Federal Technology Convergence Commission Report

FEBRUARY 2015

Federal Technology Convergence Commission Report

BUILDING A SMARTER NATION: THE CONVERGENCE OF SOCIAL, MOBILE, ANALYTICS, AND CLOUD

Table of Contents 03 Foreward 04 Executive Summary 08 Chapter 1: Understanding the World of SMAC The Four Component Technologies 08 Social Media, Mobility, Analytics, and Cloud 10 SMAC Convergence 11 Case Study: The 2013 Boston Marathon 12 Chapter 2: International Outlook A New Form of World Power 12 The Digital Diplomacy 14 A New Approach to Intelligence 14 The Issue of Data Sovereignty 15 Case Study: The Arab Spring 16 Recommendations 17 Chapter 3: Federal Public Sector Community Impact The New Public/Private-Sector Infrastructure 18 Interoperable Citizen Services 20 Case Study: Smart Cities 21 Case Study: FirstNet 22 Recommendations 23 Chapter 4: Convergence and the Individual Changing Expectations of Citizens 23 Earning the Trust of our Citizens 25 Case Study: Connect.gov 26 Case Study: Listening to the Voice of the People 27 Recommendations 28 Chapter 5 Tips for CIOs The CIO as Innovation Catalyst 29 Leverage and Protect Organizational Data 30 Create New Innovative Partnerships 32 Modernize the IT Infrastructure 33 Recommendations 34 Chapter 6: Workforce The Workforce Today 34 The Future Workforce 35 HR and the 21st Century Workforce 36 Case Study: ERAMET 36 Recommendations 37 Chapter 7: Procurement Implications – Creating a System that Works SMAC Convergence and Procurement 37 The Problem with Current Sourcing 38 Agile/Adaptive IT Sourcing 40 Case Study – GSA 41 Recommendations 42 Appendix: Recommendations Summary 46 Acknowledgments 2

Foreword The convergence of the four technologies Social Media, Mobility, Analytics, and Cloud (SMAC) is an emerging phenomenon. While each of these technologies is having a significant impact on society and government, their convergence unleashes new capabilities. Convergence in the public sector is forcing a reexamination of the role of government, the meaning of national security, and the nation’s entire approach to intelligence collection and law enforcement. In order to understand SMAC convergence and its implications for government, the TechAmerica Foundation initially formed the Technology Convergence Commission to provide the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) with industry input on this subject. Instead of looking at SMAC in isolation, the Commission focused on conducting deep, insightful research on how these technologies are converging. The Commission’s goal was to provide recommendations to the U.S. federal government on SMAC as well as its ability to improve efficiency, services, and capabilities while driving innovation and the economy. The report was completed under the Creating IT Futures Foundation—the philanthropic arm of CompTIA. ABOUT THE TECHAMERICA CONVERGENCE COMMISSION Formed in July 2014, the TechAmerica Convergence Commission brings together technology leaders to make recommendations to the U.S. Administration on the convergence of social, mobile, analytics and cloud (SMAC) technologies. Co-chaired by Kay Kapoor, president of AT&T Government Solutions, and David Zolet, executive vice president and general manager of Computer Sciences Corporation’s (CSC) North American Public Sector, the TechAmerica Convergence Commission offers industry insights on how SMAC convergence can improve government services and efficiency, while also driving innovation in addition to economic growth. ABOUT THE CREATING IT FUTURES FOUNDATION As the philanthropic arm of CompTIA, the Creating IT Futures Foundation is a 501(c)(3) charity with the mission of helping populations under-represented in the information technology industry and individuals who are lacking in opportunity to prepare for, secure, and be successful in IT careers. The foundation cultivates best practices in IT workforce development and STEM education.

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Federal Technology Convergence Commission Report

Executive Summary Social media, mobility, analytics, and cloud (SMAC) are technologies that have all made their mark independently and are rapidly changing the world. When converged (SMAC convergence), these technologies possess a unique power with dramatic implications for government across a wide range of areas. Rather than being a specific technology, convergence is a phenomenon that occurs when individuals use SMAC technologies to communicate, cooperate, and solve big problems. Although convergence takes many forms (like the city of Boston’s response to the marathon bombing or the Arab Spring protests) all occurrences of convergence share the same three characteristics: • Multiple interactions – there is mass participation and active engagement • Decentralized control – there is no single controlling authority • Distributed problem solving – problems that no individual can solve are handled collectively While describing convergence based on technology merely leads to a collection of disparate perspectives, the Commission organized its research based on convergence’s overall impact. SMAC convergence impact analysis and Commission recommendations are presented in the following areas: • International Outlook • Federal Public-Sector Community Impact • Convergence and the Individual Citizen • CIO Guidelines • Workforce • Procurement Recommendations are characterized by their timeframe: near term (less than one year), intermediate term (one to three years), or long term (three to five years).

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Executive Summary

INTERNATIONAL OUTLOOK Convergence increases connections between individuals of different nations and provides an unprecedented opportunity for the U.S. to positively influence international events and policy. The U.S. needs to embrace converged technology as a method of international influence, intelligence, and diplomacy. The Commission recommends: 1. Drafting and publishing an International Data Exchange Governance Standards document based on the National Information Exchange Model (NIEM) and National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) cybersecurity framework for data. (Near Term) 2. Creating a training program for government and civil society representatives in best practices for using SMAC-converged technologies to build relationships between the U.S. and individual people in addition to governments abroad. (Near Term) FEDERAL PUBLIC-SECTOR COMMUNITY IMPACT Convergence technologies offer significant opportunities for citizens to become more engaged at all levels of government. In response, the government must provide citizens with digital services that appear to come from a single organization. The Commission recommends: 1. Initiating a software development effort with the goal of building 100 mobile apps, each of which takes an existing government service and optimizes it for delivery over the Internet using smartphones or tablets. (Near Term) 2. Renewing the commitment to linking data across agencies by developing a network of initiatives at all levels of government designed to encourage and engage agencies in coordinated efforts to share high-value data. (Near Term) 3. Updating the national digital government strategy with best practices designed to bring about the digital infrastructure required for SMAC convergence. (Intermediate Term) CONVERGENCE AND THE INDIVIDUAL CITIZEN Convergence gives the U.S. a significant opportunity to build a smarter government through increased individual citizen participation, but only if it can establish and maintain a solid trust relationship with the citizen. This trust must be based on mutual agreement and consent. The Commission recommends: 1. Directing CIOs from the Departments of State, Treasury, Defense, Justice, Agriculture, Commerce, Labor, Health and Human Services, as well as Homeland Security to begin an 18-month initiative with the goal of providing an NSTIC-aligned solution to at least 20% of registered citizen portal subscribers. (Intermediate Term)

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Federal Technology Convergence Commission Report

TIPS FOR CIOS The CIO’s primary responsibility will be in supporting and spurring public/private-sector infrastructure needed to support converged citizen services. This infrastructure is complex and government CIOs will have to build it from a series of modernization projects. The Commission recommends: 1. Establishing a governance structure to assist in regulating the SMAC technologies and service models present across the enterprise. (Near Term) 2. Increasing the accessibility of information for mobile devices for both internal and external audiences. (Intermediate Term) 3. Implementing identity management to enable smart access into systems to safeguard the convergence of data and information. (Intermediate Term) 4. Building open Application Programming Interface (API) access for internal and external data sources. (Near Term) 5. Creating an ecosystem map of potential private-sector partners capable of providing converged technologies along with a reference architecture describing general patterns for integrating partner technologies into government enterprise infrastructure. (Near Term) 6. Incorporating evidence-based decision making into system designs to enhance outcomes and usability. (Long Term) WORKFORCE SMAC convergence allows work to be performed across geographically dispersed locations and at all hours of the day. The most valuable workers will be those with a high capacity for non-routine problem solving, dealing with ambiguity, and exercising autonomy. This new workforce must be supported by HR practices that focus on new work habits and flexibility. The Commission recommends: 1. Establishing a Commission led by the Federal Chief Operating Officers (or Chief Management Officers) in coordination with the Department of Education and the Department of Labor to define the core elements of education necessary to succeed as a “knowledge worker” in the 21st century workforce. In addition, define, or outline, specialty educational needs for specific disciplines that government requires. (Near Term) 2. Directing the Office of Science and Technology Policy to establish a roadmap of transactional (repetitive) labor functions that would likely be automated in government over the next five to ten years. This may include traditional automation and the new “Internet of Things.” (Near Term) 3. FLSA will become less relevant as the services to goods ratio widens. Avoiding reclassifying service positions as “hourly” as this may stymie productivity and foster an environment in which industry could seek to accelerate automation of those functions thereby increasing unemployment. (Intermediate Term) 6

