VMware’s Bill Rowan on Federal Digital Transformation Amid Pandemic

Bill Rowan, vice president of federal sales at VMware and a three-time Wash100 Award recipient, said in a video interview posted Friday on FedScoop that the federal government has responded to the COVID-19 pandemic in an innovative and timely fashion by embracing digital transformation to facilitate the delivery of services to citizens and accomplish the mission while keeping their employees safe amid the health crisis.

When asked about adopting emerging technologies like cloud, artificial intelligence and automation, Rowan said agencies were willing to take prudent risks when it comes to fielding such platforms to “ensure that the citizens of this country got the best most functioning government they could.”

“I think that now that agencies are starting to see that the risks they took really weren’t that big of a leap after all. We see agencies sharing authorities to operate on one cloud application to another,” he said. “Things that were set up by the FedRAMP office to do from the very very beginning but agencies were sometimes just a little hesitant to want to go do it. Well now they’re doing it, now they see that actually this works quite well.”

When asked about bringing talented technologists to the workforce, Rowan said agencies are looking inward and asking internal technology professionals of how they would go about solving a particular problem or issue. The government also continues to spend to try to meet mission challenges.

Rowan cited cybersecurity and mobility as some of the areas agencies will continue to prioritize as they head into 2021.