[Music] thank you gentlemen crystal such an honor to hear your insights i think we all learned a little something today so thank you very much our next section will focus on digital transformation in the modern workplace and how government agencies can strengthen and empower their workforce i'd like to introduce our next moderator for the session kevin brooks digital strategist at servicenow with this esteemed panel consisting of byron caswell vice president of strategic consulting at icf mark patterson cio at the dod education activity and ken rogers deputy cio at the state department kevin [Music] [Music] i need to go good morning everybody so i'm going to start this off that was a great great presentation the keynote by general crystal so uh it's hard to follow him but we're going to try maybe pivot a little bit because some things he said really resonated with me in this uh this is steam group here so i want to start off by asking mark mark you've got a unique mission at dodea you know you've got students parents educators staff they all have to get along and figure things out can you talk about some of the tools that you guys have in place to engage that constituency i think when i and i could easily say general mcchrystal stole all my comments but i won't do that um i think in 2018 when i came to the organization we really had to look at what digital modernization was and for my organization it wasn't just modernization it was transformation so some of the strategies or plans we needed to look at involved three phases people processes and platforms and that's sort of the way we addressed it because it wasn't just about updating the systems it was about this whole organizational change that was going to be required for us to digitally modernize so people very important if you think of people on a sliding scale i had about 25 percent of the workforce who were ready to go these were the innovators they were already what asking me when can we when can we when can we those are the ones you have to hold back a little bit sometimes because they're too active they really want to go security out the window let's charge let's charge let's do these products then you know we had about you know 60 percent of the workforce that we're uh maybe we can do maybe we can't do and then you have the hater section which everybody has those who don't want to go and it's not that they they hate necessarily they hate change so as we were looking at transformation we applied a number of strategies to the people even before we brought the platforms in we had to look at our people and what can we do to encourage them to grow we started a champions program which took about 20 percent of the organization those ones that were already all ready to go and we expanded that a little bit so we started sliding that needle from 20 percent to 30 percent to 40 percent and we we were developing innovators we were developing our team our employees to look for that transformation and be excited about it then we attacked the processes we had about 20 applications much older 10 plus years old access databases that were being held onto by the organization we had to re-look at those business processes even before we got to the platforms and then we looked at the platforms so we we sort of took it a little differently than probably a number of organizations do would just modernize the systems and the the employees will come along i've got a much different user community of educators education technologists how do we bring a group of teachers doctors um into this concept of digital transformation and i think we're we're so far successful it's just been a slow process but that's okay we're gonna get there so great ken i'm going to follow up with you and just say hey can you add to that how would i have state have you done that yeah i think the the people side of the equation is is quite challenging at state state department is the oldest federal agency in the government 230 years old so we consider change every century not every decade and and so right now as we as as we're well into the 21st century it's okay to pivot from an on-prem environment to a cloud environment it's okay um and and so that change is is um is not necessarily a good word to use if you care about your your career at state department what what matters is consensus making sure people are comfortable um and so we we kind of pivoted with a with a cloud strategy that pushed our productivity suite um into the cloud so you're really going from uh an 80 you know 100 capability in your on-prem stuff and as you pivot to the cloud you really get 20 of that capability i'm talking about microsoft productivity or or g suite you're you're moving into that cloud you get about 20 less but just because they've used those technologies for the past 20 years 30 years doesn't mean they understand how that changed when it moved into a cloud environment so it was really don't assume they know the difference between sharepoint groups teams and and and all the little iterations that are happening and i think the challenge we have is it's it's uh it's been a continuous process of technology iterating far faster than an organization can adapt so you really have to think through where does that where's the value of that technology really meet the business of the organization so i'm introducing the right things to the organization and not stressing the organization out because changes is such a challenge um to everyone um and and so the you know kind of pivot fast forward think about state department we're in 190 countries we have about 500 locations around the globe every single country we're in and there are some that are great environments with lots of technology and connectivity and others that are hardship posts that don't have that so but but our whole business model is a destination it's an embassy it's people coming together at a place so a couple years ago covet hits and now i have to completely pivot i literally had maybe 2 000 concurrent workers um were working remotely and and i had to pivot within 90 days to 80 000 people globally working remotely and and it it really took it really took a big toll on culture and i can talk about that as we move through the conversation but a huge cultural hit where i have people around the globe working from