As Federal agencies continue on the long road to digital transformation, David Harrity, General Services Administration Enterprise Infrastructure Operations Associate CIO, today highlighted the fundamental steps agencies should take to become “digital enterprises.”
Speaking at an FCW workshop today, Harrity listed five elements that can turn an agency into a digital enterprise:
- FedRAMP-authorized compute and storage solutions;
- Modernized network architecture achieved by shifting toward software-defined networking and hyper-converged infrastructure to meet increased end-user demands;
- Use of internet-of-things devices in combination with cloud and software-defined networking to increase agency capabilities;
- Data science and analytics to “more deeply understand the business”; and
- Artificial intelligence to reduce low-value work and “free up resources for data analytics, process governance,” and other high-value tasks.
Even with these elements, Harrity said, changing the culture of work within an agency to a more digital orientation is foundational to creating a digital enterprise.
To make that cultural change, agencies need to tackle a further list of tasks including: shifting to a “business technology” mindset; increasing visibility to expose IT performance and build trust across the enterprise; seeking efficiency gains; creating an environment that brings workflows online; and building cybersecurity into processes from the beginning.
“When I have conversations with my customers and my colleagues, I try to even sometimes correct myself and say the word ‘business technology’ versus information technology,” he said. “I like to talk about business technology – what is it that you need from technology, to either improve your speed to market, whether it’s whatever the work or the mission that drives [IT] visibility,” Harrity said.