[Music] foreign welcome back folks you can take your seats please we'll get started with our next session I hope you all had some fun networking with peers and that you enjoyed the lunch and had some thought provoking conversations with folks from industry and partners and your peers next up we'll explore the business of building a more resilient government please welcome Donald Remy deputy secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs and John Tien deputy secretary at the Department of Homeland Security and Jonathan album Federal CTO at servicenow welcome thank you again appreciate it thank you all right thanks Steve well welcome back everybody I hope you enjoyed lunch and had some great networking opportunities um thank you all for being here at fed Forum today it's been a tremendous day so far we we have a great panel next and we're going to be focusing on Mission resiliency as Steve said my name is Jonathan album and I'm the federal CTO for servicenow before I joined servicenow I worked in the federal government for many years and I had the opportunity the honor to work for the secretary and the deputy secretary at the Department of Agriculture so I have a pretty good sense of the challenges and complexities that are that our panelists face when it comes to keeping their agencies running so um first I'd want to thank you both for being here it's really an honor to have the opportunity to moderate a panel to Deputy secretaries and I'd like to have you each share some thoughts on the importance of mission resiliency in your agencies and you know let us know the priorities that your office have so deputy secretary Remy I'd like to start with you well first Jonathan let me say thank you for inviting me it's a pleasure it's an honor in fact to be here with you and to be on the stage with my colleague John Tien it is just a wonderful time to talk about resiliency because as we all know it's the core of how we deliver on our mission and we just started this month of March some call it March Madness for those of you who know my prior career you'd recognize what that means to to me but in the context of our agency and as we think about what we have to do we realize that our mission is Everlasting at the Department of Veterans Affairs we're responsible for providing world-class Health Care to all of our veteran population providing timely access to benefits to that same community and so we recognize whether challenges present that are a pandemic for example or weather challenges or other incidents that might arise that would impact what our mission is we have to be resilient and get through that and so what have we done we've looked at those challenges and how our agency has responded over time and what we found is that we can deliver more care and more benefits to more veterans than ever before using the lessons learned from our prior experiences and understanding what we have to do to move forward and we can talk about some of those things I know we have a limited amount of time but we've been able to incorporate what we've learned over the years in terms of what our veterans need their families need what their caregivers and survivors need incorporate that human-centered design and I know your your folks heard about that earlier right and the journey map of a veteran to be able to deliver on the mission of this agency yeah it's a tremendous story yeah that we that we heard this morning deputy secretary how about at the Department of Homeland Security well great thanks very much Jonathan and thanks to you for moderating this panel thanks to all of the folks in this room looking around it looks like a great crowd I gotta look at some of the demographics where you all come from I know there's a good folks set of folks in here maybe even a majority set of folks who like uh Don and I and in your prior life Jonathan as well are indeed current active federal employees uh and then a lot in the private sector who are looking to help build a community of support uh to us in the federal government so again thanks to all of you who are doing what you're doing every day and for being interested in this topic about resilience about technology and about leveraging uh things like data integration so that's great appreciate you coming thanks to uh to Don Remy here uh he won't like it but I'm going to embarrass him here for a second if you take a look at Don Remy's biography it's a long life of service to the nation in and out the private sector and some other things uh you know he was talking about his prior job he didn't say NCAA I will and uh but you know he was like me an army veteran he was an Army Captain he served in Department of Justice came back answered the call of service to raise his right hand to support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America and why am I doing this lead up not so that Don gets all the hard questions I get the easy ones but much more so that uh you know on and this is public knowledge dawn has concluded this chapter uh as the deputy secretary of home of Veterans Affairs and I think we should give him a round pause for coming back congratulations [Applause] uh so for the Department of Homeland Security uh you know two things number one and I know that the question is going to be on the books here in fact I think we'll talk about covid-19 so I won't go so much into that although I do think and I'll talk about that in a minute about what is uh we got to be retrospective about it but we really want to be prospective learning about the lessons learned from that but in terms of broadly speaking when we talk about resilience of Department of Homeland Security if you think about it and if any of you are dhsers don't raise your hands but if you think