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The VA improved public trust by 25% and other agencies can too

My career has involved driving change in both the private and public sector. As a young U.S. Army scout platoon leader in Alaska, I learned how to lead with confidence in challenging and stressful situations. In my first nine-year stint at McKinsey & Co., I guided companywide transformation programs at some of our country’s most important industrial companies. And in three-and-a-half years at the Department of Veterans Affairs spanning both the Obama and Trump administrations, I lived VA’s complex transformation firsthand and learned that transformation in government is indeed possible.

The VA has suffered from low levels of trust. In 2015, at the start of the transformation, veteran trust in the agency stood at just 47 percent. Long wait times and antiquated processes put VA in stark contrast with a private sector that was integrating technology at breakneck speeds. Members of Congress and stakeholders across the country openly questioned whether VA was simply too big and too broken to fix. Today, through a smart approach and hard work, veteran trust in VA care stands at 72 percent. The VA still has a long way to go, but there is no doubt that the agency has seen real and important progress.

The challenge of creating trust in public agencies isn’t limited to VA; in fact, McKinsey’s Organizational Health Index Survey indicates that over 75 percent of public-sector organizations have below-average organizational health. McKinsey also found in a 2018 study that 80 percent of public sector transformations fail to meet their stated objectives.

McKinsey has been studying government transformations for years to understand what distinguishes the 20 percent of transformations that succeed from the 80 percent that don’t. Our research identifies a few clear principles of success that can provide a roadmap for effective transformation:

  1. Leaders can model the behavior they expect of public servants. This often means going beyond standard public-sector management routines and leading by example to facilitate change, even when that involves challenging long-established conventions and taking personal responsibility for success or failure – lessons that all young Army officers are taught when they lead their first platoon.
  2. Successful transformations are typically guided by a galvanizing “north star” purpose and crystal-clear priorities. This helps leaders throughout the organization understand the “commander’s intent,” and can guide inevitable tradeoffs when making budgeting, resourcing and capacity decisions that often make or break whether the transformation is scalable beyond a plan.
  3. Leaders must be mindful of cadence and coordination in delivery, promoting a pace that is fast but steady, a flat hierarchy that encourages close collaboration and trust, and the flexibility to solve problems as they arise. Government transformations, in particular, are neither sprints nor marathons, but relay races that span administrations and leadership teams, making a deliberate, all-inclusive system for change even more important.
  4. Well-planned, in-depth, genuine two-way contact is the key to compelling communication – and that means meeting all affected groups and employees where they are rather than where you want them to be. Public servants care deeply about their agency’s mission, and transformation communications must ignite that passion while also directly addressing their concerns, doubts and questions.
  5. Successful transformations require skilled transformation agents with the capacity for change. With technology rapidly evolving and a shifting future of work, reskilling our federal workforce will be imperative to any successful transformation – but simply asking longstanding public servants to do more or to work differently without understanding why or how is a recipe for failure. Instead, change can best be achieved through a mix of experienced external change experts who can learn government systems, and internal change leaders who can be exposed to external best practices.

The VA’s motto has its origins in President Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address, when he spoke about the government’s obligation to care for those “who shall have borne the battle,” from our men and women in uniform to their families and survivors. Today, agencies like VA are fighting a different kind of battle; one that will determine whether they can achieve their mission and effectively serve our citizens. If they internalize these principles – if they move forward with committed leadership, a clear purpose, cadence and coordination, communication, and the capability to achieve their goals – our federal agencies will be better positioned to lead transformations, improve services, and create positive, lasting change.

Scott Blackburn is a Partner at McKinsey & Company, where he helps lead large-scale transformations at government agencies. He previously served as VA Secretary Bob McDonald’s Chief Transformation Officer, and later as Secretary David Shulkin’s Interim Deputy Secretary and CIO.

While the Office of Technology Assessment awaits comeback, lawmakers already have tweaks for it

The Office of Technology Assessment hasn’t been resurrected yet, but some members of Congress are proposing legislation to improve the responsiveness of the technical advisory office anyway.

The bills — one each in the House and Senate — would make tweaks to OTA’s existing statute in order to make the office more “accessible” and “responsive to Members’ needs.” Reps. Mark Takano, D-Calif., and Bill Foster, D-Ill., along with Sens. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, and Thom Tillis, R-N.C., introduced the Office of Technology Assessment Improvement and Enhancement Act on Thursday.

