and sensors onboard that steer the vessel and collect data on its surroundings.

The boat is the first of many the Navy hopes to launch from its new “joint hub for Saildrone operations” at the Royal Jordanian Naval Base in Aqaba, Jordan.

Small unmanned systems are becoming increasingly popular for the military’s pursuit of digital operations and services. For the Navy, being able to send unmanned tech to collect data and potentially detect adversary activity is critical on the open sea, and could even be a part of offensive operations one day.

The Saildrone and other new digital tools stem from Task Force 59, a special group in the Navy’s Central Command focused on integrating AI and emerging tech into its operations. The Saildrone’s launch also kicks off a new exercise dubbed “Digital Horizon,” according to the Navy.

“These are exciting times for Task Force 59 as we team with the Royal Jordanian Navy to establish our hub for Red Sea operations in Aqaba and deploy some of our new maritime robotics,” said Capt. Michael Brasseur, commander of NAVCENT’s new task force for unmanned systems and artificial intelligence.

For the Navy, its focus on digital services has been to incorporate tech that can expand operations and data networks to increase its global maritime reach. Other projects within its digital umbrella have included unmanned vessels, but this is the first wind-powered boat that could offer a longer range without being tied to mechanical propulsion.

“Our Saildrones leverage machine learning and artificial intelligence to enhance maritime domain awareness, extending the digital horizon with a sustainable, zero-carbon solution,” said Brasseur.

Much of the military has been focused on using AI to increase domain awareness, or “over the horizon” sight, for its operations. The idea is to use the power of AI to sift through large quantities of data to create insights on data from across a battlefield, a capability stymied by stove-piped systems that often can’t communicate with each other.

The 5th Fleet is currently in the “early stages” of being able to add these kinds of integrations to its operations, it said. In October, the task force integrated and evaluated new small, portable autonomous vessels alongside crewed ships in the Arabian Gulf during an exercise. Earlier in December, the task force also initiated another at-sea operational test for a similar system off the coast of Bahrain.

“The U.S. Navy is learning important lessons that will inform future operational employment,” it said.

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GSA will also explore including sites like benefits.gov and grants.gov in the entrance to shared services addressing major life experiences.

The executive order signed Monday builds on the vision of the President’s Management Agenda for effective, equitable and accountable service delivery by introducing 36 customer experience (CX) improvement commitments.

“The Biden-Harris administration is undertaking an all-hands-on-deck effort to make government services simpler and more secure, and as the home of governmentwide shared services, GSA has a leading role to play,” said Administrator Robin Carnahan in a statement. “For years, GSA has pioneered innovative solutions, like login.gov and USA.gov, that make it easier for the American public to interact with the government online, and today’s executive order will build on these efforts.”

The executive order further directs GSA to create a sustained, governmentwide service deliver process in the form of a product roadmap.

Multidisciplinary teams will support agencies delivering the most important public-facing services, known as high-impact service providers (HISPs), in alignment with state and local governments when possible.

GSA will also work with the Department of Veterans Affairs to seamlessly integrate login.gov customer accounts in lieu of outdated, duplicative sign-in options.

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The order mandates that federal agencies commit to placing citizens’ user experience at the center of everything they do and that departments take actions including piloting new online tools and technologies to provide a “simple, seamless and secure customer experience.”

The EO comes after the Biden-Harris administration last month announced that improving the design of digital services and the customer experience management of high-impact government service providers were among top priorities in the president’s management agenda.

The directive seeks to place the key life events at the center of digital services, in an attempt to redefine citizens’ relationship with the federal government. The order is expected to mention several key touchpoints for citizens, which include: retiring, filing your taxes, surviving a disaster, traveling, financing post-secondary education and accessing VA benefits.

A spokesperson for the Alliance for Digital Innovation said the technology lobby group broadly supported the new order but called on the Biden administration and Congress to support it with funding through structures such as the Technology Modernization Fund and the Federal Citizen Services Fund.

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The institution could operate like a military academy, but for training civil servants, offering a four- to five-year combined undergraduate and master’s degree because agencies require advanced digital skills.

First recommended by the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, the idea of a digital service academy piqued the interest of the Senate Armed Services Personnel subcommittee. The committee asked GAO to study the matter, resulting in a roundtable discussion of chief technology officers, chief data officers, chief information officers, academics and other experts on Oct. 13.

“A digital service academy could help develop the pipeline of digital services workers to better meet the needs of the federal workforce, according to roundtable participants,” reads GAO’s report released Friday. “Considerations for such an academy include the kinds of skills that would be taught and the composition and size of a graduating class.”

Skills could address updating legacy IT systems; introducing advanced technologies like AI; managing cyber risks in cloud environments, where the work is too sensitive for contractors; and improving service delivery using data insights. Students would also need to learn how the federal government operates, from timelines to data-sharing agreements to understanding data bias, according to the roundtable.

For the academy to work, agencies would need to integrate their mission needs into digital projects for students, offer them mentorships, stipulate a term of federal service for graduates, and establish career pathways to improve retention once terms end.

“Federal agencies face challenges in recruiting and retaining digitally-skilled staff as the career path is not well-defined,” reads the report. “As noted earlier, the current Office of Personnel Management occupational series does not capture the range of the digital services positions needed in the federal government, which limits recruitment efforts.”

One agency represented at the roundtable had more than 2,000 open positions requiring digital skills — executives, program staff, product managers, software developers and engineers — which resulted in project backlogs. On the flip side, another agency lacked AI projects needed to retain talent with that skillset.