about our history and if you're following the new cycle a little bit in the you know in the federal Community we just celebrated our 20th anniversary about two weeks ago over in Saint Elizabeth over at a headquarters you have to cross a different River to get to our headquarters it's a great headquarters uh the president came spoke about it and 20 years long time right but we know that secretary my orgas and I both know that there's still opportunities for transformation for the Department for maturation for the department and so much of that comes around building a a set of Integrated Systems oftentimes making sure we're leveraging technology in the right way there were two things that the secretary asked me to do when I came in number one be the deputy secretary number two like Dawn and other Deputy secretaries truly be a statutory filler statutory role as the Chief Operating Officer and so I've really he's asked me to focus on transformation again where technology data integration are a key part of it so much so that for our 2023 priorities the secretary's 2023 priorities there's 12 of them I'm not going to go through all 12 Jonathan's good because the clocks tick in uh but six of them are focused on what you would think about Mission specific things like counterterrorism uh you know being prepared for climate climate change things of that nature but six of them are very much focused on transformation organizationally three on the workforce and three focused on Mission delivery and within there we make sure that resilience preparedness and again integrating technology in the best way possible for American people is a big part of it well I want to build on what you what you just said sir when we think about the world post covid we know that we we learned a lot we moved to remote and hybrid work and I'd like to hear from you um both of you actually we'll start with you uh Deputy secretion what are the lessons that you think we've learned as a country about how we can organize and use technology to ensure that things the government services work under any condition yep thanks so number one again look across the audience a good majority of you are federal employees uh who were in the government uh during the the global pandemic and really hats off to all of you I was not I was in the private sector uh like Don was during much of depends on when you define it but certainly 2020 and first part of 2021 and it took a lot of I think agility uh and flexibility to deal with that situation both as professionals and personally one thing though when I went back and I looked at how the Department of Homeland Security handled it in 2020 and also 2021 and in portions of 2022 what I saw was a an organization and I think this is probably true for a lot of the federal government that was very proactive the minute this looked like it was happening and which it started and I don't want to name vendors or anything like that but one of the things they did was said all right we're going to go to a particular set of systems that is going to allow us to be not only efficient and effective in terms of how we do things but also to be safe and I'll talk a little bit about the the mission of Department of Homeland Security in terms of uh cyber security but one of the big things was we have to have a system that is going to allow us to if we apply the right kind of cyber hygiene the right kind of cyber hygiene that the system will actually reward that and I think that was really important now that's a retrospective look towards cover 19. I think moving forward the term of art that we all tend to use is really future of work right now generally people tend to look at future of work and said well that's telework right or it's remote work or it's hybrid you know we as a department I think broadly across the federal government look at future work and say we actually take a step back take a breath and say what is the mission what how do we leverage the fact that things have changed in terms of we'll use the the telework as an example how do we use that to best support our mission someone told me the other day it's not my Lane it's much more Dons but a doctor told me the other day who's in federal government pretty senior said you know what what covet did glass Out full view obviously on covid is it accelerated telemedicine by a decade wow right it just made it so ubiquitous and user-friendly at a scaled level that people were able to integrate with it and that's how we're trying to look at almost every single job that we have across the department is how do we use the fact that people are more comfortable in the telework environment how do we use this the fact that we had to integrate and have operational cohesion on a level that we had never seen before I will close with this you can't the Department of Homeland Security 70 of the department could not telework because they put on a uniform and in some cases uh you know they wear you know they wear sidearm or a firearm so they they never could truly tell work but we did have to go from ten thousand to seventy thousand in telework uh that's that's impressive and you know I think what you're describing is CR you know ensuring that you have technology systems that offer flexibility and platforms that offer flexibility which makes it which makes such a huge huge difference a deputy secretary Remy what did the VA learn and how have you applied those lessons going forward well I'd like to pick up where John left off because it is one of the clear lessons learned that we have as the Department of Veterans Affairs in terms of providing health care and first before I get to thank you for the shout out John I appreciate you it's always terrific to be here with you and I appreciate