Executive Summary

4. Directing the Bureau of Labor Statistics to complete a study on the impacts of changing today’s 40 hour work week to the ACA stipulated 30 hour work week at a lower pay rate for government non-FLSA service workers. Ostensibly, if ten individuals, on a voluntary basis only, were to accept a 10% pay cut in exchange for a flexible 30 hour schedule, government could hire one additional person. Assuming that half of the non-military workforce accepted this proposition, we could add 138,000 full time positions and, if this were extended to the U.S. as a whole, we could add 2.75 million jobs. (Intermediate Term) PROCUREMENT IMPLICATIONS Government agility is a significant potential benefit of SMAC convergence. With the right procurement practices, government has the opportunity to become as agile as commercial organizations. Google and Facebook already use SMAC technologies to deliver hundreds of product updates and enhancements every day into production with zero down time. The Commission recommends: 1. Developing a knowledge management capability for sharing acquisition best practices across government. (Near Term) 2. Building a web portal capable of connecting government and private-sector knowledge workers—especially procurement personnel. (Near Term) 3. Finding a way to get more insights about a technology or approach before getting too far down the road in the procurement process. Get vendors involved earlier in the process and give them insight into the whole business process that is impacted and might need to change. (Intermediate Term) 4. Establishing clear two-way communication in instances where it is necessary to improve the results of a procurement goal. (Intermediate Term) 5. Creating an electronic acquisition process that does not require written technical proposals with all the associated time and cost for the government to read, evaluate, and score the results. (Long Term) Table E-1 categorizes the recommendations of this report as near term (less than one year), intermediate term (one to three years), and long term (three to five years). The recommendations are designated in the table by the chapter number in bold font and recommendation within the chapter as numbered in this appendix. TABLE E-1. Timeframes of the Report Recommendations.

Near Term

2-1, 2-2; 3-1, 3-2; 5-1, 5-4, 5-5; 6-1, 6-2; 7-1, 7-2

Intermediate Term

3-3; 4-1; 5-2, 5-3; 6-3, 6-4, 6-5; 7-3, 7-4

Long Term

5-6; 7-5

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1 Understanding the World of SMAC The Four Component Technologies

WHAT IS SMAC CONVERGENCE AND WHY IS IT IMPORTANT? Social Media Social media is the interaction among people in which they create, share, or exchange information, ideas, as well as pictures/videos in virtual communities and networks (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.). This technology increasingly is being used to support collaboration within and across organizations. From the perspective of SMAC convergence, social media facilitates communication and cooperation across large numbers of people in addition to generating massive amounts of data. Mobility Mobility is the shift from restricted access and scarce computing resources to ubiquitous access, data agility, and control capability. It provides always-on access to virtually everyone. Mobility, both in terms of personal devices (smart phones, tablets, etc. and their related apps) and machine-to-machine (M2M) communications—which leads to the Internet of Things (IoT)—represents ubiquitous computing along with unprecedented sensor data and remote-control capabilities. Analytics Analytics is the discovery and communication of meaningful patterns extracted from the massive amounts of data generated by social media and mobility. New techniques for mining human-size insights from large, confusing data reveal the hidden patterns and insights needed for effective businesses and government. Cloud For SMAC convergence, cloud overcomes a mobility limitation. As powerful as today’s smart phones and other personal-computing devices are, they have neither the computing power nor storage necessary to perform analytics. Cloud computing provides a centralized platform for data collection, storage, and analysis. Social media and mobility require computing power beyond what any individual or organization can realistically afford. Cloud computing solves this problem by pooling computing resources and renting them out to users as needed.

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Understanding the World of SMAC

A Smarter, More Engaged Nation • Decentralized control • Distributed problem solving • Multiple interactions

Social Media

Mobility

• Widespread participation • Creates large quantities of data of different types

• Ubiquitious computuing • Ubiquitious access

Convergence

Analytics • Turns data into information • Capable of dealing with large quantities of diverse data

Cloud • Platform for colleciton and analysis of data created by social media and mobility • Enabler of social media

Figure 1. The convergence of Social Media, Mobility, Analytics and Cloud unleashes new capabilities.

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Federal Technology Convergence Commission Report

Convergence is evident anytime social, mobile, analytics, and cloud technologies are used in combination by groups of people to tackle problems no single person could solve. SMAC CONVERGENCE With SMAC convergence four complementary technologies unleash new capabilities, as shown in Figure 1. Three principles define SMAC convergence: • Decentralized control • Distributed problem solving • Multiple interactions Decentralized control means that no common authority oversees user interactions. Even dictatorial regimes are limited in their ability to constrain users’ ability to share information, spread ideas, and collaborate (see Chapter 2). Distributed problem solving arises, because so many people provide information. Even though analytics processing is not fully distributed, the input to that processing and, in many cases, the availability of the results are (see sidebar on the Boston Marathon bombing). Since individuals collaborate through a wide range of methods and sites, multiple interactions is another key distinguishing characteristic. With SMAC convergence, it could become possible for the government, its citizens, and energy companies to reach an acceptable national U.S. energy plan. A smarter nation could increase citizen engagement using the Internet as the new public space. It could provide innovative services and programs that give U.S. businesses, as well as educational institutions, a clear competitive edge. Government must leverage SMAC convergence tools. This report expands on SMAC challenges and presents solutions in the following areas: • International Outlook - Mutually beneficial relationships with other countries will happen as the result of large-scale collaboration among individual officials. A new, holistic way of gathering intelligence, understanding threats, and co-creating partnerships with other countries will be called for. • Federal Public-Sector Community Impact - In the future, there will be public/private-sector infrastructure capable of decentralized, federated governance; a single view of distributed citizen services, such as: healthcare, education, and taxation; in addition to interoperable services shared across departments, agencies, and states. • Convergence and the Individual - Collective intelligence will give citizens new opportunities for an extended democracy where each individual can offer support or opposition to individual ideas and proposals rather than to specific people or ideology.

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Understanding the World of SMAC

• CIO Guidelines - SMAC convergence will require government CIOs to become responsible for discovering new insights using analytics, accelerating government agility with cloud computing, increasing worker mobility, and increasing engagement with new citizen services. • Workforce - Building and maintaining the new ecosystem of private-sector platforms needed to support convergence requires a SMAC-savvy workforce. Managing these workers will require technical leaders and human resources professionals not just skilled at managing IT and IT departments, but adept at hands-on use of the technology itself. • Procurement - Adopting and benefiting from the emerging ecosystem of private-sector platforms will require agility in technology procurement. Best practices are needed to allow the government to benefit from the emerging ecosystem of private-sector platforms.

Case Study

The 2013 Boston Marathon

On April 15, 2013, the Boston Marathon was the target of a bombing attack that killed three people and injured more than 200. Immediately following the attack, witnesses near the scene began posting eyewitness accounts to social media sites. Within minutes, sites like Twitter had messages identifying the time, location, and description of specific events. This stream of social media data gave runners warnings and accounts of the attack while additionally giving authorities instant updates. The Boston Globe temporarily converted its homepage into a live blog that pulled Tweets from Boston authorities, news outlets, and citizen witnesses. After the bombing, Boston police made a plea for citizens to send in their video and picture footage, which added hours of available surveillance to the investigation. Police used automated facial recognition on the data in attempt to identify suspects. The response to the Boston marathon bombing is an early example of the collective intelligence that results from convergence. Mobile technology made computing ubiquitous in the venue. Social interactions, enhanced by this ubiquitous computing, generated valuable data about the attack. Cloud infrastructure from social media sites and the Boston Globe automatically scaled to accommodate the influx of data. Analytics were used to spot patterns and gain new insights.

