William McCormick
Philip Habuda, vice president for DHA Enterprise Information Technology Services Integrator Program with Capgemini, recently spoke with ExecutiveBiz regarding the most critical challenges that the federal workforce is facing as cybersecurity has become a necessity and continues to impact our national security interests.
In addition, Philip Habuda also discussed his strategic goals for the coming year as well as the new markets he’s looking to expand the company’s presence and how its digital transformation efforts are keeping Capgemini ahead of the speed of innovation in the highly competitive federal landscape during the latest Executive Spotlight interview.
You can read the full interview with Philip Habuda below:
ExecutiveBiz: What are your strategic goals for the coming year? What do you hope to accomplish and any new markets that you’re keeping an eye on in the federal sector?
Philip Habuda: “My career path over the last 30 plus years of experience that I have had across many different aspects of what aligns in our industry. It goes from the strategic management consulting arena, which covers infrastructure, service providers as well as the software and agile development component. I’ve also had a cup of coffee in the advisory service community.
As I joined Capgemini, I built my experience in each of the four major components of what the industry has to offer in terms of heavy duty infrastructure to software and management consulting to advisory services.
I took a lap in the advisory services arena after my first tenure with Capgemini and then the opportunity to rejoin the company’s Government Solutions team, which is a solely owned subsidiary. I believe my strength and experience can really help the government solutions team leverage a broader global economy of services for the federal government space.
The evolution of Capgemini Government Solutions has evolved from the beginner level of the government space to being an industry leader today and being able to bring the best commercial and global practices instead of federal agencies just looking at what other agencies are doing.
It’s not just a rinse and repeat. One of the major components of me coming back to Capgemini was getting into the Government Solutions space and leveraging our global reach to the federal government. Capgemini continues to see significant transformation efforts happening across the business systems and ecosystem modernization that’s happening throughout the government.
We’re seeing a drive towards the next evolution of where it’s cloud or cybersecurity or just the huge business transformation of established platforms. They’re looking at how these things have been done in the commercial industry and how people have adapted as a result of the pandemic, but also the speed of innovation that’s picked up significantly over the past decade.”
ExecutiveBiz: With the influence of emerging technologies impacting every aspect of business, how has your company been able to drive digital transformation efforts to stay ahead of innovation in the federal landscape for yourself and your customers?
Philip Habuda: “Our growth strategy is based on being one of the biggest, small organizations in the government space. Capgemini is a global company worth upwards of 18 billion dollars. Our federal business is a fraction of our business and the growth aspect of the space is to double down and leverage each of our major service lines into the federal government space and expand.
We have a number to put on it, but its significant growth aspects and aspirations for the federal government team are from the innovation side of it. For Capgemini, the question is how do we carry the load and help solve the problems and challenges in the digital transformation space for our customers.
Whether it’s cloud, cybersecurity or just a general component to it, Capgemini is laser-focused into how we can help our clients deliver the dynamic services portfolio in the government space today. Our approach is essentially customer and citizen-centric focused and centered around how we can offer service and help our warfighters as well as civilian and government agencies.
Another critical area will be removing duplication across our services portfolio that any agency has their major issues that come from the cost. The funds are unlimited to continue doing this for years and years. As a result, we need to bring the major services integration and management components to it. We help to take that duplication of costs out of the process as best we can.
In addition, I have to mention the aspect of transformation that helps play out is the ability to adapt to the dynamic changes of how quickly technology is moving and evolving at all times. It used to be more of a ‘plug and play’ and integrated approach, which has been enhanced heavily by the cloud and everything under its umbrella these days.
Now, we have everything under cloud like cloud as-a-service products and everything is running on cloud. That allows Capgemini to have the flexibility to really plug and play very fast across the board in that environment. Following that, how does Capgemini help the ecosystem and modify it by utilizing the key components of superior service quality.
Capgemini is becoming a trusted advisor and we’re providing one sense of truth to the industry for our customers across their entire ecosystem through one lens instead of multiple. We have robust governance and control capabilities that really engage the business functions to perform and drive the benefits from the overall ecosystem for our customers.
We are integrated with this and Capgemini has a stake in the game. If there’s a penalty involved, we have a stake in the game and share in that penalty. That’s a unique component that only we are advanced on compared to others in the industry.
That allows us to put that extra stake into the environment that’s all focused around the customer or citizen experience and having those leading edge capabilities to have personas around what are the various groups of people integrating them into their business ecosystems.
It’s really about looking to improve and advance innovations with the systems so everything evolves at the same time.” That’s imperative to Capgemini to provide our clients with the rapid and agile innovation efforts they need.”
ExecutiveBiz: What do you see as the most critical challenges facing those in the federal sector as cybersecurity continues to rise in importance and cyber hygiene becomes a necessity for all companies and even more critical at the national security level?
Philip Habuda: “From the current administration’s agenda and the challenges and execution borders around cyber and we’re now seeing it within every federal agency, every RFP and the major mandates based around zero-trust and the cybersecurity components.
From an overall standpoint, we’re also seeing this from the major efforts around governance, risk and compliance. We have monitoring systems for cyber hygiene, which is down to the provider level. Any providers from infrastructure to end user services as well as support desk and applications.
It’s really about having a clear view and vision as well as the single source of truth to be able to see what is happening and where. In addition, it’s proactive to ensure that we’re seeing a ‘catalog item’ in the ecosystem that is out of date or not running the way it should. It’s identified and flagged ahead of time instead of waiting for a breach.
The hygiene side is there from a reactive side to ensure anything that’s happening is being recognized to the proactive side that has us checking the entire ecosystem in line from the end user to the infrastructure hardware and everything else in between.”