home disconnected to their colleagues when being connected to their colleagues is our primary business so huge challenge but you know two years later we're now asking the question what what's the flexible workforce of the future look like and how do we equip and enable that to be effective it's not coming back to work it's it's not coming back into the office it's it it's it requires asking the really really hard question how do i build culture going forward in a different paradigm okay thank you for that uh byron so these two gentlemen talked about transformation as government employees and executives can you talk about a little bit as an implementer and how you help your customers do that yeah sure i mean seeing customers across the health defense intelligence security civilian spaces commercially as well i mean when we really look at digital transformation or modernization efforts i mean we're talking about organizational change with the technology wrapper right and so you know general crystal had a few things ken mark same thing about creating culture that is comfortable with discomfort with discomfort and being able to really embrace that embrace that difference in how we operate because you know the mission still remains the mission still accelerates we need to do more with less typically we need to do more with more in different things in different spaces and watching you know helping and assisting federal customers move toward that that goal is really you know rewarding for me but when i think about some of the elements around it you know the people process technology tools platforms element the organizational sort of transformation and culture issue for it and then one of the things that i i always see quite a bit of really is um sorry one sec one of the things i see i see quite a bit of there is having the organizational disciplines and the just the willingness for failing and you know we agree on the mission we agree on the outcome how to get there is always up for discussion and so when organizations become successful across those they really embrace that that aspect for it when they move the cloud when they move to doing different things in the in to meet that same mission that's really what hits for for us pretty well okay great thank you so can we go back to you for a second here and so the uh the federal government spends about eighty percent of its i.t budget on existing systems uh well existing systems already have a technical debt so that only 20 percent of your budget to do modernize can you give us some of the things that you go through your mind and how you uh get to that point of maintaining current systems while also modernizing and innovating yeah i'm i'm very well aware of that we have we have one of the indicators when i look at our portfolio across state department is is a development modernization side of my budget in the o m side of the budget and and i think one of the and then of course that's the money we have and can use and then i have my my from the people side and the mission side i have demand so my demand far exceeds my budget and and what what chews up my ability to actually meet that demand and deliver the capabilities of the mission today needs is really to look at that o m cost and shrink that and and and um and so i i think again i i come back to there's a couple things that we're doing so state department out of that 90 billion is is has a three billion dollar i.t portfolio one billion of that or a third of that sits directly under the cio of course as as general mccrystal said the cio is still responsible for the other 60 that's done decentralized across the department so so we have to manage the portfolio and then drive change with that budget that's directly under the under the cio and there's two things we put in place over the past year for our cio keith jones we put in an i.t program review looking at investments from across the department we established a site cio i.t evaluation methodology 16 indicators and four categories so we can look at the health and the value of rit investments which ones are on the right path moving in the right direction are we taking the the five um programming languages that have that have 70 front-end apps to an oracle system and cleaning that up or not and so the program review really allows the leadership across the department it's is shared by the cio with participation by the cfo and the cao and the cizo so it's a pretty it's a pretty in in-depth review of the health and value of those investments across the department and then we have the after-action follow-up so that's that's number number one in order to get our arms around that the second one is to really look at enterprise standards one of the big challenges you have in a decentralized organization with 32 bureaus and 60 of the i.t happening outside the organization outside of direct cio control is is that um if they they're going to build to what they need and if you don't provide enterprise standards to lower the operating cost of that environment they're going to you're going to find yourself duplicating capabilities across 32 bureaus and i'll use i'll use the example of identity management i can build identity management into every single application well that makes no sense whatsoever or i could build a standard and require all apps to all investments to leverage that central standard or service going forward so that's a way to get that economies to scale and push down the cost associated with the apps that sit close to the mission i'm talking hr financial acquisitions you can go down the list consular affairs is one of our our our biggest areas where we interface with customers for passports and visas and of course i love the fact that we have procrastinating americans when it comes to travel because we get expedited passport fees that goes into an i.t central fund for funding new initiatives across the apartment so get this we get close to three to four hundred million dollars a year because you guys wait to the last minute to get your passports and it's it's great so you know wait to the last minute yes i'm guilty you got some of my money so um so it is really important to create those standards and then um you know i've been uh at the department for numer numerous years and you you look at the reputation of