“A revised and reformed Office of Technology Assessment will play a crucial role in helping Congress tackle issues as diverse as data privacy, energy independence, and American innovation and entrepreneurship,” Tillis said in a statement. “This bicameral, bipartisan legislation will give Congress the tools, resources, and policy expertise it needs to address the most pressing technological issues facing our country.”

The OTA provided members of Congress with objective science and technology information from 1972 until it was defunded in 1995. Since then, there have been near-annual attempts to bring it back. This Congress has seen some promising movement on the issue — the revival has broad support from outside advocates and the House version of the fiscal 2020 legislative branch appropriations bill includes $6 million in funding to re-establish OTA.

“An improved OTA … would provide Members of Congress with the support they need to be effective legislators; especially as emerging technologies are affecting every aspect of our daily lives,” Takano said in a statement. “By making it more accessible, responsive, and transparent, these reforms will give Congress the ability to address the technological challenges of the present, and prepare for what’s in store in the future.”

Specifically, this legislation would update the OTA of the past by pushing for quicker research turnaround times, having board appointments made by the bipartisan party leadership in each chamber, requiring that final reports be made publicly available “whenever possible” and requiring coordination with the Congressional Research Service and the Government Accountability Office’s new Science, Technology Assessment and Analytics team to avoid any overlap in efforts.

Leaders want TIC 3.0 to serve as model for better policymaking

The release last week of the Trusted Internet Connections 3.0 policy may usher in a new, more nimble era of policymaking for IT, federal leaders said Wednesday.

The Office of Management and Budget’s updated and more flexible guidance for how agencies connect to the greater internet is a major victory in that it was the first update in a dozen years. But it also provided a new model for how OMB can revamp policy to be more iterative and in rhythm with the rapid evolution of technology.

OMB is moving from a “slow” process of issuing policy updates that typically requires long studies and years between any refreshes to “actually challenging ourselves to have a deeper connection to exactly what’s happening and create ongoing ways that we keep things current,” U.S. CIO Suzette Kent said at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency‘s National Cybersecurity Summit.

In the case of TIC 3.0, though it’s the first update to TIC policy since 2007, it was developed in an agile, responsive manner so that when agencies evolve the way they connect to the internet, such as through the cloud, OMB won’t be far behind with policy to reflect it. The new policy includes pilots and use cases — led by agencies who have creative new approaches to using the government’s Trusted Internet Connections — that it says “ensure they remain relevant” as they must be “reviewed and updated on a continuous basis.” The result, the policy explains, is a “process for ensuring the TIC initiative is agile and responsive to advancements in technology and rapidly evolving threats.”

OMG has enlisted the Department of Homeland Security as the cybersecurity experts at the helm to continuously decide what new TIC use cases to approve and which ones to cycle out as they’re no longer needed.

“From the OMB side, the goal…is to more focus on intended outcomes and expectations, not the detailed specifics, and partner with the experts in any specific space to drive the details that are appropriate at that point in time for that specific agency mission and bring the depth of subject matter knowledge in to match with the infrastructure that we’ve put in place to manage across our entire enterprise,” Kent said.

Kent explained that “our environment is changing so quickly” requiring new methods and approaches to creating policy. Methods, she said, could be “as simple as a timer: I’m going to reexamine this every six months, every one year, and evaluate if this is still effective.” On the approach side, it was as simple as partnering with DHS’s CISA and trusting the agency to lead the way.

“What we are doing is creating a pathway to ask the question, ‘Is there a better way?’” Kent said. “And make that happen very quickly versus a decade, or a long study. And that’s the kind of agility and nimbleness that we have to have in this space because cybersecurity is a perpetual state of hypervigilance. We have to constantly be evaluating what are we seeing, how do we act, what’s the next step?”

OMB looked at that “across all of the policies over the past 18 months — we’ve updated all of the major pieces,” Kent said.

Jack Wilmer, CISO for the Department of Defense, gave “big kudos” to OMB and DHS for their work on TIC 3.0 and developing a new, more-iterative way to think about policy. He agrees with Kent about letting bright minds around government lead the way.

