Articles Events Opinion

[ARTICLE] Digital Transformation in Federal Government: Workforce, IT, Leadership & CX

Sam Button, Head of Growth, Roar Media

Introduction to The Federal Digital Transformation Conference taking place April 22, 2021 online.

Over the past twelve months, digital transformation has been vital for almost all industries, with product pivots and digitalized services propelled by the pandemic. One area where technology has been pertinent was within the federal government who required the assistance of digital initiatives in 2020 more than ever before to ensure the citizen user experience was maintained and provide internal workplace services to a remote workforce. 

We were fortunate to have two digital leaders in the public sector on our panel session as part of our Digital Transformation Conference last October. They both noted a considerable change in the way individuals & teams were looking to digital since the pandemic began. With the sudden need for rapid rollouts & expansions of digital services, this is the most significant change they have seen in their careers in terms of strategic heads & end-users demanding enhanced digital technology & processes overnight. 

Given the continued need for digital technology innovation within federal agencies, we are delighted to be returning our dedicated Federal Digital Transformation Conference, which will take place online on April 22. The event will be free to attend, thanks to our sponsor Radiant Digital. The key topics covered are discussed below; please keep an eye out for the release of the agenda in mid-March. 

Acquisition Support 

This change in emphasis due to the pandemic led to a significant push within transformation initiatives to get the right technology & tools into workers’ hands at a rapid pace. Having this buy-in from senior management and their understanding of the haste of requirement have accelerated transformation projects and placed importance on other digital innovation strategies.

Next month, the digital transformation conference will provide insight into harnessing this emphasis on technology to increase acquisition support within the organization to continue the digital innovation journey to support customers & employees for the years to come. 

IT Transformation 

Data has been crucial to the government’s response to Covid-19, with many federal agencies utilizing data to monitor how well their internal processes and teams perform in a remote environment & how well they are servicing their citizens and employees. Harnessing performance information to make data-driven decisions is imperative in making sure you are innovating the right technologies at the right time to improve either employee engagement, efficiency & productivity, or customer experience. 

Part of this data-driven enterprise is a cloud-based workforce, able to collaborate & communicate as a distributed workforce through the digital workplace. The main hurdles for this are protecting sensitive information, privacy & security of customer & employee data. In the digital workforce, all remote technology and tools need authentication to authorize users to the correct access to information & applications. For many agencies, this requires using a VPN to scale up to deal with daily users’ surges. 

Workforce Transformation

Getting the right technology in place for end-users to perform their daily tasks while working within a distributed workforce relies on research into the user experience for employees to identify elements to enhance. Once identified, a strategic implementation requires team leaders’ support across the organization, which can be harder to achieve while working remotely; coaching, mentoring fully, and training need to be available with the full backing to ensure technology utilizes maximum effectiveness. 

Digital Leadership

When remote work has been a necessity, it has been imperative for internal communications & leadership to ensure employees are engaged, comfortable and happy. Digital leadership in terms of everyday motivation, communication & collaboration with teams has become just as important as strategic digital innovations. 

Application Transformation

The changing nature of the way we work, communicate and collaborate means applications must evolve with constant improvements needed to adapt to new demands. This often involves app modernization, with applications needing to be cloud-native & able to be enhanced & built upon. This agile development of continuous improvement to citizens & employee tools & technology enables future development to ensure service & efficiency is maintained in a secure environment. 

Customer Experience 

Maintaining a harmonious working environment is very important. Still, it is essential to remember the main reason to provide the correct tools & technologies for your staff to provide the best services for customer satisfaction. Digital enablement & digital delivery of services needs to be in keeping with the level of service & technology supplied by commercial companies to meet ever-changing consumer demands. This is a constant battle and only achievable through continuous innovation & fine-tuning of the user experience.

Throughout the event, this will be discussed as we look to establish best practices for the future of work in government. 

The Federal Digital Transformation Conference, April 22

Next month, the online conference will bring together expert CIO’s & CTO’s from various federal agencies to share their digital innovation journey’s over the past 12 months, the challenges they have overcome, and what their thoughts are for the future of work in government. In proud partnership with our headline sponsor Radiant Digital, we are delighted to bring 12 expert speakers together to discuss digital innovation of internal employee experiences and utilize technology for delivery to citizens for services. 

Radiant Digital

Radiant specializes in delivering technology solutions driven by proven methodologies to help customers navigate the digital enterprise’s journey. Radiant is very focused on comprehensive project management supporting Agile style implementations, using a combination of a highly productive and iterative approach, along with process management disciplines and agile tools and technologies.

Radiant solutions focus on IT Transformation, efficiently executing and managing intelligent infrastructure strategies that enable the digital enterprise; Application Transformation, quickly integrating new systems, processes, and customer experiences into all areas of the enterprise; and Workforce Transformation, effectively enabling change, from techniques and skills to culture and behavior for all stakeholders.

The event is free to attend. If you are working within the federal government & would like to learn from your peers’ digital innovation journeys, you can register for the conference here.

Leave a Reply