the it organization you look at the tools that are out there and and there's been a big push the the last um couple administrations to to really get technology right and and if you look at what happens with technology is is it used to be a support function and if you look across industry every single market um where there is success have moved technology into in into par with the mission of the organization and brought it together it's the starbucks is an i.t company that sells coffee that's their thinking with the importance of digitization in their marketplace and we need to be thinking that as well and and i and so but when when i look at how we do um technology um a little over 50 of my it workforce are contractors many of you here in this in in this setting and so if i if i look at my total portfolio 3 billion 400 million is my fed workforce across the whole department and the rest is hardware software and services that i'm buying from industry if i don't get acquisitions right i do not transform technology um in the federal workforce effectively and so we've got to figure out a way to do that and i'll give one quick story with that regarding servicenow when when we we moved to the cloud and and you know the the the 20 that are aggressively adopting technology i had close to 30 servicenow production environments no close to 50 servicenow production environments and i had over 20 contracts in order to put that in place okay so that's five to seven people managing every single one of those contracts every single one of those production environments i had to secure 58 production environments needed an ato not one scaling 58 how does that make any sense if i want my money to go further i've got to consolidate that started with an acquisition the only place you can buy service now is through our central uh purchase with servicenow what that gave me is information who in the department is using this platform and why that allowed me to have a conversation with them do you want to continue to spend 80 percent of your money for infrastructure and platform or do you want to pivot that to spend 20 for infras infrastructure and platform and spend 80 for capability for your mission when i framed it that way i had i had um the majority of bureaus saying okay we don't want to run this we want to use it we don't want to secure it we'll use your secure environment and that really launched a significant pace of cloud app development and adoption across the department we lowered the barriers of entry and and you know when you when you identify cost savings you you you you it's not cost saving it's cost avoidance so the so the savings that my bureaus were able to experience really pivoted towards their capability that they could provide to their customers and it was it was a huge success stop there i could keep going i get it excited about that stuff so a little earlier you talked about culture and you want to come back to that but so i'm going to get take us down that path indirectly so i'm going to come back to mark and ask you i know you all have a really good uh low code no code platform you're using which is servicenow and you have a citizen development program at dodea can you tell us about that a little bit yes we've tr we've worked you know one of the things part of that whole transformation effort was how do we push the power of the platform down to the lowest level possible and the reason for that is because we understand or we understood how old development was done by your little development shop in the dark at night all around screens just developing away and realize the power of any platform any should be pushed to the lowest level so we've actually identified training we train down at our districts we have district personnel that are actually trained in service now so they they're able to go in and do a certain level of work a certain level of automation they do it in service now they do it in sharepoint you know whatever tool they need we provide them with the toolbox whether that tools a shovel or a backhoe like servicenow is we might give them the shovel and and train them on the shovel but we provide that training down at the lower levels they go through our learning management system they take a level of courses they do an exercise and then they're given a certificate they're given a certification so now they're a pseudo developer they're an innovator within the organization so we've pushed that platform down to the lower level so we can be more responsive so they can do some of their own work that increased innovation excitement about now i have something at my school district level then i need to automate that may not be an enterprise project so let's do it you know and we still provide them the support if it's something big it comes to the enterprise and then we look at it that way so we're really excited about that i don't know others that have done that but we had to push that out we don't have the bandwidth to as you start this transformation you the organization develops an appetite yeah and the appetite just gets bigger and bigger and everybody wants to automate and everybody wants something new well the only way we can achieve an innovation innovative pace is by spreading that down and letting them handle some of that at the lower level so then byron follow up on that uh tell us a little bit more more expansively you've seen this work throughout the government so yeah and i'll hit what ken said i mean as a guy who lives in that 20 of modernization budget right you know there's there's only so much velocity that can be delivered for that given technical debt given funding constraints and so democratizing the pace of change and building again that organizational muscle of we're going to continue to modernize together and yes there are times where you need sort of specialized expertise but a lot of the processes a lot of the you know work that we do the meta work that we do that enables the mission is something that you know citizens soldiers airmen sailors you know federal employees can be part of and so as you kind of look across the technology space that exists and align it to business function outcome technology services and supporting capabilities for it how do we pick the right investment strategy to ken's perspective of giving the organization