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2 International Outlook

A New Form of World Power—Transparency and Participation

“New power is the deployment of mass participation and peer coordination to create change and shift outcomes”

SMAC convergence provides unprecedented ability for the individual to influence international events and policy. Convergence allows greater direct citizen engagement that leads to what Jeremy Heimans, co-founder and chief executive officer of Purpose, describes as “the deployment of mass participation and peer coordination to create change and shift outcomes.” Internationally, SMAC convergence will bring about a bottom-up approach to inter-organizational and multi-governmental collaboration. Convergence will allow a fundamental shift in the balance of political and social power in the world—as well as old power versus new power. Mutually beneficial relationships with other countries will happen as the result of large-scale collaboration among individuals. The power to influence international relationships will shift from being held by a few to being made by many. Transparency and participation become key with SMAC convergence. A country’s power to influence will be determined by the strength of publically accessible, informal networks. New power will require a new, holistic way of gathering intelligence, understanding threats, and co-creating partnerships with other countries. THE DIGITAL DIPLOMACY

—Jeremy Heimans, TED Talk, What New Power Looks Like

Convergence connects people across government agencies and country boundaries. As more of the important world events—from Middle Eastern social movements to Western political leadership—rely on SMAC convergence tools, more of the information about those events will be generated by social media. The U.S. needs to embrace converged technology as a method of international influence, intelligence, and diplomacy. Convergence leads to a digital diplomacy where social media tools are used to collect and share international policy messages. This includes actions like using converged technologies to counter media misinformation or jihadist propaganda, using viral videos to influence foreign policy agendas or using mobile technology as widespread public tools for election monitoring. Conversely, SMAC technologies also can be used by adversaries for message promotion and recruitment, which presents new security and intelligence issues. The early stages of digital diplomacy are quite evident. In Sierra Leone and Montenegro, volunteers are using S.M.S. to report voting irregularities.1 The U.S. State Department has hundreds of thousands of Facebook followers in Indonesia.2 The State Department currently communicates with more than 15 million people directly via social media.3 Citizens no longer need to visit the embassies physically to have their questions answered. In 2011, the Swedish Foreign Minister, Carl Bildt, used Twitter to call public attention to the fact that his Bahraini counterpart was unresponsive during a heated protest movement.4

1. See, for example, Ian Schuler, “SMS As a Tool in Election Observation,” Innovations, Spring 2008, p. 143, https://www.ndi.org/files/2329_sms_engpdf_06242008.pdf. 2. http://www.thomascrampton.com/indonesia/us-embassy-indonesia-facebook-jakarta/

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3. http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/up-front/posts/2012/10/26-ediplomacy-hanson 4. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/twitter/8537970/Swedish-foreign-minister-uses-Twitter-to-contact-Bahraini-counterpart.html

International Outlook

As converged technology emerges, it will give people a greater ability to have their voice heard. The shift to new power resulting from SMAC convergence will allow citizens to communicate and influence international relationships unfiltered by traditional diplomatic channels. Access to new power will become democratized. In 2013, Jack Dorsey, a co-founder of Twitter, publicly interacted with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, successfully eliciting his comment on Iran’s censorship stance.5 In 2011, it was reported that Chinese hackers tried to break into dissidents’ Gmail accounts.6 In response, Google refused to comply with China’s censorship laws and redirected Chinese users to its Hong Kong search engine.7 Google’s actions gave added resonance to a speech U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivered wherein she emphasized the freedom to connect as part of the U.S. human rights and foreign policy agenda.8 The rise of new power will lead to large-scale collaboration among individual citizens being used to co-create mutually beneficial relationships between the U.S. and other countries. After the 2010 Haiti earthquake, the U.S. State Department set up the Text Haiti 90999 program that raised more than $40 million in Red Cross donation aid from individual U.S. citizens.9 The State Department is identifying influencer Muslims on major social media platforms and is reaching out to these individual citizens asking them to help spread international diplomatic messages consistent with their values.10 Converged technologies allow the U.S. to create systems of free text messaging so that anyone can report a crime. Personally identifiable information would be stripped from the messages before feeding the data into federal and municipal police systems monitored by a trusted third party, thereby allowing the U.S. to build an infrastructure of transparent crime reporting for Mexico. Converged technologies like mobile banking already are well established in places with widespread political instability like Kenya and the Congo.11 By offering direct payments to the phones of friendly contacts, which would be transferable to the phones of their families, converged technologies could be a powerful tool for the U.S. to influence diplomacy and security in those regions. The State Department also has recently begun providing SMAC technologies that increase communication among Iranian dissidents.12 5. http://www.theguardian.com/world/iran-blog/2013/oct/02/iran-president-hassan-rouhani-internet-online-censorship; http://amanpour.blogs.cnn.com/2013/10/01/twitter-founder-dorsey-and-iran-president-rouhani-exchange-tweets/ 6. http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/02/us-google-hacking-idUSTRE7506U320110602 7. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_China 8. http://www.state.gov/r/pa/scp/fs/2010/136702.htm 9. http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/12/tech/mobile/charity-donations-text-messages/ 10. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/18/magazine/18web2-0-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 11. https://mobileinthedevelopingworld.wordpress.com/2013/05/05/democratic-republic-of-congo-mobile-banking-on-the-up/ 12. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/18/magazine/18web2-0-t.html?pagewanted=all

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Federal Technology Convergence Commission Report

A NEW APPROACH TO INTELLIGENCE The decentralized control, distributed problem solving, and multiple interactions typical of SMAC convergence require new methods of gathering and using intelligence. Agents must have the autonomy to make small, yet actionable connections to large sets of otherwise disparate data. This new method of intelligence must allow agents to contribute at the individual level to an entire intelligence ecosystem that allows better strategic and tactical responses at the group level. Imagine intelligence platforms that allow analysts to create micro-apps or applets for mission-specific hypotheses, then mash up these applets into larger, more comprehensive intelligence. An early example of this new approach to intelligence is the CIA’s Intellipedia program. Based on the same collaboration principles behind Wikipedia, Intellipedia allows any intelligence analyst to create a short article called a stub—a placeholder for a more complete article. Analysts can add bits and pieces to the stub and, over time, a complete picture emerges.13 Intellipedia was essential in providing actionable intelligence when, in 2006, a small plane crashed into a high-rise building in Manhattan. Within 20 minutes of the incident, agents began coordinating indirectly using the site. Without an official investigation, the site collected information from open sources and made it apparent that the crash was an accident and not a terrorist attack.14 THE ISSUE OF DATA SOVEREIGNTY Even with the use of cloud computing inherent in SMAC convergence, every data storage facility has a physical location. When that location is not in the U.S., there is increased risk that overseas data will be subject to sovereign control of the country where the data is physically located. Even if there is legal assurance of the offshore data integrity through contractual and international agreements, those agreements do not protect against intrusion by foreign espionage. Subpoenas can lead to governments gaining access to hosted cloud data without the owners being notified. In some cases, there may be no legal obligation for the cloud provider to report any security breaches at all. Many of the current concerns that surround data sovereignty relate to enforcing privacy regulations and preventing data that is stored in a foreign country from being subpoenaed by the host country’s government. Widespread adoption of cloud services, as well as new approaches to data storage including object storage, has broken down traditional geopolitical barriers more than ever before. In response, many countries have regulated new compliance requirements by amending their current laws or enacting new legislation that requires customer data to be kept within the country in which the customer resides.

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13. https://www.cia.gov/news-information/featured-story-archive/intellipedia-celebrates-third-anniversary.html 14. http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/news/techinnovations/2006-11-02-intellipedia_x.htm

International Outlook

Verifying that data exists only at allowed locations can be difficult. It requires the cloud customer to trust that their cloud provider is completely honest and open about where their servers are hosted as well as adhere strictly to service level agreements (SLAs). Typically, Twitter data stored on the cloud does not belong to the cloud provider nor does it belong to the software application developer. Rather, it resides with the government agency or the private company using the application. If the cloud provider or software application developer is subpoenaed, they must refer the legal authorities to the agency or private-sector company licensing the software application. This applies for SMAC convergence or any data transfer and storage, but can vary country by country. Disputes about data control are resolved on a case-by-case basis. Currently, there is no international standard governing data sovereignty and it seems unlikely any international institution is likely to sponsor an agreement in the near future. Recommendations for protecting data in the absence of a comprehensive data sovereignty agreement are presented in Chapter 5.