“Let’s get the right group of people together to assess the risk of what that is, to look at the results, to look at how it works, and then if it seems like it worked well and is a good approach, let’s go ahead and modify the policy to say now any other federal agency can use that model,” Wilmer said of agile policy. “And similarly, the intent is that as the threat evolves and we find out ‘OK we were letting people do this but now we understand that that probably is not a good idea,’ we should be able to rapidly evolve our policy so that no new connections use that model that we know now to be not the right approach.”

He hopes to use it at the Pentagon for its internal tech policies.

“Instead of doing a two-year-long study and trying to come out with the answer and saying, ‘OK this is the next version of how we’re going to do X,’ it’s looking at more of an agile approach to policy development,” Wilmer said.

“I am absolutely trying to figure out how do I bring that into the Department of Defense so that the policies that I write, that we update, are things that we can evolve in a more agile manner,” he said.

Report: Agencies need better data on the skilled technical workforce

Federal agencies should put additional resources toward collecting data on the state of the skilled technical workforce, according to a National Science Board report.

Skilled technical workers use science, engineering or even coding to do their jobs but without a bachelor’s degree.

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine estimate there will be 3.4 million unfilled skilled technical jobs nationwide by 2022 — many of them in government.

NSB, which establishes the policies of the National Science Foundation, recommends additional funding and personnel be allocated to gather education and skills data on tech workers in areas ranging from information technology and cybersecurity to energy and health care.

“We need to take a look at this and see what is driving the demand,” Vic McCrary, chair of NSF’s Task Force on the Skilled Technical Workforce, told FedScoop. “Why is there a perception the pipeline is not as robust as should be?”

Federal statistical agencies must do a better job of coordinating to address data gaps, with NSF’s National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics at the helm, also coordinating input from states, industry and academia, according to NSB.

Such data will help design policies, skill development programs and workforce planning tools for public use.

“In government, there’s a real need around cybersecurity. You don’t necessarily need a bachelor’s degree in computer science,” McCrary said. “What we want is to get some of those white hat hackers working with our intelligence agencies and securing data.”

But that requires changing government’s message about the path to a successful career in skilled technical work that combats negative perceptions concerning holding a certification versus a four-year college degree, he added.

As new research in artificial intelligence and advanced materials defense becomes commercializable, more workers are needed to supply the resulting products and services.

Meeting that employee demand is critical to U.S. economic competitiveness, national security and the functioning of government facilities, McCrary said.

“We can not find enough of these workers,” he said.

5 ways self-service improves government customer experience

For good reason, U.S. citizens have a sense of ownership with federal agency services and expect government to meet, even exceed, service levels compared to the commercial sector. The​ ​State of the Connected Customer Report​ from Salesforce Research finds that 73% of customers say an extraordinary experience with one organization raises their expectations of other organizations.

Dan Davis, senior vice president for public sector, Salesforce

For many agencies, technology is tied to complex bureaucracies, approval processes and policies. So how do we break down silos and make federal agency services more accessible, efficient and transparent to U.S. citizens and agency partners? Choosing the right platform is one answer. Leverage a purpose-built platform that is secure and offers self-service out of the box, as well as API-led integration, which allows agency employees to stay focused on the customer and provide intuitive, omnichannel access to government services.

There’s a Customer Behind Every Device

Recognizing there is a customer behind every device means providing an integrated digital experience across the channels customers use. Self-service allows agencies to offer customers information, tools and resources when they need them, in ways that significantly cut down confusion, wait times and delays. For instance, Gartner’s research finds digital assistants reduce call, chat and email volume by up to 70% while delivering higher customer satisfaction.

Agency benefits of self-service

Creating a digital one-stop-shop, or an “Agency Front Door,” helps agencies accelerate down the pathway of modernizing citizen engagement. The Agency Front Door provides customers a personalized digital space where they find the resources and tools they need. Here are five ways to improve customer experience using the Front Door concept:

Self-service provides customers with instant access to information, allows for personalization, and saves valuable time and organizational resources. Compared to legacy systems, self-service portals are easier to maintain, upgrade and integrate with data, business systems and processes.

By putting an element of control into the hands of the customer, federal agencies can better deliver on their mission objectives while fostering the trust and engagement that is expected.

To learn more about how to deliver a best-in-class customer experience across all digital touchpoints, let us prove it to you and take on your most relevant customer engagement challenge. Or, simply join us for a live demo on Oct. 3 at 1 p.m. Eastern to see how it works. Learn how you can put experts, data and processes where your customers and citizens need them most — at their fingertips.

