Scaling IT Modernization Playbook: A Roadmap

Ann Dunkin, Chief Information Officer, US Department of Energy

Ann Dunkin, Chief Information Officer, US Department of Energy

Today’s federal technologists must balance interwoven priorities: delivering reliable IT services, cybersecurity, and digital innovation.

I am especially encouraged by the progress we’ve seen in IT modernization. Nearly a decade ago, the US government began our digital transformation journey in earnest. We’ve seen increasing support from Congressional legislation, White House executive orders focusing on cybersecurity, customer experience, and data strategy, and from agency leadership.

At DOE and across the federal government, teams have achieved successes – learning to use agile development and implementing DevSecOps pipelines for example. Moving forward, we must continue to drive innovation across our organizations, providing better, faster, and more secure services.

Of course, digital transformation and IT modernization can be difficult to achieve at scale. Why do some projects flounder while others flourish? In any major transformation effort, there are multiple disciplines which must all work collaboratively.

That’s why, I’m proud to launch our Scaling IT Modernization Playbook, a resource that provides a set of “plays” – concrete roadmaps to help organizations implement change at scale.

“Scaling IT modernization” refers to the actions that enable an organization to move towards comprehensive, coordinated, and enterprise ready capabilities, thereby realizing the transformative value of IT modernization more quickly to achieve mission outcomes.

We knew our playbook needed to be universally applicable to ensure utility across the federal government, so we conducted in-depth interviews with IT leaders across industry and government, and consulted with federal CIOs, CTOs, CDOs, and CISOs.

“Moving forward, we must continue to drive innovation across our organizations, providing better, faster, and more secure services.”

Throughout the interviews, leaders shared how technology was rarely the barrier when scaling IT modernization efforts. Time and again, successful transformation came down to people, process, policy, politics, and culture – what one contributor called “soft-tissue issues”. After consolidating and analyzing the feedback, we grouped fundamental elements of scaling IT modernization into three main themes, each with a set of related plays.

• “Mission Focused: Business-driven Innovation,”can be uniquely challenging for IT staff whose day-to-day work may be removed from the organization’s mission. In short: Value outcomes over process. Never pursue modernization for the sake of modernization. Ground IT modernization efforts in mission outcomes and how to better serve the customer, whether the “customers” are government employees or the public. Key plays here focus on vision, mindset, and data adoption.

• “Speed and Agility,” cautions against underrating speed as value. Technology moves fast; so should modernization efforts. Organizations must have the right tools, culture, and environment to enable true agility. Plays here focus on risk management, responsive cyber, building workforce culture, valuing learning, and delivering solutions.

• “One Enterprise, One Government” emphasizes coordination at scale. We must diminish the learning curve by getting people to work together early and often. We need to work together across the government to overcome common barriers, leverage relationships, and share assets that provide cost of efficiency advantages. Plays here focus on breaking down silos and building shared services.

Each play includes rationale, foundations, step-by-step actions, real life examples of success, and key considerations. The playbook is meant to be actionable. What does that look like?

In our Reframe Risk and Deploy Responsive Cyber play,we discussthe idea of reframing risk in ways that are consistent with mission goals and offer actions that transform the control and compliance mindset to one of responsible enablement for safe exploration. Another play, Elevate Coalitions, provides actions for building teams of early adopters and success champions. This is also emphasized in the Evangelize a Shared Vision play, which further demonstrates how a shared vision can break down silos within and across agencies and departments, setting the foundation to experiment together and share risk and resources.

To be successful, readers need to focus on a combination of foundational components enabling IT modernization: funding, talent, leadership, program vision, security, architecture, and governance.