Case Study

The Arab Spring

The Arab Spring is a revolutionary wave of demonstrations and protests (both nonviolent and violent), riots and civil wars in the Arab world that began on December 18, 2010. It spread throughout the countries of the Arab League and surrounding areas. By December 2013, rulers had been forced from power in Tunisia, Egypt (twice), Libya, and Yemen, additionally civil uprisings had erupted in Bahrain.15 SMAC technologies were critical enablers of these demonstrations. The characteristic principles of SMAC convergence—decentralized control, distributed problem solving, and multiple interactions—were clearly on display during the Arab Spring.16 The United Kingdom’s (UK) Foreign Commonwealth Office (FCO) used social media to improve its diplomatic preparedness – monitoring events as they occurred. The FCO used convergence technology to engage more effectively. They were able to encourage others to build influential informal networks, respond to negative comments, and rebut inaccuracies.17

15. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Spring 16. http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/what-the-arab-spring-tells-us-about-the-future-of-social-media-in-revolutionary-movements 17. http://icai.independent.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/FCO-and-British-Council-Aid-Responses-to-the-Arab-Spring-Report.pdf

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Federal Technology Convergence Commission Report

RECOMMENDATIONS The Commission recommends directing CIOs from the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), National Protection & Programs Directorate (NPPD), the Office of Biometric Identity Management (OBIM), DHS Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to conduct a 180-day initiative to draft and publish an International Data Exchange Governance Standards document based on the National Information Exchange Model (NIEM) and National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) cybersecurity framework for data. While the likelihood of success cannot be guaranteed because of the interdependencies of the countries involved, the impact would be high as no such governances are in place today. This recommendation would have short, medium, and long-term goals, and objectives assigned. One short-term objective could simply be identifying the five countries that wish to collaborate. The Commission recommends initiating a 180-day training program for government and civil society representatives in best practices for using SMAC-converged technologies to build relationships between the U.S., and individual people, and governments abroad. Employees should be trained in using SMAC-converged technologies to explain U.S. views on particular issues, build dialogues that clarify perspectives, and build relationships that can be used to resolve shared challenges. These employees will, for example, use converged technologies as a mechanism for combatting terrorism, fostering free trade, addressing immigration, and even providing legal assistance to governments as well as civil society organizations looking to draft or improve laws. Building such initiatives is advised for the Departments of: State, Treasury, Defense, Justice, Agriculture, Commerce, Labor, Health and Human Services, and Homeland Security, the United States Agency for International Development, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, and the Office of the United States Trade Representative.

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3 Federal Public-Sector Community Impact The New Public/Private-Sector Infrastructure

Government at all levels will have to adapt to take advantage of SMAC convergence’s increased connectivity and participation. As shown in Figure 2, effective government will require: • digital and organizational infrastructure capable of meeting the shared needs of multiple cooperating departments and agencies. • a secure infrastructure that improves overall resource efficiency, while still allowing for modular adaptation to the specific needs of government at the state, local, and tribal level. • an online channel that presents a consistent, single view of government services to citizens and enables two-way interaction between citizens or businesses and public-sector.

1 Shared resources

2 Online availability

Mechanisms in place to share back-end services for HR, finance, accounting, procurement and related data, and IT

1 Shared resources

3

4 Interoperability The notion services are interoperable and shareable across departments, agencies, or even states

An omni-channel approach to delivering full online availablilty of government services

4

Single view of the citizen

Interoperability

3 Single view of the citizen

2

A single, consistent view of the citizen, patient, household, across service, programs, and departments

Online availability

Figure 2. The technology infrastructure needed to support an extended democracy.18

The connectedness and adaptability convergence demands as well as requires government to adopt systems architectures designed for modularity and interoperability. Post convergence, few government IT systems will be useful if they stand alone. It will be commonplace for data in different systems to be tagged and shared, for databases to be integrated into several different applications. There will be widespread government use of application programming interfaces (APIs) for building citizen service applications. Government-only IT infrastructures are not practical for such a complex IT environment. For future IT infrastructures, government IT architects will commonly use combinations of their own infrastructure, infrastructures of other government agencies, and external private-sector cloud resources to build fully hybrid environments. This hybrid approach to government infrastructure design will increase as the extended democracy drives IT infrastructure complexity. In the future, government IT architects will routinely design infrastructure solutions from a mash-up of public-sector and private-sector resources.

18. http://ibm.co/1tQd0a9

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Federal Technology Convergence Commission Report

Engagement between the government and citizens—within and among government agencies at all levels—requires better use of open, secure, and flexible technology environments. For example, leveraging the Internet of Things (IoT) requires off-premise cloud solutions, likely paid for in “as a service” models—something that many agencies have been slow to adopt. In addition to the acquisition and policy challenges associated with moving to more integrated digital platforms, there are issues to be addressed regarding access to as well as adoption of high-speed broadband networks, in addition to security for the devices used. Rural and tribal areas of the country have been faced with the lack of broadband services and an inability to receive the benefits of the telecommunications industry’s fast-paced evolution to high-speed data. First described as the “Digital Divide” back in the early 90’s, much effort, energy, and grant money has been spent to help drive more broadband to these regions. Access to and adoption of high-speed broadband—the underpinning for using any mobile or wireless SMAC device—continue to be challenges today. The government (federal, state, and local) recognizes these issues and has provided more than $7 billion in grants and loans to help states, local municipalities, tribal nations, and non-profits build out infrastructure and promote user adoption. Through programs such as the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) Universal Service Access fund, the Department of Agriculture Rural Utility Service loans and the Department of Commerce’s Broadband Technology Opportunities Program, resources have targeted infrastructure build-out, citizen training and subsidies for broadband services to foster many public policy initiatives across topics such as education, workforce and economic development, health care access and even public safety. INTEROPERABLE CITIZEN SERVICES Convergence technologies offer significant opportunities to reduce costs and improve the experience of government services by delivering them through a centralized one-stop shop. Citizens should experience services as coming from a single organization (the U.S. government) with a single, coherent view of every citizen, rather than the traditional siloed agency approach. Workforce restructuring efforts (Chapter 6) clear the way for the seamless integration of various agency services. That seamless integration drives even greater government efficiency through the increased citizen use of self-service channels. For example, the Hong Kong government publishes digital citizen services through a single, unified online channel. The services are grouped into meaningful clusters and made easy to access by different demographics. The site is designed around the citizen with features such as “I’m looking for…” and “I want to…” sections embedded in the main page, as shown in Figure 3.

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Federal Public-Sector Community Impact

Figure 3. From Hong Kong’s GovHK website. 19

SMAC convergence changes the individual’s capabilities and expectations of interacting with other people as well as with government. Citizens not only expect personalized, customizable self-service anytime, anywhere on their mobile devices from businesses, but also from the government. Furthermore, the federal, state, local, and tribal government workforce expects similar capabilities on mobile devices when conducting official business to improve operational efficiencies. Mobile devices already are being used around the world as a conduit for greater government efficiency and increased citizen activism. In Malaysia, for example, citizens can use SMS to verify the parliamentary and state constituencies where they are registered to vote. The California state government allows citizens to register for mobile notification of energy alerts, lottery results, traffic updates, and articles from the Governor’s press room. In the Philippines, citizens help enforce anti-pollution laws by reporting violations using mobile devices.20

19. http://www.gov.hk/en/residents/ 20. http://www.egov4dev.org/mgovernment/

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Case Study

Smart Cities

SMAC convergence can be leveraged by cities looking to become “smart” or “smarter.” Chicago is using a blend of SMAC technologies in predictive, rather than reactive, ways to solve issues like the city’s rat problem. “We’ve built a predictive model based on more than 30 variables of where rats are likely to infest and we target those areas,” said Brenna Berman, commissioner and CIO for the Chicago Department of Innovation Technology at a recent SMAC conference, reporting a 35 percent reduction in rat-related calls. “That use case is one simplified example of how that model is working.”21 The City of Chicago Technology Plan22 presents a series of initiatives aimed at moving towards modern infrastructure, smart communities, and technological innovation while making Chicago a “city where technology fuels opportunity, inclusion, engagement and innovation for all.” These developments in Chicago highlight the smart city concept. According to Wikipedia, a smart city uses digital technologies to enhance performance and well-being, to reduce costs and resource consumption additionally to engage more effectively and actively with its citizens. Key “smart” sectors include transport, energy, health care, water, and waste. A smart city should be able to respond faster to city and global challenges than one with a simple ‘transactional’ relationship with its citizens.23 SMAC convergence is a key enabler for smart cities. Some of the distinguishing characteristics of smart cities are “the collective intelligence of a city’s population,” (distributed problem solving) and technology embedded into the city’s physical environment that is available to the city’s population such as communication infrastructure, digital spaces, and online problem-solving tools.

21. http://www.techamerica.org/smac-chicago-highlights-the-challenges-and-trends-in-technology-convergence/

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22. http://techplan.cityofchicago.org/ 23. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_city

Federal Public-Sector Community Impact

Case Study

FirstNet

The First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet24) is an initiative to provide first responders with a resilient broadband network to perform their life-saving mission. FirstNet will facilitate the use of rugged, easy-to-use devices designed to meet public safety requirements while providing a rich set of applications and services that enhance first responders’ ability to do their jobs. The FirstNet network will provide the backbone to allow the public safety community to improve its communications and perform its mission more safely. Once in use, FirstNet will provide a foundation on which public safety agencies nationwide can better leverage data-rich applications, sharing information more seamlessly across jurisdictions. FirstNet will provide state-of-the-art mobile and web-based technology to aid the critical mission of protecting and securing citizens. The FirstNet initiative is leveraging SMAC convergence to enhance public safety. FirstNet will obtain improved scene awareness from social media. Analytics (e.g., visualization, text analytics) will be applied to extract data of interest to first responders. The cloud is the platform for collecting and analyzing the data. In addition, there will be a range of (cloud-based) mobile applications aimed at first responders. FirstNet users will be able to send and receive data, video, images and text, as well as use voice applications. They will communicate over the network and benefit from the ability to share applications. FirstNet is a direct application of SMAC convergence principles: decentralized control, distributed problem solving, and multiple interactions.