The roundtable also suggested pay caps be increased for graduates because the lowest level of compensation for digital staff remains General Schedule-9, and salaries vary between agencies. Hiring should also be streamlined with the federal average time to hire digital staff still around nine months. Even fellows and interns require in-house talent to train them.

Lastly the roundtable noted full-time equivalent (FTE) allocations, used by the Office of Management and Budget to manage employment, would need to be increased to accommodate a new academy.

“Without additional FTE allocations, participants said, agencies’ capacity to absorb digital service academy graduates would be limited,” reads the report. “Even with expanded budgets, agencies at or near their FTE caps would not be able to bring in new digitally-skilled staff and would instead need to rely on contractors for digital services work.”

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The administration in its statement of priorities said service delivery from federal service providers has “not kept pace with the needs and expectations of those it serves” and that it will work to address such shortcomings head-on.

“This includes building on progress among Federal High Impact Service Providers—those services that serve the largest percentage of people, conduct the greatest volume of transactions annually, and have an outsized impact on the lives of the individuals they serve,” the document says. “Focusing on these high-impact services will yield capabilities, tools, and practices that will cascade to other Federal programs and services as well, improving our delivery Government-wide.”

The document, issued by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), outlines equity, dignity and accountability as three overarching themes that it says will provide a foundation for federal government policy.

The president’s management agenda is a set of initiatives and standards delivering an overarching management vision for an administration’s term of office.

As in past management agendas, federal IT delivery is emphasized as an enabler to deliver this plan’s goals, calling for agencies to “continue to enhance federal information technology (IT) and cybersecurity as key enablers of mission delivery.”

“Cybersecurity and IT modernization are critical tools that must be at the foundation of Government management. The COVID-19 pandemic showed us how critical IT investments are to supporting mission delivery and the essential work of Government,” the plan says. “We will continue to bolster Federal cybersecurity and ensure that secure systems help deliver Government services. To better prepare for our future, we also must identify and address critical skills gaps across the Federal IT and cybersecurity workforce.”

Data management and data science capacity building are also crucial across the federal enterprise, according to the agenda.

Other key developments within the PMA include a focus on federal agency recruitment – hiring the most qualified candidates for jobs from a diverse pool of talent – and ensuring that all employees have the chance to join a union.

Other core priorities outlined in the strategy document include ensuring OMB and the Office of Personnel Management have the tools to support agency human resources staff with data-driven strategic workforce planning.

In the PMA, the administration said also that it will use its procurement and financial assistance resources to drive the development of new technologies and solutions.

Commenting on the launch of the PMA, Jason Miller, OMB deputy director for management, said: “To advance the President’s ambitious agenda for our country, we must strengthen our Government’s capacity to deliver for the American people.”

Miller added: “The Biden-Harris Management Agenda Vision marks a crucial step forward in this ambitious undertaking—laying out a clear, bold roadmap toward a more equitable, effective, and accountable Government that delivers results for all.”

During the Trump administration, the PMA focused on three central pillars of reform: technology and workforce management, data accountability and transparency, and federal workforce transformation.

Over the course of the administration, this resulted in specific policies including the creation of IT modernization Centers of Excellence and the OMB’s reorganization efforts.

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Speaking Monday at the ACT-IAC 2021 Imagine Nation conference in Hershey, Penn., the federal CIO cited the Kennedy administration’s approach to the Apollo Program and noted that federal IT leaders would benefit from adopting a similar bias to action and ambitious approach to solving large technology problems.

During the 11-year Apollo Program, NASA’s fast-fail approach to innovation resulted in technological advances that subsequently were used in the development of fire retardant suits for firefighters, solar panels and chlorine-free swimming pools.

“I am asking everyone here today to be unwilling to postpone what is possible. We need to accommodate each person’s needs and…give them the exceptional customer experience that is on par with their favorite consumer brands,” she added.

In particular Martorana said that agencies must work to overcome communication silos between centers of excellence and adopt a relentless focus on simplicity of user interface. The technology exists today to provide citizens with a seamless experience, according to the federal CIO.

“We must, and we will bring our performance in line with public expectations…we know we can [provide] an outstanding customer experience for the American people,” she added.

Earlier this year in September, Martorana in a White House blog stressed the importance of CIOs across government thinking about the services they provide to citizens, rather than simply the IT systems they administer.

At the time, the federal technology leader outlined priorities for the Biden administration and has previously stressed the need to be product- and service-oriented in order to improve agencies’ delivery on their mission objectives.

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Writing in a White House blog post Thursday, the federal technology leader outlined priorities for the Biden administration and her expectations for how CIOs should approach the modernization of federal networks. She has previously stressed the need to be product- and service-oriented, saying that adopting cloud and other modern technologies are needed steps to improve agencies’ delivery on mission.

“As Federal CIO, I’m empowering Chief Information Officers across government to place our customers – our citizens – at the center of everything we do,” she wrote Thursday. “This means we must understand what our customers need so we can adjust our delivery methods to improve our service. It also requires us to organize around users and services instead of information systems.”

Her post also noted recent funding made available to agencies through the Technology Modernization Fund. It follows news this morning that the fund will distribute $311 million for seven new agency IT modernization projects.

Cybersecurity and the move to zero-trust architecture remain key priorities of the Biden administration, according to Martorana.

“Our Zero Trust strategy will ensure every agency is adopting cybersecurity principles that consider every person, device, and network inside of an organization as untrusted and even potentially compromised,” she wrote. “This strategy will make it harder for even sophisticated actors to compromise an organization.”

Martorana also stressed that federal IT shops across the government are expected to hire a diverse workforce. She said it’s critical to have a broad workforce to ensure biases are not introduced into the systems that support government services.

“The Biden Administration believes a diverse IT workforce is essential,” she wrote.

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