Dan Davis is the senior vice president for public sector at Salesforce.

Learn more about Salesforce and trailblazers in government.

Three recommendations to strengthen agency crisis management plans

Every leader would like to think their organization’s emergency plan is up to date, if not foolproof. However, when a crisis arises, even the best plans will require adjustments.

While federal agencies are required to develop continuity of operations plans, it’s also important for them to have dynamic and flexible crisis management plans on a local level, especially when employees are dispersed across the country — and increasingly working outside the office.

Tracy Reinhold, vice president and chief security officer, Everbridge

As a result, agency leaders need to reconsider how best to modernize the execution their crisis management plan. A large part of that will mean moving away from printed documents, call-trees or email blasts, and embracing smarter, more cost-effective tools for their crisis management team.

Digitized plans are more likely to be initiated if and when a crisis occurs, and are flexible to change relative to the situation, unlike static pages in a binder. However, technology is only part of the equation. Agency managers also need to give fresh thought to organizational practices, to ensure contingency plans are kept up to date and employees are prepared when emergencies happen.

We work with a lot of agencies and organizations on crisis management planning. Here’s what they’ve learned and recommend:

Create a senior level crisis committee

Organizations should set up two distinct teams to guide the agency in planning and implementing crisis response.

The first is the crisis team. This relatively small and agile team should be charged with managing short-term impacts during a critical event, including communications and logistics. It should have the crisis playbook and technology tools in hand to be able to respond quickly as developments change. The best technology tools today are cloud-based platforms that can provide a virtual command center capable of connecting to team leads on any mobile device, from any location, for any facility in the agency’s purview.

A crisis committee, on the other hand, serves a more forward-thinking function and is often an overlooked step with organizational leaders.

This committee should consist of directors and executives who look at the long-term impacts and potential consequences of a critical event. This committee needs to consider big-picture strategies, for instance, if key employees are displaced or certain operations remain offline. This will help the organization develop a more comprehensive crisis response plan. 

Draft communications before the crisis

Communicating messages quickly and clearly to employees oftentimes is the biggest challenge for agencies during emergencies. And making sure employees have confidence in the instructions from the crisis management team is crucial to keep emergency operations moving smoothly.

Agencies can save valuable time, and avoid confusion, by pre-drafting messages during times of calm, so the guidance to your workforce is clear and simple. Crisis events unfold quickly and unpredictably. There’s not the luxury of time for managers to think about how to frame these messages or confirm everyone received them.

That’s where modern critical event management (CEM) platforms can play a valuable role, by giving your crisis management team the ability to send out communications automatically and simultaneously to different groups depending on what information they need. They can also give agency leaders, crisis teams, human resources representatives and public relations offices the ability to serve in different roles, but in a coordinated way, so that employees are kept safe while also maintaining operations during a crisis.

And if one regional facility is temporarily unable to communicate to employees or partners, a modern CEM streamlines the ability for the crisis management team to send notifications, with custom crafted messages, throughout the organization.

Additionally, those messages can be delivered through multiple channels — by phone, email, or text. And the system can ping every designated individual until there is a response, so the crisis team knows they have received the information.

Learn from your missteps

Many leaders know that even the best-laid plans may not go as intended, so it’s important for agencies to analyze the event after the crisis is over to modify their emergency plan as needed.

Here again is where modern CEM technology can prove to be extremely valuable. A system that creates comprehensive log files will help your team analyze the data and assess how emergency response activities unfolded during the crisis. The systems can capture data on employee, visitor or resident response rates; team and responder response rates; and message deliverability.

That analysis can help crisis management teams address areas of possible improvement while they are fresh in their minds.  And it can also help crisis committee members better gauge the potential long-term consequences of an emergency and better guide managers on the most effective procedures.

Most of all, having the right tools, processes and practices in place will help ensure that your federal workforce is informed and safe.

Tracy Reinhold is vice president and chief security officer at Everbridge. He is responsible for advancing Everbridge’s enterprise-level security strategy, as well as working closely with customers and partners to optimize their approach to managing and responding to critical events. Prior to his commercial roles in security, Reinhold served as a Special Agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation for twenty-two years. During this time, he was a member of the Senior Executive Service, served as Associate Executive Assistant Director for National Security and led the FBI’s intelligence division.