24. http://www.firstnet.gov

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Federal Technology Convergence Commission Report

RECOMMENDATIONS The Commission recommends initiating a software development effort with the goal of building 100 mobile apps, each of which takes an existing government service and optimizes it for delivery over the Internet using smartphones or tablets. The effort should include a challenge to all agencies and levels of government to participate. Participation should be measured, highly visible and structured to foster friendly competition. These 100 apps should come from at least six federal agencies, and be completed within 12 months. The Commission also suggests a renewed commitment to linking data across agencies. A network of initiatives at all levels of government should be designed, which encourages and engages agencies in coordinated high-value data sharing. This initiative should include a single set of data sharing methods, using simple, Representational State Transfer (RESTful) APIs. This effort should have the goal of defining an API structure within six months and issuing an API description within 12 months. The Commission further recommends the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) update the national digital government strategy with digital infrastructure best practices. These best practices would deliver a single view of citizen services, a security-by-design approach to future data infrastructures and a Fed Cloud organizational model.

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4 Convergence and the Individual Changing Citizen Expectations

Widespread consumer acceptance of SMAC converged technologies is changing citizen expectations of the government. Services built from SMAC convergence technologies are already a part of how individual consumers interact with private-sector companies. These services include essential, everyday transactions like buying goods, finding work, and communicating with each other. Many individuals, for example, use mobile banking to receive rapid and accurate information about their financials; they expect their government to provide similar rapid and user-friendly details about their enrollment status in a program or their eligibility for health insurance. As citizens become used to participating in the kinds of collective intelligence that SMAC convergence allows in the private sector, they will come to expect the same services from the government. Citizens will expect, for example, the ability to securely collect as well as share healthcare data between patients and physicians, additionally having apps that provide automated safety checks on over-the-counter medications against federal electronic medical records. Within five years, the majority of individuals will depend on mobile technology, rendering existing government services that use desktop-based systems obsolete. Within 10 years, the majority of individual citizens are likely to expect government to deliver personalized data analytics, real-time status updates, and technical support via social media—all to a single app on a smartphone. As the U.S. government expands its technical infrastructure to meet these expectations, citizens will be extended digital services offering new opportunities for mass individual citizen engagement. In a mass-interaction environment, the biggest challenge will be protecting the individual as well as establishing an effective method for each citizen to establish and manage trust. The critical success factor for this new infrastructure is its ability to protect both the privacy and security of every individual citizen. Chapter 3 described the approach and technology needed to accomplish this; this chapter outlines how this security-by-design philosophy will affect (and protect) individual citizens, and how the can government establish digital identities that ensure the integrity of this increased citizen engagement. EARNING THE CITIZEN’S TRUST THROUGH IDENTITY Building a smarter government through increased engagement requires establishing a relationship of trust between the government and the citizen. This trust must be based on mutual agreement and consent of the rights and responsibilities of both citizen as well as government. SMAC convergence enables greater levels of high-value interaction, but these interactions come with higher risk. Government agencies will only offer (and citizens will only engage in) these interactions if there is an easy, reliable way to determine the actual identity of everyone involved. Meaningful digital government interaction requires easy-to-use methods of establishing identity.

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Federal Technology Convergence Commission Report

Americans already manage several different passwords and many will not be willing to go through the cumbersome process of creating and managing more just to interact with a government agency. Secure, easy-to-use identity solutions will make it easier for individual citizens to have meaningful government interactions. A vibrant identity ecosystem is needed where citizens can use the same credentials to access disparate government services in a unified way—an identity ecosystem that enables a wide variety of new citizen-facing government services while reducing the cost and effort required for both individuals and governments. The U.S. federal government currently uses Personal Identity Verification (PIV) and Common Access Card (CAC) smart identity credentials, but this is not the same as establishing a national identity ecosystem. Many countries have built trusted government-to-citizen interaction using national identity cards that incorporate government-issued digital IDs. These citizens can use their digital credentials to interact with their government entities or participate in commercial services. Some are even extending the digital ID to include digital credentials that can be embedded into a mobile device. Although the U.S. lacks national, government-issued digital IDs, it does have a comprehensive digital identity policy and solution. However, without widespread adoption and execution, IDs issued under these solutions will have limited authority and usefulness. To enable full trust in the new, extended democracy, the U.S. needs full public- and private-sector support of a national policy and set of standards that include the life cycle of managing, using, and relying on digital credentials. The Federal Government has begun to address the issue of needing trusted digital credentials with the publication of President Obama’s National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC). NSTIC calls for private-sector collaboration in creating interoperable Identity Trust Frameworks. These frameworks would use various personal digital credentials to interact online in a trusted manner. The NSTIC guiding document points to the rising tide of identity theft, online fraud, cyber intrusions, unwieldy username and password requirements, as well as the need to deliver online services more securely and efficiently as the basis for this framework strategy. The NSTIC initiative is very practical in its approach, because it limits the Federal Government’s role to that of enabler, facilitator, and accelerator of the identity ecosystem development. It specifically states government will not impose mandates or be the owner of the identities. There is a clear recognition that many different public and private stakeholders will be involved in working out the specifics of the identity framework and ultimately putting it to use. Identity security ranges from full anonymity to strong verification. Not all services require the same identification strength. The bulk of government digital services are likely to be low-value services, such as publishing blogs or news updates, which do not require strong identity verification. Most agencies, however, have a small number of killer apps they are unable to release online, because they cannot currently establish robust identity verification.

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Convergence and the Individual

Any identity ecosystem must allow individual citizens to establish, control, and communicate his/her own cyber identity levels. Citizens should be in control of how much identity they release, how that identity will be used, and how much information will be communicated for each online transaction. In low-risk activities such as social media, citizens should be able to participate using relatively anonymous identities. In higher-risk activities where child safety (age verification), financial transactions, or filing taxes are involved, a more rigorous enforcement of identity verification or specific attributes (e.g., age) may be required. For trust to work in the extended democracy, the government must establish mechanisms for establishing and protecting identities. Likewise, citizens need to understand they are responsible for using a secure digital identity, while managing and maintaining any shared personal data. Citizens must accept the terms (application, supplying confidential information, accountability for personal data) and enroll to access services across agencies in a trusted environment. Citizens must become adept at managing their privacy by opting in and out of digital trust relationships. Finally, those without digital trust relationships must still have a variety of channels through which to interact with the government. Those other channels may not operate as efficiently (for the citizen or the government) and may be less cost effective in practice, but they must be available.

Case Study

Connect.gov

The U.S. government has begun tackling the identity challenge through the development of Connect.gov (http://www.connect.gov/), which is being implemented by the General Services Administration (GSA), the United States Postal Service (USPS), and the National Institute of Technology (NIST). Connect.gov is a shared service for all agencies to leverage a common base of non-government issued digital credentials. The USPS serves as the technology manager for the program and is responsible for the USPS Connect™ service that provides the connection point between federal agencies and approved credential providers. GSA is leveraging its experience with shared services and identity-management technology while serving as the program manager for the Connect.gov program. NIST is providing the roadmap for Connect.Gov through the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC). Connect.gov provides citizens with security, enhanced privacy, and ease of use, while simultaneously offering federal agencies increased security, application growth, and reduced spending. 25

Federal Technology Convergence Commission Report

Case Study

Listening to the Voice of the People

SMAC convergence provides government with an opportunity to better understand citizen expectations and to design its “products” to better serve the people. Social media provides a vast amount of crowdsourcing data that might help agencies anticipate and react to trends in individual expectation. These very techniques were used to shape the content of this report. At publication, most analyses still tended to look at SMAC in isolation. There were plenty of projections for the cloud market, new ways that analytics is changing business and articles about the latest mobile apps. It was difficult to find deep, insightful information on how these technologies are converging. The Commission wanted a report representing the entire nation, which meant sifting through a huge diversity of perspectives to discover common insights. Analytics were used to understand the citizens’ expectations and to shape the research agenda. As illustrated in Figure 4, the Commission analyzed six months of blogs, articles, and tweets, found hidden themes and used those themes as the basis for the overall research structure.