the tools that it needs to drive change at the pace it demands and disappoint everybody at a rate they can accept um in those modernization journeys when we look at the low code space right there are things that servicenow does really well there are things that things like appian or salesforce or even some of the emerging players do really well and making sure that a department and entity has the right tool for the right job and makes the right business decision given you know funding constraints licensing realities but also performance maintainability and supportability across those becomes really powerful to start rolling out sort of larger and larger initiatives and become get success and build that virtuous cycle of hey we're part of that group that's moving the department forward and then oh that's that creates interest and engagement and more success that's great okay so now i'm going to close a circle and go back to even deeper into culture and so we'll start with go left to right because make it easier so mark you talk about you know you've got multiple generations of workers you've got multiple generations of parents and then you've got k-12 education you have to be responsible for how do you how do you mold the culture of your digital transformation to fit the culture of your organizational mission that's a good question i'm not sure i've gotten there yet actually to be honest with you we're trying you know and i think it is that variance from that teacher that's been teaching for 55 years in a dodea school and is reluctant even to access the internet for their curriculum which is all internet based now anyway to that innovator that you know education technologist that every day is asking me when are we going to get this product when are we going to get this product and i think it's been an interesting journey so far as we've done that but i think we're able to engage everyone and have been through through robust communication through focus groups trying to bring in everyone to sort of move the organization forward together in many ways i think one of the biggest challenges and i i missed it earlier has really been my i.t staff you know even if you look at your i.t departments as we're making these migrations to cloud i have system administrators that have been with the organization for 25 years they're they're kicking and screaming hugging that server in the server room when i'm telling them no that's in the cloud now so there's a whole aspect of culture even within your i.t divisions that has to change as part of this transformation if that doesn't change first i'm probably going to be unsuccessful you know when we're having this conversation next year hopefully somewhere absolutely um we can talk about where we've we've been from that but that's a key point is internally within our own i.t support structure has to also transform it has to also change so ken do you see the same thing yeah i underscore the the importance of the the i.t workforce changing we've got a couple things so as i have moved exchange servers from you know over two three four hundred from 190 countries and it's all in the cloud i no longer need that expertise on the ground i i'm moving up the stack i don't need those network i still need network engineers jerry karen i'm i'm not picking on you um but but but uh yeah exactly so i'm moving up the stack and the need is is really at that apple layer because infrastructure and platform are being provided to us i don't have and from a cyber security standpoint i'm locking down who can touch the controls so that my the the needs that i have in the in in the it space are moving up to that that consultant role where they can sit down with a customer understand the business understand what their requirements introduce we talk about innovation as technology innovation 90 of innovation is business process re-engineering if you're not creating efficiencies on how we work you can just put a new shiny object in there to do it but it's the old couch path that we're we're leveraging so you have to introduce that so acquisitions talk about my my partners constantly looking for those it organizations that really want to help me execute my mission they're they're they're not you know more than just a revenue stream no that's not the right thing to do this is a better path because it brings you more value but as we as we pivot to this through the the whole covet era my dev team i have my development in the cloud i now have a dev team that operates in 10 7 to 10 states across the country it's lower price for me because they're in lower cost of living areas i get better talent and it's better quality of life okay two three years ago management the management level we would you know maybe you could have one day a telework but the job's not going to get done what we've been forced into is realizing the mission can get done so as we pivot forward how am i thinking of of leveraging what we've experienced for the past two years to really create a healthier workforce that really can execute the mission with a better quality of life those are the burning questions for us and i think we have an opportunity to continue down that path you know one of the new things that that has swept across um the federal government is diversity and inclusion um and those are challenging sets of issues that are associated with that but if as you bring and and one of the biggest challenges as you address the diversity issue is the inclusion issue but the paradigm has shifted so almost every video conference i'm on instead of having 10 or 15 people i have 30 or 40 people on a on a a webex or a team's meeting and so there's more people involved but i don't know their faces i know their initials you know the the introverts i know by initial and the extroverts i know by faces you know and and they haven't muted their their so so the the cultural issue that we're supposed to be introducing the the very difficult is what are the new norms that i'm putting in place how are we going to be how how is being decentralized and remote in a hybrid way gonna still create inclusive opportunities for career growth career growth and development and so we're grappling with that we're looking at the future we don't want to lose the value that we've gotten out of the last couple years