Everbridge’s cloud-based platform for critical event management is FedRAMP approved. It currently supports the operational resilience needs of more than 40 federal agencies.

Air Force’s shift to multi-domain operations depends on networks

As the Air Force embarks on a new strategy of multi-domain operations, building out a modern network to integrate those disparate domains will be essential, the service’s top leadership said this week.

The multi-domain operations strategy looks to link together air, sea, land, space, cyber and information assets to better identify and eliminate threats. Acting Secretary Matt Donovan said the future of battle “will depend less on discrete warfighting platforms and more on the networks, data and IT infrastructure that binds them all together.”

“It will take true teamwork across all forces and domains to meet the difficult challenges posed by future adversaries. That is the power of multi-domain operations: In effect, it integrates and synchronizes military activities instead of just seeking to deconflict them. This creates simultaneous dilemmas for our adversaries, overwhelming them with more challenges than they can deal with at one time,” Donovan said at the Air Force Association’s Air, Space and Cyber Conference.

This strategy will be powered by the Air Force‘s in-development Advanced Battle Management System — a system-of-systems approach for force integration and information sharing.

“The Advanced Battle Management System, or ABMS, is our first real step in operationalizing this type of command and control required for multi-domain operations,” Donovan explained. “Instead of relying on one specific platform for future command and control, we’re developing a robust, open-architecture family of systems that includes air, ground, remotely piloted and space assets, and synchronizing them onto a single network.”

‘Connecting every sensor to every shooter’

Indeed, the network is key, said Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein, and for multi-domain operations to work for the force of the future, the service today must build out that network and change its way of thinking around it.

“I don’t actually know standing here today what’s going to actually go in the bay of that B-52 or that X-37” or in the weapons systems of the future, said Goldfein, the Air Force’s top uniformed official. “Nor do we have to. … Our job is to connect them. Our job is to build the network and to build the highway that these platforms and sensors and weapons are going to ride on to be able to do the work” needed in the digital age.

Donovan echoed that point: “The key is not the individual platform. The key is connecting every sensor to every shooter.”

This will require the Air Force shift its thinking from “platform-centric” to “network-centric,” Goldfein said. “The questions for us is can we look beyond the devices, can we look beyond the trucks, can we look beyond the platforms and actually focus on the highway we’ve built for the future?”

Recently, Goldfein traveled to Silicon Valley, where described himself to major tech companies as the “chief of staff of a garage startup,” he said. He continued that analogy this, calling the Air Force a hardware startup — i.e. planes, weapons, sensors —that needs to evolve into a software startup.

“We’re a garage startup, and today we’re sort of a hardware company: platforms, sensors and weapons,” he said. “And I’m here because our future is in software. It ain’t going to be the device that wins. It’s going to be the app. And the questions for us is how do we build the highway to be able to work it?”

This all feeds into the service’s Digital Air Force Initiative, in which IT modernization is a key element. The Air Force is partnering with commercial providers to develop the network it needs under its enterprise-IT-as-a-service initiative.

Donovan summed up this future state of the Air Force well. “How do we develop the app that sits on the cloud that’s powered by AI that’s connected to the warfighter?”

“The same technologies that are revolutionizing business and commerce, such as smartphones, cloud computing and artificial intelligence, are equally influencing the future of war,” he said.

Senate spending bill doesn’t include TMF funding

The Senate Appropriations subcommittee that handles general government operations advanced a version of its fiscal 2020 spending bill without any money for the Technology Modernization Fund.

That came in spite of appeals from Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., who spoke in favor of the revolving IT investment fund during a markup session Tuesday. “The federal government spends annually $80 billion in information technology, and 75% of that money goes to old legacy systems that are outdated, antiquated, they’re vulnerable and they’re unsupported,” he said. “And no agency ever seems to have the money to pay for updating their IT.”

“This is an investment, not an expenditure,” Moran added.

He encouraged the full Appropriations Committee to consider reinstating TMF. Moran was a Senate sponsor of the Modernizing Government Technology Act, which created the TMF.

In March, the White House budget proposed $150 million for TMF. The House version of the 2020 Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Act, which passed in June, proposes cutting it to $35 million.