Figure 4. The Commission used analytics to understand SMAC convergence. These same techniques can help government better understand what its citizens are saying and what they expect. It can help governments design services that better match citizens’ wants and needs. This technology could be used, for example, by senior leadership in program operations to identify bottlenecks and backlogs while directing preemptive action in time to lessen the impact to citizens.

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Convergence and the Individual

RECOMMENDATIONS Direct CIOs from the Departments of State, Treasury, Defense, Justice, Agriculture, Commerce, Labor, Health and Human Services, as well as Homeland Security to begin an 18-month initiative with the goal of providing an NSTIC-aligned solution to at least 20% of registered citizen portal subscribers. The Identity Ecosystem Steering Group (IDESG) has been established to be the caretaker of NSTIC. The Federal government should be an early adopter of these trust frameworks, allowing individuals to use their trusted credential to interact with the government rather than having to enroll into each portal. The IDESG is a privately-led 501(c)(3) created in partnership with the U.S. Government. It is tasked with crafting an “Identity Ecosystem Framework” of standards, policies, and business that ensures interoperability and can enable the Ecosystem to flourish. The GSA oversees the Trust Framework Solutions program today, which is focused on partnering with private-sector organizations to accredit different types of non-government issued digital credentials for government use. The U.S. Government is already well down this path with the creation and upcoming launch of the Connect.gov solution, a shared service for all agencies to leverage a common base of non-government-issued digital credentials. By regularly engaging NSTIC on their current progress and needs, the U.S. Government will drive the eventual adoption of a trusted online identity system. Adoption of this system will make a large impact as it will reduce the amount of Internet fraud, provide convenience to citizens, and ideally tighten the communications gap between the constituency and elected officials. Considering usage case, technology, comparable foreign-government systems, and that a U.S. Government initiative already exists, this system likely will be quite successful.

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5 Tips for CIOs

The CIO as Innovation Catalyst

Technologies at the convergence of social, mobile, analytics, and cloud will require an entirely new set of IT leadership skills. SMAC convergence will force the existing role of technology management to evolve into a role focused on innovation management and collective intelligence. Responsibility for these game-changing technology shifts often falls into an organizational gap, with unclear and often overlapping accountability across the C-suite. Delivering the potential benefits of SMAC technologies—while avoiding their risks—may require changes to scope, priorities, legacy business processes, relationships, and budgets across the organization. The government CIO will see his/her primary responsibility change from directly managing IT to becoming a catalyst for government innovation. The primary responsibility of CIOs will be in supporting and spurring public/private-sector infrastructure as well as interoperable citizen services described in Chapter 3. Government CIOs will see their focus shift from legacy technology concerns like Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), network infrastructure, and communication services, to next-generation technologies like search, mobility, and cloud. SMAC-converged technology adoption will happen rapidly and organizations will look to the CIO for leadership. The CIO will be responsible for: • shepherding the use of SMAC convergence into true business value to the organization, • discovering new insights from big data using advanced analytics, • accelerating government agility by increasing cloud computing, • increasing worker mobility by introducing mobile architectures and next-generation mobile applications, • increasing engagement by introducing new digitally enabled citizen services, • and integrating with public social networks. Failure to lead may result in siloed and disorganized adoption across different organizational boundaries. The organization will fail to reap the benefits afforded by technology convergence. CIOs need to become educated on SMAC convergence and the ever-increasing opportunities to deliver value in their organizations as well as customers. They should respond by working to build flexible infrastructure and agile application processes within their organizations to support SMAC technologies in addition to the overall convergence of these tools. Adopting flexible enterprise architectures and evolving solution frameworks will be key challenges for CIOs. Among all issues emerging from SMAC convergence the most significant challenge will be providing enterprise security that is viligant against emerging threats, yet not so stifling as to restrict innovation.

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Tips for CIOs

CIOs need to experiment with how convergence can succeed within their organizations by first creating a roadmap to include both tactical and strategic objectives around implementing SMAC technologies. CIOs should implement flexible infrastructures and create agile processes within their organizations that will support SMAC technologies in addition to the overall convergence of these tools. CIOs should start with a combination of strategic and tactical planning, seeking to align their business objectives with the SMAC technologies’ potential. Setting achievable goals against a realistic assessment of the organization’s ability to adopt change will allow the CIO to create a tactical roadmap for achieving strategic objectives. It is important for the CIO to work collaboratively across the C-suite and with organizational stakeholders, who recognize the intent of the tactical plan is to achieve the learning necessary to make progress against an evolving strategic plan. Taking small steps that either garner near-term success or that fail-early/failfast, will accelerate an organization’s ability to identify the right balance of what works for them and what doesn’t. LEVERAGE AND PROTECT ORGANIZATIONAL DATA The CIO of the future will need very strong data management skills. As a catalyst for innovation, CIOs will be asked to collect and analyze massive amounts of information while generating insights that lead to a smarter, more efficient government. In this new role, the CIO must become adept at garnering insight from data generated from direct citizen engagement—data from sources like social media exchanges or new citizen services transactions. Leading CIOs will have plans for leveraging their data to improve core functions like government process management, government operations, and budgeting. Government employees will benefit through stronger internal collaboration; citizens will benefit through greater access to more timely information. CIOs must plan for storing and protecting massive amounts of data, while still making it available to workers and citizens at a moment’s notice. New cloud-based tools will free distributed teams of developers from traditional infrastructure procurement constraints, empowering them with the ability to create compelling and engaging applications in much shorter times. CIOs will have to design data centers of the future capable of supporting large transaction volumes for this new wave of next-generation applications. These data centers will have to operate seamlessly across different agencies, application deployment options, traditional outsourced environments, and new hybrid cloud environments. The CIO must learn to harness techniques like smart computing, intelligent analytics, and automated policies (for example, business rules for allocating virtual resources) to optimize data center resource configurations and place applications workloads.

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Federal Technology Convergence Commission Report

The CIO will need to develop strong security and compliance skills to manage organizational data securely. CIOs managing SMAC-converged technology must understand how to secure and protect private-citizen information, while complying with laws and regulations at all levels. High-profile data breaches can permanently damage the public’s trust in government services. CIO security considerations will have to encompass everything from mobile device security to data storage, privacy, and sovereignty issues. It may be necessary to add C-level executives dedicated to overseeing IT security and data-privacy compliance initiatives. It is unlikely any international institution will sponsor an agreement on a comprehensive data sovereignty policy in the near future. This presents U.S. Federal CIOs the opportunity to provide international leadership on data policies. Potentially starting with NATO partners and the U.S Visa waiver countries, close coordination with U.S. State Department will be critical to provide leadership that promotes globalization. There would also be a need for close coordination with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). As the business value of data interchange on a global level continues to grow, policies will be needed to address security. Sensitive topics–such as data import and export tariffs on data exchanges with nation states or blocking them entirely–need to be explored with congressional leaders, the IC, DOD as well as their state, local, and tribal partners. CREATE NEW INNOVATIVE PARTNERSHIPS Government CIOs of the future won’t be able to accomplish their goals using governmentonly resources. They will have to rely heavily on partnerships from private-sector vendors and partners. For the CIO working in a world of SMAC convergence, the ability to manage partnerships with private-sector companies is a key skill. The CIO can expect regularly to upgrade and invest in new infrastructure technologies to improve operations. A major part of the CIO’s time will be spent keeping up with which service provider best meets the agency’s current set of IT service needs and overseeing IT service provider contracts. CIOs will rely heavily on the willingness of these service providers to act as partners—devising new, custom methods of delivering their services seamlessly and cost effectively. For the new government CIO, partner management can happen in a variety of ways. Some CIOs may go as far as establishing a vendor management office (VMO) to assess vendor risk, handle contracts, and monitor service level agreements. A major consequence of SMAC convergence is decentralized control. Regardless of the mechanism for managing vendor relationships, CIOs must make sure government employees understand which vendor relationships are authorized and what self-service options are available.

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Tips for CIOs

Standards-based APIs exposed

Government Fed. Agency A

Fed. Agency A

Added Functionality Government, Private-Sector Partner Ecosystem

State

State

Added Functionality

Figure 5. APIs act as catalysts for faster infrastructure adoption and integration between otherwise disparate systems.

One of the more innovative ways CIOs will coordinate with private-sector partners will be through application programming interfaces (APIs), as shown in Figure 5. Simple APIs built on common standards act as catalysts for faster infrastructure adoption and integration between otherwise disparate systems. For example, good API strategies today include webbased technologies conforming to RESTful standards like: Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), JavaScript Object Notation (JSON), /Extensible Markup Language (XML), and Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP). Future CIOs must learn how to build and maintain APIs that are open, allow for multi-device connectivity, support user interfaces, and can handle structured in addition to unstructured data. Exposing APIs allows for new, unanticipated uses. It can spur new business models and entirely new technical ecosystems. These APIs will make complex vendor management possible and will further accelerate SMAC technology adoption.