you and your recognition of me in this role you know we are the largest Integrated Health Care system in America at the VA and during the height of the pandemic we had to make sure that we had a vehicle to continue to provide Health Care to our veteran community and we needed to make sure we could provide that health care where they were and what we learned and I was surprised as surprised about this as any is that our veteran community appreciated the ability to receive their care through telemedicine I would not have thought that going into this time period and to John's point and talking to the doctor you know we're able to do this in a way that we never thought we would I think about my dad it was a Vietnam vet and and I think you know is this guy really going to participate in telemedicine or is he going to want to be physically where his doctor is well you know for every cohort of Veteran patient we learned that they can appreciate the value of that telemedicine and and so we can tap into their appointments where they need to be or of course we can still have people come into the office obviously there's a significant number of medical procedures that can only occur in person and so during the height of the pandemic we had a significant portion of our Workforce like yours John that continued to come to the office to come to the hospital and those people people worked day in and day out tirelessly to continue to take care of our veteran community in the most challenging of circumstances and I'm so proud of the VA family and for all the clinicians the health care providers the nurses the the Physicians assistants the nurses assistants everyone for continuing to work through those challenges but we learned that we could do things differently when we have to and so now that we're getting to this point in the pandemic we're realizing that we can practice medicine in a hybrid environment and we can provide those services that people have grown accustomed to during this time period where the veteran wants to receive them and so that's a terrific part of what we learned in in overall in our efforts at digitization and tapping into technology we've done a lot of things even Beyond telemedicine to make sure that everyone can have access to the services we provide this is across the government not just at VA we're working you know in the president's management agenda which you reference I I had the Good Fortune of co-chairing the president's priority number two around customer experience and I know your team heard about customer experience earlier with Robin Carnahan at GSA and your colleague Drew bronow who recently left as defsec at USDA and we we focused on how to get this One-Stop shop for the American custom through usa.gov and how you can go there and then get to any agency and get to DHS you can get to VA and you can get to the benefits that you're looking for you're making government very accessible absolutely very simple to go one place and then be able to Branch off into the different programs or agencies we were talking about before to the average person the government is the government it's very hard to distinguish between agencies or programs or levels of government so I I really love what you're describing because it's making government more accessible which is one of those things we have to do to build trust and to to create a a government that people are engaged in so I I really appreciate your your comments deputy secretary Tien have you seen technology create trust like we're talking about if you could provide some you know examples of perspective on that that's a really great question in so many different ways it's you know when you say create trust so you know the way uh the department secretary of my Orcs And I look at it's it's trust with who so it's actually trust with uh you know I think you're thinking you know okay American people for sure and I'll talk about that in a moment but it's also trust with our fellow employees with all of you who are out there in the federal Workforce is and if you uh think back to what I spoke about at the very beginning those 12 priorities uh three really very much focused on the workforce it is about making sure that we're providing you said make it more accessible but we're also making sure that we are bringing in technology bringing digitization bringing in uh management not only in terms of the software platforms but also what I would call the the infrastructure that drives the policies both inside outside but also inside the Department of Homeland Security so one of the things that we're making sure we're doing is across our components we call them you know if it's FEMA TSA USCIS CBP ice Secret Service you know cisa those those are the organizations that we're making sure that there's a CIO Council the CDO Council especially I think you know CTO Council those are the organizations those are the driving forces that say what are the right policies both outside and inside so we want to make sure that uh we are providing the software in the right policies and the right guiding principles so that they can do their jobs in the best way possible for who for the American people for essentially our customers so one thing I love riding in uh on the coattails of Don Remy is the VA and again I'm I don't think I said it before I applauded for you as a fellow American but I also applaud it for you as a fellow veteran and I use a lot of the services in in the benefits that you provide me in our community Don so thank you uh is the human-centered design piece that you've already spoken about here you all have spoken about and Don spoke about uh we when people think of va I think they do say okay well it makes sense you're serving you know 20 million