As the private sector continues to up the ante on what’s possible for digital applications that make life better, the public space has historically struggled to keep up with the pace of that innovation. Strict governance, policies, and traditional hierarchies can make it more difficult to enact significant change in these spaces.
The time of simply using technology to enable improved operations has passed. With initiatives like the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Cloud Smart program in place, the stakes are higher than ever for public sector organizations to truly adopt digital-first mindsets that emphasize a foundational evolution of the way they do business. While this imperative can feel daunting, the most important thing for public sector leaders to understand is that getting started is key. There are blueprints from commercial first movers we can use and adopt to make the transformation easier and more seamless. And the process doesn’t have to occur overnight. Set your strategy to be aggressive, yet realistic, and in time, your agency will achieve a digital-first culture.
By Alex Rodriguez
Moving from Tech-Enabled to Digital-First in the Federal Space
• What are the parts of your organization that
are burdened by highly manual processes?
• What does your enterprise IT strategy look like?
• Where do you feel technology is most heavily
customized to meet legacy processes?
• How does emerging technology fit into your IT
roadmap?
• What are the biggest technological pain points
in your citizen and employee experiences?
• What are the risks of inaction?
Once you’ve answered these questions honestly and with an open mind, consider your next best steps are to start transitioning your agency to a digital-first culture. While this change requires an upfront investment of time and resources, the payoff in the end is so worth it.
Here’s a short list to get you started:
Now that you have a better understanding of the differences between technology-enabled and digital-first federal agencies, take a moment to think about your own organization. When we work with public sector teams, we always start by conducting a readiness assessment that provides a gap analysis and allows us to identify low-hanging fruit. As we mentioned previously, transitioning to a digital-first organization is a large undertaking and it can feel difficult to get started. It’s okay to start small. As a matter of fact, starting with a pilot can really inform a longer-term digital-first strategy. But the first step is to start asking the right questions.
But as digital experience becomes considered more prerequisite to an outstanding employee or citizen experience, federal agencies can no longer uphold business as usual if they want to maintain trust with their constituencies and meet increasingly stringent metrics for efficiency and resource allocation.
So what is a digital-first organization? Being a digital-first enterprise is much more than implementing new technologies. It’s connecting technology and culture to adapt to constant disruption, innovate business operations, and deliver exceptional consumer, citizen, and employee experiences. Creating trust that fuels citizen engagement and employee retention requires industry experts that can connect people, process, data, and technology to generate sustained growth.
The chart below outlines some differences between tech-enabled organizations and digital-first organizations and how those classifications may manifest in federal agencies.
Data and Technology
Training and Innovation
Security
Cloud Mindset
• Learning from the private sector and embracing
commercial best practices
• A terminal uniqueness mindset that believes commercial
practices don’t apply in the federal space
Technology-Enabled ORGANIZATIONS
DIGITAL-FIRST ORGANIZATIONS
Technology-Enabled ORGANIZATIONS
• Investing in EHR, ERP, CRM, analytics, and informatics
while operating models stay the same
• Creating flexible procurement models that are quicker
and more efficient to streamline adoption of technology
and drive innovation with contractors
DIGITAL-FIRST ORGANIZATIONS
Technology-Enabled ORGANIZATIONS
• Improving overall employee experience
DIGITAL-FIRST ORGANIZATIONS
Technology-Enabled ORGANIZATIONS
Invest in security measures to achieve compliance.
• Achieving an authority to operate
Security as a technical feature meeting minimal compliance requirements siloed security approach
and design
• Forward-looking security measures scale with business
requirements
DIGITAL-FIRST ORGANIZATIONS
• Culture of digital transformation embedded into
the organization
• Skills assessment and development
• Empowering employees to feel ownership over processes
and technology
• Forward-looking training approach
• Formalize innovation initiative – drive innovation
• Standards and best practices sharing
• Executive sponsorship
• Embrace technology
• Intentional change management
• Integration of technology into all core initiatives
Role model digital-first thinking and reward innovation.
• Free up time for employees to focus on mission-critical,
strategic activities
• Manage the transformation actively – it’s not a single
event; it’s a transformation
• Employees that are threatened by technology
• Adding ad-hoc efficiencies to how people do their jobs
• One-off projects and initiatives
• Fighting organizational resistance to change
• Helping shift the mindset of the workforce
Train people and drive the adoption of new technology.
• Making marginal improvements to citizen experience via
technology without a clear strategy or actionable data
• Automating or simplifying existing processes without
evaluating their efficacy
• Customizing technologies to meet legacy processes
• Siloed focus with little to no recognition of
enterprise need
• No governance
Improve how they operate using data and technology.
• Using data to improve citizen experience, based on data
and as part of the larger enterprise strategy
• Looking at end-to-end processes and rethinking how
things are done in the context of available resources
and technology
• Challenging existing workflows and being unafraid to
re-engineer them, when needed
• Highly-predictable processes
• Proactive use of data to initiate and execute process
improvements
• Looking beyond technology to focus on processes first
• Focus on foundational operational improvements
Change how they operate centered around technology and data.
• Procurement strategies that adhere to policies but don’t
think beyond them
• Leveraging technology to solve short-term problems
• Migrating to a cloud environment
• Upgrading legacy systems or technologies
Adopt a cloud-first mindset.
• Driving efficiency, eliminating repetitive tasks,
and reducing manual labor
• Creating and maintaining a Center of Excellence to
provide ongoing Cloud governance
• Measuring transformation success via a set of key
performance indicators
• Implementing and improving scalable processes in
conjunction with technology implementations
• Taking an enterprise view of data rather than working
in siloes
• Transforming how tech, processes, and people can
improve overall outcomes
Embrace and enhance a cloud-smart mindset.
• Cybersecurity is viewed as a core business requirement
• Tailored cybersecurity plans and processes in the context
of maintaining business operations
• Secure proactively by design
• More proactive approach to ensuring appropriate security
measures are in place
• More focus on achieving mission objectives vs. checking
a compliance box
Invest strategically and proactively in security measures to meet mission objectives.