Expert Q&A: Discover a New Style of Government IT

IT leaders are taking a close look at how technology innovations, like cloud, big data, and mobility, are impacting the ways with which government does business with citizens. Scott Gaydos, Chief Technologist at HP Enterprise Services, U.S. Public Sector, says these transformations are giving shape to a new style of government IT. In an interview, he explains how agencies are interacting and engaging with the public in new, customer-centric ways.

Q: What do you mean when you say a “new style” of IT? 

It’s actually about a new style of digital business, powered by IT. It’s a combination of technologies and services to deliver the secure solutions that agencies require. With a new style of IT, agencies are combining things like traditional IT service with cloud, mobile, and big data solutions. This new IT is really a hybrid IT environment. Hybrid IT manifests itself in situations where a business has major systems-of-record existing in legacy environments, along with new systems that deepen citizen engagement and often rely on the support of emerging technologies.

Q: When we talk about hybrid IT, what kind of transformations are we seeing in government, particularly when it comes to citizen engagement?

Government agencies are designing systems for citizen engagement, backed by things like web services and cloud-based infrastructure. They’re helping to make the execution of citizen-facing services much easier and more customer-centric. Take, for instance, the opening of government data sets —things like Data.gov — where agencies are enlisting the public’s help in the analysis of large data sets. The public can engage with the data, and even build new services created from the data. Initiatives like these are creating a new way for government to securely interact and engage with citizens, and it’s transforming how government runs.

Q: Looking at the future, budget is one of the first things on the minds of IT leaders. As a leader, how can you push for transformation in leaner times?

Government leaders need to have documented but flexible multi-year, transformational plans. These plans are inclusive of tactical investments in innovation that help to drive the plan forward. I like to call them transformation roadmaps, and these roadmaps center on a variety of focus areas: IT infrastructure, application portfolios, business processes, and even governance strategy. The roadmap ends up being a strategic artifact that lays out multi-year plans around some high-level item, like lowering cost and staying on budget. But, it also includes specific tactical innovation investments. For instance, a plan might ask where in the process of lowering costs can government move workload from traditional IT into the cloud in order to save money. It’s a strategic plan with iterative tactics, and it can create the framework needed to work in constrained budget environments.

Q: So once you have a plan in place, how do you control things like shadow IT?

Back in the day, shadow IT — a style of IT used inside organizations without explicit organizational approval — meant the small server hidden underneath the desk. But, shadow IT today is just a credit card purchase away for off-premise software services and solutions. The challenge now is that government missions and businesses continue to have needs that outpace traditional secure and locked down service. We actually advise leaders to embrace change, things like shadow IT, by becoming a provider of some services but a broker of all services. As a broker, you maintain control over IT operations and keep your options flexible enough for government to do the work that they need.

Q: What are some of the IT tactics that you see agencies taking today?

What we find are tactics like workload movements to cloud, and exploration of how to invest in mobility. And remember, mobility can mean many different things. It can be about mobility management of devices, but it might also mean the development and release of mobile apps — both internal and external facing. There’s a host of other tactics at play in agencies today, particularly when it comes to data analytics and security. But, if you take a look at a few of these, each one ends up being an item that you can explore and experiment with along a much longer transformational journey.

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