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Federal Technology Convergence Commission Report

MODERNIZE IT INFRASTRUCTURE The infrastructure needed to leverage SMAC convergence fully is complex and government CIOs will have to build it from a series of modernization projects. SMAC can be thought of as the layers of an enterprise architecture designed to enable new government citizen services. The CIO will need the IT project management expertise to initiate, plan, and implement each layer. Each project may require different agility levels. The modern government CIO must be familiar with a vast number of IT project management methodologies. The shift to delivering citizen services will require a shift in the way developers think about creating applications and a shift in the way CIOs support those developers. CIOs will have to learn how to make available systems of transaction, systems of decision, and systems of relationship capabilities to service developers. For example, a CIO might decide to make F# programming environments a standard, enabling programmers to write data-oriented applications. The infrastructure for a smarter nation requires a focus on efforts much more encompassing than a set of individual modernization projects. Common frameworks for systems interoperability, security by design, shared service identity, and more efficient organizational structures are needed. A coordinated infrastructure modernization approach across all levels of government is required. Securing infrastructure should be the focus until it becomes common for all vendors to adopt a privacy-by-design approach. One logical starting point for U.S Federal CIOs and Chief Security Officers (CSOs) to consider for securing transnational data sharing is the NIST Cybersecurity Framework, driven by Executive Order 13636, “Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity,” enacted in February 2013.25 This Executive Order calls for the development of a voluntary, risk-based Cybersecurity Framework—a set of industry standards and best practices to help organizations manage cybersecurity risks. The resulting Framework, created through collaboration between government and the private sector, uses a common language to address and manage cybersecurity risk in a cost-effective way, based on business needs without placing additional regulatory requirements on businesses. The Framework focuses on using business drivers to guide cybersecurity activities and considering cybersecurity risks as part of the organization’s risk management processes. Consisting of three parts - the Core, Profile, and Implementation tiers—the Framework can assist organizations in incorporating privacy and civil liberties as part of a comprehensive cybersecurity program. The Executive Order requires that the Framework include a methodology to protect individual privacy and civil liberties when critical infrastructure organizations conduct cybersecurity activities. Strong CIOs will lead their organizations in applying convergent technologies to deliver true business value aligned with their mission. By guiding the requisite organizational/cultural, procedural, and infrastructure changes necessary to implement a strategic roadmap, the CIO can lead his/her organization to greater efficiencies, superior performance, and more satisfied customers. Methods for measuring return on investment (ROI) should be identified and applied. 32

25. http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/02/12/executive-order-improving-critical-infrastructure-cybersecurity

Tips for CIOs

RECOMMENDATIONS CIOs should establish governance structures to support SMAC technologies and service models across the enterprise. These structures should include strengthening alignment, roles, and responsibilities across the organization (CxO and operations) for SMAC-convergence impact. CIOs should lead through continuous improvement rather than a “big bang” approach. Every federal CIO should have the goal of establishing appropriate governance structures within six months, followed by continuous improvement. CIOs should work to increase the accessibility of information for mobile devices for both internal and external audiences. For employees and other internal users, this means increased access to mobile options for conducting their work. These options should allow users to work from anywhere via VPN access and agency-specific mobile apps. For external users, CIOs should design systems to accommodate and take advantage of mobile users/devices. Within six months, CIOs should assess their current support for mobile users and define plans for enhancing these capabilities. In order to provide the access required to leverage SMAC convergence while not compromising security, CIOs should implement identity management to enable smart access into systems to safeguard the convergence of data and information. Particularly for internal users, CIOs should make use, where possible, of standard approaches that have been adopted by other government agencies, such as CAC and PIV cards, while understanding that these technologies are only part of the solution for identity management (see Chapter 4). Open API access for internal and external data sources is critical to enabling the full potential of SMAC convergence in addition to promoting innovation across the global ecosystem. CIOs should aggressively execute programs to identify data sources and owners, implement standardized data access policies, and provide machine access to data sets as governed by policy. The details that would be part of this recommendation should be specified as part of the API structure and description discussed in the recommendations for Chapter 3. CIOs should leverage this API structure by creating an ecosystem map of potential privatesector partners capable of providing converged technologies. This exercise must be done in collaboration with private-sector companies. The mapping should include the creation of a reference architecture describing general patterns for integrating partner technologies into government enterprise infrastructure. The recommended timeframe for developing this ecosystem map is 180 days. Longer term, CIOs should incorporate evidence-based decision making into system designs to enhance outcomes and usability, especially as more data and information become available as a result of SMAC convergence. Additionally, CIOs should enable IT systems—both cloud and legacy systems—to improve data collection as well as analytical capabilities.

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6 Workforce

The Workforce Today

SMAC convergence increasingly enables work to be performed across geographically dispersed locations at all hours during the day. It already has produced a significant shift in the composition and characteristics of the workforce. Many functions being performed by humans today may be totally automated within the next five to 10 years leaving a strong demand for “knowledge workers.” This converged workforce model requires a very different support structure when it comes to human resource services. For example, as the telework initiative becomes more popular and gains more traction, performance appraisals can no longer be based on high-touch and in-person observations or daily face-to-face interactions. Business hours are no longer nine-to-five, as work can be performed anytime through mobile access and cloud-based services. THE FUTURE WORKFORCE Transactional labor in the next few years will bow to a new player called “digital labor,” and this may rewrite the rules for outsourcing and in-house work altogether. The digital labor phenomenon could eclipse offshoring and has the potential of changing global economics because of SMAC convergence. Automation based on this phenomenon could provide as much as a 40 percent cost advantage over companies or countries that are performing transactional labor with humans. Transactional labor involves performing the same or similar tasks in a repetitive fashion while the “knowledge worker” performs interactions such as searching, coordinating, non-routine problem solving, and oversight that spurs the movement of goods or services. The knowledge worker’s real value is in dealing with ambiguity in which there may not be rulebooks to follow and high levels of judgment must be exercised. The new workforce will have the ability to use discipline-specific knowledge skills from any location that is acceptable to their agency. Converged technologies coupled with digital labor mean a worker can successfully complete his/her mission in Florida in the winter and New England in the summer with no impact on the outcomes, if trained and managed correctly. Moreover, the worker will no longer need to be restricted to one department or agency. Today’s “shared services” as a method for obtaining targeted solutions that improve over time could become “shared knowledge workers,” which span agencies to accommodate specific projects at specific times. At a micro level, the U.S. Postal Service has been doing this for years through a process called pivoting. Pivoting allows management to assign a carrier to work on another route if his/her route takes less than eight hours to complete.26 One of the constraints today is a lack of information sharing between groups. This cultural constraint is usually obviated in the social networking environment, but the mere deployment of technology does not improve interactivity. Social media must be augmented with social thinking to avoid organizations prevailing. Only organizations that can learn how to engage their workers constructively are likely to enjoy a distinct advantage.

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26. http://uspsmiscl.lettercarriernetwork.info/Planning%20and%20Pivoting%20-%20Labor%20Relations.pdf

Workforce

HR needs to champion the integration of social media into the business to ensure the successful adoption of collaboration. Collaboration is most effective when the parties are working toward the same goals in addition to when there is a clear connection between collaboration efforts and business objectives. Collaboration meets with more success when it is seen as a part of the corporate culture and publicly accepted from the top down. HR AND THE 21ST CENTURY WORKFORCE SMAC convergence provides the ability to work from any location at any hour to accomplish a goal or complete a project. Many employees believe it is unnecessary to be in the office to be productive. Employees may request a wide range of flexible schedules to accommodate their lifestyles. “In-sourcing” models in the commercial-sector may be used to retain valuable talent, giving those employees flexibility to take on outside endeavors in exchange for their availability at critical junctures. The term “job” is normally associated with performing tasks in a field of endeavor for a single employer at a time that one would expect to continue throughout his/her working years. Since repetitive tasks can and will be automated, the new employment model is analogous to an adjunct professor - the worker may take on projects and assignments from multiple agencies in government. While the worker may have a “home agency,” their skill sets can be utilized across the spectrum of organizations. Such arrangements would be enabled by improved connectivity and work that can be performed from any location. This approach could foster an expanded social environment since this is similar to a “shared service” that the IT function is attempting to accomplish. The demand for knowledge workers will exceed the supply and government will be competing with private industry for those individuals. Competitive pay does not mean the successful employer will be the “highest bidder,” but government must be in the range without being substantially lower. If other elements are in play by government, it is likely the top candidates will select this as a career of choice. Training both new and incumbent workers must address SMAC convergence both in its content and delivery. The rapid pace of technology, and particularly with a phenomenon such as technology convergence, requires frequent training updates in order to keep the workforce positioned to realize the efficiencies SMAC convergence offers. Similarly, SMAC convergence allows for improved ways of delivering training. Employees don’t need to be in a classroom or even at their desks to receive training. Cloud-based training is available anywhere, anytime. Social media allows for collaboration among students and for peer-to-peer learning. The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is striving to foster an environment in which high school graduates who have gained specific skills (through what was formerly known as vocational-technical path) necessary to meet the demands of government can be hired quickly. A new Phased Retirement Program has been put into place, allowing agencies to retain the part-time services of eligible retirees to provide mentorship and knowledge transfer to the next generation of federal employees. 35