In fiscal 2018 the TMF received $100 million, and in fiscal 2019 it got an additional $25 million. Supporters argue that the money, which recipient agencies pay back over five years, helps agencies work on large-scale modernization projects. Thus far the fund has awarded a total of $90 million to seven distinct projects — two at both the U.S. Department of Agriculture, General Services Administration, and one apiece at the departments of Energy, Housing and Urban Development, and Labor.

However, there has been some skepticism about it among appropriators, and this isn’t the first time the Senate has threated to defund the program. Some in Congress have argued, for example, that the TMF’s board should be more transparent about its process. The seven-member board, which decides which projects receive funding, includes Federal CIO Suzette Kent.

The full committee markup is scheduled for Thursday.

CISA launches contest to identify top cyber talent in government

Federal employees will soon compete in a series of increasingly difficult contests showcasing their cybersecurity skills.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency announced the first President’s Cup Cybersecurity Competition this week.

President Trump’s executive order in May on cybersecurity workforce called for the competition, which will identify and reward top executive branch personnel.

“Strengthening our federal cybersecurity workforce is key,” CISA Director Chris Krebs said in the announcement. “This competition is designed to be a unique and fun way to engage and reward existing talent, while also encouraging others to get involved and join in this critical mission.”

Offensive and defensive cyber will be on display in two online qualification rounds and a final, in-person round at CISA’s headquarters in Arlington, Virginia.

Pentagon and civilian government personnel can enter individually or as a team of up to five members from the same agency.

Winners will receive up to a $50,000 bonus from their agency, with all finalists being invited to the award ceremony. Registration runs from Sept. 16-21.

Treasury’s $1 billion-plus enterprisewide cloud contract is coming

The Treasury Department has mapped out its transition to a seven-year, enterprisewide contract exceeding $1 billion for a full suite of cloud products, services and support from multiple providers.

Developed by the Office of the Chief Information Officer in collaboration with the IRS, procurement offices and other stakeholders, the roadmap details a yearlong effort to develop and award the solicitation for what’s being called the T-Cloud.

The Treasury must maintain and expand existing cloud services in the meantime, and there are quite a few.

“At present, Treasury bureaus are individually moving forward with cloud solutions, and have implemented a number of cloud solutions to address unique mission priorities requiring agile and elastic approaches, often through duplicative contract actions,” reads the roadmap on FedBizOpps. “This scattered approach, while offering varying degrees of agility for individual customers, ignores opportunities for cost reduction through service deduplication and consolidated procurement actions.”

Bureaus currently use cloud services from Oracle, Box, Acquia, Service Now, Salesforce, and CEvent, and the department predicts that overall usage will increase 30% year-over-year — driven by the IRS and Bureau of Fiscal Service plans to migrate more workloads to Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure.

The department has found transferring workloads between cloud service providers (CSPs) at the end of contracts particularly difficult.

“No matter what choices you make, you are generally ‘stuck’ with a platform until a competitor makes a fundamental technical or pricing advance that makes it sufficiently attractive for you to dedicate the time and money to migrate your workload to a different platform,” reads the roadmap. “For these reasons, a workload moved to Amazon and optimized in Amazon will operate best in Amazon, and the same for a workload moved to Microsoft or Oracle or Google.”

Treasury, as a result, needs multiple CSPs under contract.

OCIO built infrastructure for shared services, called the Workplace Community Cloud (WC2), in moderate and high Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) enclaves within AWS.

This fiscal year, the ceiling of the existing AWS contract will be raised from $6.4 million to $9.6 million and additional services acquired to meet bureau demands.

Short-term bridge contracts for core cloud and professional services will be awarded in early fiscal 2020 for three- to four-year periods. This includes recompetes for the $170-million Metrostar professional services contract, $200-million Four Points AWS contract, and $200-million DO contract for Microsoft services. The IRS will look to migrate its Enterprise Case Management workload during this period.

The T-Cloud contract is expected in fiscal 2021 and its award in early 2022. The solicitation will support a multi-cloud environment and centralized management of infrastructure-, platform-, and software-as-a-service by a single broker.

In addition to full suites of AWS, Microsoft, Google and Oracle cloud services, the contract will include the ability to onramp new CSPs.

“The desire is to minimize the number of cloud acquisitions across Treasury by sizing them for the enterprise, and to migrate them to a longer-term, maximally-competed, comprehensive contract for third-party managed and unmanaged IT services,” reads the roadmap.