Jane Edwards
Julie McPherson, an executive vice president and head of digital solutions business at Booz Allen Hamilton, wrote in a guest piece published Friday on Nextgov that there are five rules technology leaders at federal agencies should consider to maintain the momentum in digital transformation to meet mission needs and one is planning for and harnessing failure to continuously improve a platform.
“When organizations harness (and don’t simply tolerate) failure, teams can stand up rapid prototypes, test them in the real world, and then spiral back for continuous improvement. Ideally, those solutions are open and modular by design so the innovation cycle can happen with no disruption to the broader infrastructure,†McPherson wrote.
Other rules agencies should consider to continue eliminating barriers to modernization are advancing radical change through “government as a platform,†rethinking the deployment of technical talent against modernization programs and making customer experience a part of the service design process.
She also called on agencies to modernize processes and systems to narrow the attack surface.
“While adversaries seek new entry points into national systems, agencies should continue to build contemporary data architectures, through DevSecOps practices, to achieve systems that are hardened and transparent,†McPherson wrote. “Cloud demonstrates why this is so pressing: Modern cloud environments leapfrog past on-premises software when it comes to visibility into system activity, and there’s no comparison when it comes to its automation of security monitoring."