but we we want to leverage that in an effective way so you're saying the room where it happens it's no longer a room it's on zoom exactly there you go right i got that okay byron so again let's let's take that to a little bigger level just instead of just two departments talk about culture when it comes to a digital transformation writ large and how you all lean into that as as a partners so it's interesting there because ken said something i think really powerful and seeing like commercial entities that have gone through this or going still going through this five years ago federal civilian you know in the same kind of in that modernization shoot and then dod that is kind of grappling with mission and then the technology modernization that follows after it right um the the commercial perspective is that every company is a tech company right they do starbucks sells coffee as a tech company right as the public sector market starts looking at themselves as technology organizations that create or drive this mission outcome you know cancer institute for instance right it is a technology company focused on bioinformatics that is trying to eradicate cancer right cms is a technology company that is uh responsible for overseeing and orchestrating the medicare and medicaid portfolio for us right that perspective starts driving the right behaviors and organization and like we look at work change and you know multiple models top down bottom up middle out kind of thing and they're all right in some ways and they're all wrong in some ways and it's sort of as the organization you know the people and the culture that exists tailoring that um specific modernization journey or specific the specific needs of the leverage to pull to move them to the to a better place where they can start you know making good investment decisions for the technology platforms they use or the technology services that they acquire they can start accelerating and democratizing the pace at which they change with modernizing legacy systems or decoupling things from you know the on-prem kind of world that we all lived in for the entirety of the technology world that becomes a a real journey that we start seeing and sort of as you look at you know state right seeing that convergence and servicenow environments which remember that pretty well um and the technology business management perspective that sort of was put in to make that investment review and decisions more strong and and better for it like that repetition of it as we go through different customer environments becomes like it's the same story with different actors and different you know a different path but we're all like everybody that we run into it's they're at a point in that journey that's great okay gents to wrap this up i want to give you each of like one and a half minutes so to tell us one lesson that you would give to our our esteemed uh audience out here they're all in the midst of some type of digital transformation give us one thing you would do if you find yourself stuck one tip for them so we'll start with you again i said in the wrong chair i should have been down there so i could have answered that one one thing that that i would do if i found myself stuck i i think it really would be rally the troops you know i'm a soldier rally the troops bring the team together how do we get past this um because we're not one person we're we're a team that's making this happen so how do we get past whatever this is um and include collaboration with with users and others to see what the best solution would be to vendors others to get past that so all right okay yeah i'll focus on the uh the i.t space we talk about low code no code if you're not doing that you're introducing technical debt of the future you it is so critical that we we look at these platforms from that loco to no code so we don't have that technical debt but the the biggest fundamental change in in the i.t workforce that is is driving success at state department is agile development understanding mvp and then iterating i i we literally do i i can be you know fact-checked in a minute by one of my staff we we do about six sprints a week and and we have about four five work streams and work we get to that mvp in an agile way and then we start iterating the highest priorities to the lowest and it's a it is it's is as hard as it is to get some to let go of their servers down in the data centers it's hard to get let to get that transformation from you know the waterfall approach to an agile approach but that is the future of what we're doing what we're here and and and doing in in the i.t space so i'll do a douglas adams call back of you know first off don't panic right you are remember that you know if you're stuck in a modernization effort you're not alone people have walked this journey before you people are walking it alongside you so it's going to be okay somehow the vendor community the the honestly the government community i mean the networks that we establish at places like this at other conferences for it you know somebody has walked through and hit this path for it call out to friends like it's okay and then also i mean of the vendor partners that you have right as you look through how you buy services ken said something about demand that they are consultants not they're not going to go take an order they're going to challenge inferences they're going to ask the hard questions of why are we doing this this way is there have we thought about something different because if you don't get that then you're kind of in this echo chamber and if you're stuck in an echo chamber not a great place to be um you're burning dollars you're burning time you're burning good will you're burning you know you're not completing that mission that you need to so i mean those two things like it's going to be okay make sure that you're you're finding partners that really can that want to that care about your mission as much as you do and will push along the the you know consulting path to help you get there together that's great well gentlemen thank you for your time today this has been a great it's a very insightful conversation and i look forward to having more you guys in the future and mark i'm going to hold you to that promise to tell me next year how you're doing steve [Applause] [Music]