The ability of Federal IT operations to adapt almost overnight to support citizens and workforce amid the unique challenges of the national pandemic is one of the few bright spots in the past three months of turmoil. The drivers of that performance are neither easy nor accidental, and depend on steadfast leadership. MeriTalk is chronicling the untold stories – and lessons – of Federal IT success during the pandemic. Please join us for a conversation with Federal CIO Suzette Kent, who spotlights the value of teamwork, fast action, and focused leadership in times of crisis.
Speed, Collaboration Drive Pandemic Transformation – Federal CIO Q&A
Since becoming the fourth Federal CIO in early 2018, Suzette Kent has been a tireless advocate for government IT modernization and the benefits that better technology can bring to citizens. A prime mover behind OMB’s President’s Management Agenda that drives modernization as the key to improving Federal agency mission outcomes, Kent has skillfully put those ideas into action as leader of the Federal CIO Council.
In normal times, there might still be room to debate the relative benefits of modernization. But the last 12 weeks of Federal IT performance and transformation in the midst of pandemic have settled the question once and for all. Kent offers the proof: civilian agency investments in modern infrastructure and applications have yielded an 800 percent increase in telework capacity. That allowed many agencies to send 80-95 percent of their workforces to safer locations.
Because modernization based on secure and scalable technology already was well underway, smaller pilot projects could be grown quickly into mainstay programs to meet pressing demands. Examples include a cybersecurity pilot that jumped from 10 percent to 80 of capacity, and the creation of emergency funding portals in less than a fortnight. At the same time, older ways of doing things – like wet signatures and printing – have gone to join that old desktop PC in the basement.
In an exclusive interview with MeriTalk as part of our CIO Crossroads series, Kent highlights the pillars for Federal IT’s strong performance during the COVID-19 pandemic – speed, collaboration, ingenuity, scale – and even more speed. From the early days of running triple-shifts in the IT shops to the relative stability of the new normal, those concepts continue to drive rapid change to meet whatever lies ahead.
Credit for the Federal IT pandemic performance can rightly be spread around to hundreds, if not thousands, of tireless professionals dedicated to serving the American people. Kent assumes little on her own; we’ll leave it to the many agency CIOs we’ve interviewed to do that. The common refrain from those CIOs: a tireless convener of cross-agency leadership dedicated to fast problem-solving, no matter the obstacles. Continuity planning and fire drills only go so far; when crisis becomes a reality, there’s no substitute for insightful and unflinching leadership.
MeriTalk: Can you offer some metrics that would give a sense of the scope, scale, and speed of the Federal government’s mission response at the onset of COVID-19?
Kent: We all pivoted to telework at the same time. What we expected to see, and did see, in the first few days was an uptick in both questions and adoption. And, we expected to see significant increases in VPN traffic, and time spent on teleconferences and collaboration tools.
Now, 10 weeks into it, agencies are ranging from 80 percent to 95 percent of their team teleworking. Overall, we saw volumes up more than 800 percent over anything we’d seen before. Not only are people online and using tools, we’re also seeing great productivity. We’re hearing from many of the agencies who’ve been tracking productivit...