Innovation in Government videos

Dave York, the senior vice president of U.S. public sector for Genesys, said agencies can improve how they deliver services to citizens by taking a omni-channel approach to digital modernization.

Juliana Vida, the chief technical advisor public sector for Splunk, said there is hope and there is opportunity, both of which can be found in the data.

The ultimate objective is to eliminate the need to work on multiple devices. Using the cloud, the data is all in one place and easier to access, and easier to share.

Chris Townsend, the vice president of federal at Symantec, said with all of these cybersecurity initiatives and expectations agencies must ensure they are on the right path in moving to zero trust, while also addressing challenges around mobility and cloud.

Craig Harber, the chief technology officer for Fidelis Cybersecurity, said there are several steps agencies can take to reduce their risks, starting by consolidating their security tools and architectures.

Dennis Reilly, the vice president of federal at Gigamon, said tools like next generation network packet brokers help agencies catch up and get ahead of cyber attackers.

Eva Skidmore, the vice president of public sector for Salesforce, said agencies need to continue to improve customer service and IT modernization together by adopting open platforms and application programming interfaces (APIs).

Joel Jackson, the director of emerging technology for Red Hat’s North America Public Sector group, said all of these approaches bring together the key building blocks of modern software design–cloud, automation and microservices–and underpin federal IT modernization efforts.

Since its inception in 2013, the federal government’s Continuous Diagnostic and Mitigation program (CDM), led by the Department of Homeland Security, has helped agencies discover up to 50 percent more assets inside their systems than they were previously aware of. And they’re able to do it in real time.

Jim Walker, director of public sector marketing for UiPath, said 25-to-30 agencies already are taking advantage of RPA to automate menial, repetitive tasks.

Chris Townsend, the vice president of federal for Symantec, said it’s time for agencies to drive that complexity out of their cybersecurity environment and move to a more standard approach.

Randy Wood, vice president of U.S. public sector sales for Akamai, said zero trust is not a new idea, but one that is about five years old. It promotes the simple concept that trust is not an attribute of location, and just because an employee is trusted inside perimeter, it doesn’t mean he or she should be granted access to all the information.

Jeff Reilly, the senior director of the America’s commercial presales for Dell EMC, said SDN lets agencies move faster and become more agile by redefining their infrastructure.

Gary DePreta, the area vice president for defense, intelligence and aerospace at Splunk, said many of these challenges can be reduced if agencies and organizations better understand the data around their cyber threats and vulnerabilities.