plus veterans I think the Department of Homeland Security you're thinking about our security Mission but if you think about TSA FEMA USCIS CBP we we're touching two three four million Americans every single day and we want to make sure that those folks and we actually just created for the first time ever we've always had customer experience in there but we actually created a customer experience office uh hiring the right people who who come from that Arena and understand what human-centered design really means I think a really good example is what uh our administrator Deanne Criswell the first woman uh FEMA administrator ever is doing over there and saying we've got to make sure that when a person is in need when a family is in need maybe a small business is in need as a result and we're seeing so much extreme weather that FEMA is providing them support especially through the online environment because that's really become sort of the ubiquitous customer system of choice and that they are not blocked as a result of Technology but in fact enabled going back to your point earlier around accessibility yeah very good it builds on concepts of equity it builds on access fields and all these things we've talked about and technology is again you know that enabler should not be a roadblock or an important it should be an enabler right that's right so you know a lot of that comes through collaboration with industry government industry have to work together to create these kinds of solutions and I think this kind of collaboration can support resiliency as well and uh deputy secretary Remy what what is the VA doing from uh uh perspective of working with industry to strengthen the VA and those services and enhance resiliency well it takes a community to actually deliver on what I talked about earlier what I call the greatest mission of any agency and that's to deliver the care and Veterans to the care and benefits to our veterans that they've earned and you know I start when I think about the the community the business Community I start with our veteran service organizations because uh when you reference resiliency in my mind that means something that will last for the rest of time and our veterans service organizations exist throughout the country in all kinds of communities and it's that group of people that can help us deliver on our message that group of people that we tap into to talk about things like The Pact act which is a piece of legislation that President Biden signed in last October August excuse me that is going to provide more benefits than likely we've ever seen before and more Health Care to our veterans but we've got to get people to know about that piece of legislation and what it might mean for them John talked about the fact that he's a veteran and I'm a veteran I'm just curious how many people in here are veterans look at that and how many of you know what the pact Act is only about half of you and see so we have to be able to use the community the business Community the VSA the vso community to get out that message to let people know that if they served in certain theaters at certain periods of time and were exposed to toxins and they have a variety of different conditions they've earned Health Care they've earned benefits and so that's one of the ways that we can tap into the business Community as an example I should say of one thing we can tap into the community to get the message out so that people can get access to that health care and get access to those benefits also you know obviously our agency engages in contracts with any number of people to help us provide that care and provide those benefits everything from electronic health records to the ability to process benefits claims through electronic means and so we engage with that Community quite frequently to to have those services at our fingertips to enhance the services that we can provide to the veteran Community well uh the uh you know the what I'm thinking as you're saying that is knowledge is power and if we can get those that information out to a veteran to the veteran community and they have the ability to seek health care they're going to be healthier they're going to be more productive they're going to have greater opportunity and the Opera the the chance to be part of that conversation I think a lot of organizations want to want to take part it's a way to contribute absolutely and so I think it's a that's a that's a great call for for uh organization to help spread the word I want to Pivot a second um to the concept of security and cyber whether it's cyber security or Homeland Security deputy secretary what is the the connection in your mind between security and enhanced technology digitization how it ties into this big idea of resiliency I appreciate that Jonathan well let me start with by talking about uh restating the mission of the Department of Homeland Security it is with honor integrity we will safeguard the American people our homeland and our values and I'll say it again with honor Integrity we will safeguard the American people our homeland and our values now when you you think about that it's you can go across all of the different big eight components that we have I spoke about a couple of them already FEMA and TSA but one of them cisa cyber security infrastructure security agencies their main mission is is around the security especially in the uh in terms of cyber defense they are literally I mean if you go on to their website their mission statement is as uh I'll paraphrase is as America's cyber Defense Agency we will manage uh understand and reduce the risk of uh to our critical infrastructure in terms of cyber security that's a pretty tall order especially when I look across this room a bunch