An Insider's Guide: Going Digital with Government Software

Technology is being implemented at a rapid rate across local, state and federal government. Many agencies are using newly received federal funding to keep up with the demand of both their citizens and employees for more technology-forward initiatives. Whether it’s increased internet access across rural areas or firming up IT and networking to enable remote work, technology is heavily leveraged in the public sector. Agencies are turning to trusted government software partners to help ease the burden of implementing and maintaining these new technologies. Departments are increasingly turning to government software to tackle initiatives involving data governance, transparency and equity. We had the pleasure of sitting down with John Paul Farmer whose impressive resume includes roles with the Obama administration, Microsoft and New York City. In this article, we tackle how government agencies can look at digitizing critical services and move from traditional IT to a true digital experience.

What gets a government to yes?

With any new digital initiative—whether it’s implementing new software for government or spinning up remote call centers—there is a period of internal hesitancy that comes with making these types of changes. Understandably, government agencies are risk averse by nature.[esper_resource_quote layout="1" count="1"]John Paul Farmer spent nearly three years as New York City’s Chief Technology Officer. Under his guidance, the city leveraged technology to ensure sufficient heat in the winter, provide young people with key mental health resources, connect communities of isolated older adults and enable evacuations in the face of potentially fatal flooding. They made it easier than ever to access government services—such as applying for affordable housing, finding and hiring minority- and women-owned businesses (M/WBEs) and securing essential business permits.John Paul likened the work he was doing to a car.

“What we do is often under the hood. Many people in government focus on what the car looks like, and not how it’s running. We were looking to improve what was going on under the hood, which no one was rushing to spend time or money on. We had to find an angle.”

That angle was efficiency. With more efficient processes, innovative government software and stable infrastructure, agencies save money in the long term. When someone leaves the government and that institutional knowledge has not been captured, agencies are losing even more money.Efficiency also leads to better decision making.

“Typically, you might have eight different siloed agencies and they don’t have systems that talk to one another. If these agencies can all collaborate quickly and communicate with each other, you can move faster and make better decisions.”

Looking to your peers for inspiration