Delivering on the Promise of Government for the People

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Each administration issues a President's Management Agenda (PMA) that lays out several key goals around transforming the way government does "business." In his PMA, President Biden challenges agencies to "prove that government can deliver results." The guidance goes further to define success as results that are equitable, effective, and accountable. The PMA has three key areas of focus that aim to advance efforts currently in place with additional counsel and resources.

Priority 1: Strengthening and Empowering the Federal Workforce

The once feared "retirement tsunami" in reality has been a slow, steady wave, but incredibly impactful, nonetheless. As long-tenured federal employees retire, they take with them a valuable trove of knowledge - of what has worked and not worked overtime as well as how to navigate the bureaucracy of government. It is important to take that information out of employees' heads and document it in systems so that future teams have access to the experience.

Beyond retaining their knowledge, the role these employees play also needs replacing. Recruiting, training, and retaining are key focus areas of the PMA. To fill senior roles, existing employees need training to advance into these more strategic positions. For more tactical work, agencies are challenged to find ways to automate some manual efforts.

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Looking Past the Cloud and Into Space

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While the focus of government modernization has been transitioning government into the Cloud, NASA and Space Force have their sights set even further. Both organizations are focused on bringing "new knowledge and opportunities back to Earth."

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Show Me the Data!

Data is critical to that mission. Using data, NASA leaders have set a goal to accelerate the time it takes to release innovations to the market by 25%. This data use challenge is common across government, and becomes even more complex when you have to get data from where it is to where it's needed and that movement involves data coming from space.

Being a new agency, Space Force is able to implement many digital born systems, but working with legacy data and systems is a constant challenge that requires innovative thinking. Critical to this is understanding a technology's application to a specific mission and effectively communicating its impact to leaders to help reduce barriers to changing "how it's always been done."

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Go Ahead, Call It a Comeback: Outlook for In-Person Events in 2022

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Speaker at Business Conference and Presentation.

As we head towards the end of a second pandemic-influenced year, sports and entertainment facilities are back up to full capacity, albeit with varying levels of mask and vaccine requirements. This holiday season feels a bit more normal, as family gatherings are becoming routine and larger group celebrations are being reintroduced. With this shift to comfort in gathering, we wanted to take the pulse of the government community. As we've done twice before, we reached out to our members to gauge their interest in and readiness for professional events.

At the time of the survey fielding (November 2021), 73% of respondents said they would be comfortable attending an in-person event in 2022. Within this response, we looked at people who had responded "no" to attending in-person events on the last survey (August 2021), and about 50% of those people changed their response to"yes." In August, our survey found only 51% comfortable with attending an in-person event by the end of 2021, a 24% decrease from the responses in May. However, with the most recent rise in readiness back up to 73%, public comfort with in-person events is back to what it was in the spring of 2021.

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If Data is the New Currency, How Are We “Spending” It?

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The government is at no loss for data. And, over the last decade, there has been a concerted effort to use that data more efficiently to improve decision making and service to the citizen. Chief Data Officers are in place across government to shepherd the changes in process and technology needed to achieve the goals set forth in the Federal Data Strategy.

Meeting the Plan to Plan

Department-level data strategies have been borne out of the federal guidance to mature data governance and infrastructure and publish those plans. In fact, the report "CDO Insights: 2021 Survey Results On the Maturation of Data Governance in U.S. Federal Agencies," found that 75 percent of respondents said they had started or completed five of the six action items named in the Federal Data Strategy 2020 Action Plan. The report found that constituting a data governance body (completed by 75%) was the least challenging action. Getting these bodies in place means that beyond department-level plans, some agencies are moving to making plans for critical subsets of data much like the State Department did for geospatial data.

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Next Generation Connectivity Catching Up to This Generation’s Needs

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Pandemic-necessitated remote work and increased reliance on online apps and sites for routine everyday tasks like shopping and transportation showed us that Internet connection is a critical utility. It also proved that getting connected is not enough -- the speed and quality of that connection have a huge impact on how we carry out day-to-day activities. In a timely coincidence, this reliance on connectivity comes at a time when networks are improving their service to supply that exact speed and reliability.

Introducing a Whole New Level of Speed: 5G

5G promises to be faster with less latency when connecting to the network. The speeds afforded by 5G mean that visions for smart, connected cities can be logistically achieved as 5G networks will be better able to handle more users, lots of sensors, and heavy traffic. The Department of Veterans Affairs is already tapping into 5G to allow doctors to use augmented reality to look at and manipulate large imaging files, like MRIs or CT scans.

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