of federal employees and a lot of private sector where 85 percent of the critical infrastructure is owned and operated by the private sector so a lot of responsibility lies there the responsibility right now tends to fall a lot on our individuals whether you're an employee or whether you're or you're a consumer and at sisa one thing that we're really trying to get across is obviously we want micro uh responsibility but we're also trying to make sure that we move it up the chain of responsibility so that we can get a scaled effect uh particularly around cyber hygiene what are the responsibilities and as anybody who sits in this room knows and then especially in this industry knows is that the Cyber threat actors are moving much faster actually uh with obviously a lot of Nefarious aims than the rest of us so I think from a security perspective I only focused on cisa in that particular regard but I think it's an important one because it's so evolutionary and fast-moving there's another piece to this though so when I started and I read and I talked about the mission statement with honor integrity will safeguard the American people our homeland and our values people tend to focus on the Safeguard piece but think about what what book ends that mission statement with honor integrity and values with honor and integrity and values and this is really about the responsibility of Department of Homeland Security as with all of us to make sure that our fellow Americans your information your personal identifiable information Don obviously thinks about this uh for for health care as well but that your personal information for whatever use it's being used for you're swiping your ID uh real ID your driver's license facial recognition things of that nature that we we aren't just doing it because well we feel like we have to do it because there's a privacy law but because literally it's part of who we are as Americans in terms of the Privacy rights of Americans the civil rights of Americans and the civil liberties of Americans so the thing again there's a lot of safeguarding security in our mission statement but it starts and ends with honor integrity and values very good we're coming to the to the end of our panel and you know I think they're you know we talked a lot about covid we've talked about Lessons Learned and and the idea of how Mission resiliency builds into these these uh is built into some of the lessons learned and it feels like where you have a more responsive government post covet it feels like we have the opportunity to deliver better for for Citizens uh I I would love for each of you to provide one additional thought or lesson learned or uh idea that people at this conference could take forward to to back to their agencies or back to their companies um deputy secretary rep not original at all but Teamwork Makes the Dream Work Well what we learned during the pandemic was how the team can come together to deliver in a more efficient and more effective manner on the mission of the agency I talked about the health care and the providing of Health Care through Telehealth before what I didn't talk about is the reality that we're processing more claims for benefits than we ever have before the backlog of those claims has reduced than it has been and hasn't existed in the past now the pack that may make some of that go up and will continue to process but we'll take all the lessons we learned by working together as a team in a stressful challenging environment some remote some in person hybrid Workforce to continue to deliver on our mission for our Teamwork Makes the Dream Work I love it I number one agree with everything uh don said there we have to be you have to be smart you have to think you have to look retrospectively and think prospectively because if not uh you know that's that's a failure of leadership uh in many ways and I know that they're doing at the VA and I certainly know we're doing at the VA you know I talked about the 20th anniversary at the beginning of this talk let me let me talk about another you know about the philosophy that secretary mayorkas and I came into the administration with which is around transformation and building on we know history didn't start with us but we're really building on the shoulders of others who have done great things at DHS we want to continue to make sure the organization and we'll leverage technology in the appropriate way for all the things I've said but think about what the uh you know Don and I are part of the Biden Harris Administration we came in in the body Administration with the philosophy of build back better to build back better this is just we just passed the second anniversary of the American rest rescue plan that's this is a philosophy it's a lot of programs it's a lot of good programs it's a lot of funding uh it's funding across the United States of America but ultimately ultimately this is a philosophy that says that all of us in this room who are federal employees and certainly Don and me and Jonathan in his prior life is we have a moral obligation to serve the American people and we need to find every way that we can to be as Don said efficient uh philosophically correct in how we approach their their Privacy Information and Incredibly effective and that's why I think this this speaking about resilience uh is not just about the here and now it's about the future uh what what a great way to end our panel let's think about the future and uh with that we're going to bring this panel to a close I want to thank you both for being here it's tremendous to have two Deputy secretaries be able to talk about a topic so relevant and timely thank you so much and I'm going to turn things back over to Steve Walters thank you Jonathan thank you