Shifting the organizational mindset around cloud modernization is a driving factor for Federal agencies to overcome the challenges of cloud migration. Having this organizational mindset shift is also key when putting a cloud governance in place.
When speaking today at the Software and Cyber Solutions Symposium about a better governance process U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development CIO David Chow champions a more centralized and sustained vision.
“So it goes back to what we talked about before, that this is a lot of human element involved that it can be solved by having more a centralized vision, sustained vision, or it can be resolved by … having this community of practice,” Chow said.
Chow also offered that cloud migration is truly about the people, to which Catapult Information System Program Manager for the Department of Defense’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency Rachel Maxwell agreed.
Maxwell said that agencies must have a cost-benefit analysis mindset change that start from the top leadership positions. Additionally, a mindset change also includes helping people within the agency understand that cloud adoption will help in shifting what they are doing and not fully automating their job – just automating some of the processes.
“So here I am telling my team: ‘we’re going to go to a cloud, and some of your stuffs going to be in this automated DevSecOps pipeline.’ So automatically, they’re thinking ‘my job’s going away,’” Maxwell said. “And that’s not what’s happening.” She explained that the agency would be able to automate some of the job functions that weren’t able to be completed without the automated processes.