Federal Technology Convergence Commission Report

Case Study

ERAMET

The French mining company ERAMET offers its employees many opportunities to change division, function, or country. Their leadership has established a priority of achieving their performance goals while meeting the aspirations of their employees. ERAMET places skills development at the heart of its human resources management. They give everyone the means to evolve in their field or a related field, they offer the opportunity to move on from an operational responsibility to a functional responsibility or project, and even to change their line of business. Occupational mobility is an area in which employees, managers, and HR teams must be involved, each with their different roles and responsibilities.

RECOMMENDATIONS Establish a Commission led by the Federal Chief Operating Officers (or Chief Management Officers) in coordination with the Department of Education and the Department of Labor to define the core elements of education necessary to succeed as a “knowledge worker” in the 21st century workforce. In addition, define, or outline, specialty educational needs for specific disciplines that government requires. Direct the Office of Science and Technology Policy to establish a roadmap of transactional (repetitive) labor functions that would likely be automated in government over the next five to ten years. This may include traditional automation and the new “Internet of Things.” FLSA will become less relevant as the services to goods ratio widens. Avoid reclassifying service positions as “hourly” as this may stymie productivity and foster an environment in which industry could seek to accelerate automation of those functions thereby increasing unemployment. Direct the Bureau of Labor Statistics to complete a study on the impacts of changing today’s 40 hour work week to the ACA stipulated 30 hour work week at a lower pay rate for government non-FLSA service workers. Ostensibly, if ten individuals, on a voluntary basis only, were to accept a 10% pay cut in exchange for a flexible 30 hour schedule, government could hire one additional person. Assuming that half of the non-military workforce accepted this proposition, we could add 138,000 full time positions and, if this were extended to the U.S. as a whole, we could add 2.75 million jobs.

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Implications – 7 Procurement Creating a System that Works SMAC Convergence and Procurement Agility is a significant SMAC convergence benefit. SMAC technologies allow dynamic auto scaling of infrastructure and continuous delivery of product enhancements. They are now in use by most modern Internet-based companies. Commercial organizations like Google and Facebook use SMAC technologies to deliver hundreds of product updates in addition to enhancements every day into production with zero down time. Current public-sector sourcing models assume traditional engineering approaches that emphasize rigid planning and forecasting. New, visionary best practices are needed for allowing governments to benefit from the power and flexibility of SMAC convergence. Strategies that allow the public sector to acquire and integrate next-generation IT services from private-sector providers are necessary, as are clear criteria that government agencies can use to guide and evaluate technology choices. U.S. federal agencies spend more than $76 billion annually on IT in support of their missions. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has called for the government to adopt a better approach to procuring and consuming IT. Governments largely depend on third-party IT providers and need alternative, sustainable source options. Although technology service providers offer the benefits of shared services and flexible, pay-as-you-go options, sourcing IT services is still a major problem for the public sector. Neither the government nor private industry has figured out the right way for the public sector to acquire the kinds of technologies needed take advantage of SMAC convergence. Government procurement is deficient in many respects. Cost overruns and schedule delays are painfully common. Large IT systems have been particularly difficult for the government to deploy with systems for the IRS, FBI, and Healthcare.gov serving as prominent examples. The issues with government procurement are much broader than technology, but technology including SMAC convergence - can help improve the process. THE PROBLEM WITH CURRENT SOURCING The modern procurement process was born out of the civil service movement that reformed government contracting and hiring processes during the transition from the 19th to the 20th century. The goal was to help ensure accountability and transparency in how government awarded contracts. Those traditional procurement policies, many of which are still in play today, serve legitimate purposes—to ensure the procurement process remains open to the public and to make government officials accountable for their purchasing decisions. The problem is that many of those traditional government procurement cycles, goals, strategies, and methods are out of phase with best practices for procuring current SMAC technologies. In some cases, contracting officers’ legal guidance even prevents some agencies from adopting cloud-based commodity utility subscription services.

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Government programs often require significant lead times, which force funding to be mapped out well in advance. This kind of planning makes agile, pay-as-you-go models counterintuitive. Furthermore, many government IT departments are either unfamiliar with or unaccustomed to many of the SMAC technologies. Widespread adoption of agile procurement methods will require a significant change in government culture and significant government employee education. Current sourcing models such as price-directed bids, competitive negotiations, conceptual negotiated sourcing, engineering selection, and modular contracting provide some sourcing flexibility, but no existing procurement model is fully compatible with the adaptive sourcing of cloud-based services. Federal procurement is facing a number of challenges that SMAC convergence can help meet. These rapid advances in technology are driving opportunities to change business processes and increase productivity. SMAC convergence as well as related technologies can help streamline the procurement process, reducing the procurement-related costs, and decreasing procurement cycle times. For IT procurement, SMAC technologies allow services to replace many products and requirements to be met more efficiently with lower cost. In particular, cloud technology allows for “as a service” procurements. Mobility allows workers to work anywhere, anytime and it raises the issue of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD). AGILE/ADAPTIVE IT SOURCING A transformation in IT procurement is needed that encourages changing requirements and scope (see Figure 6). Procurement practices designed to replace commodity IT products with services (like cloud computing’s as-a-service procurements), are needed and that meet mission requirements more efficiently while providing a lower total cost of ownership. Procurement processes must consider potential ‘lock-ins’ and data sovereignty issues, while meeting interoperability standards. Adaptive sourcing is an IT procurement model that encourages changing requirements without approval delays. Adaptive sourcing requires a shift in government procurement culture – calling, for example, for agencies to abandon the existing request for proposal (RFP) templates and try a one-page problem statement. Government service providers need the flexibility to offer both fixed unit prices for contract line items and market-driven variable consumption rates for pools of contract line items. Especially needed are simple and expedited processes for X as-a-service contract line items. Procurement models must allow the transition from human-based manual oversight to instant automated policy-based oversight. Models such as real-time cloud billing reports showing market consumption rates as well as thresholds or auto notifications of consumption rate and threshold changes.

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Procurement Implications – Creating a System that Works

Classic project management

Agile methods

Plan Driven

Vision Driven

Scope

Default

Estimate

Costs

Costs

Deadline

Deadline

Scope Agreed by contract

Flexible

Figure 6. Agile methods provide needed flexibility.27

The U.S. Technology Federal Acquisition Regulation (TechFAR) lays the foundation for several of these needed changes.28 The TechFAR is a handbook to help the government procure digital services using agile processes. It highlights acquisition methods allowing for agile development, such as the use of a pay-for-service model. It also provides language for the government to include in the procurement and gives guidance for a greater use of modular contracting. The TechFAR endorses modular contracting principles where IT systems are acquired in successive, interoperable increments to reduce overall risk and support rapid delivery of incremental new functionality. SMAC convergence itself is the best catalyst for improving government procurement. The Commission recommends developing a knowledge management capability for sharing acquisition best practices across government. If government acquisition personnel understand new models of acquisition, they can use them drive the required changes in policy and culture. The Commission also recommends building a web portal capable of connecting government and private-sector knowledge workers—especially procurement personnel. Collaboration should be encouraged by building threaded discussions orchestrated by leaders like publicand private-sector CIOs. In particular, best practices for sharing IT assets and devising mutual IT solutions should be discussed. Agile procurement programs should include members at different physical locations. Such a system could make a large impact on government procurement by providing a continuous training tool for acquisition staff. Additionally, procurement practices should be enhanced by: • Including ALL stakeholders in the procurement process – IT convergence is driving the importance of involvement by the business unit. Too often, the business unit completes the list of requirements and is not involved in the procurement process. Outcomes will be more successful with the business units and other stakeholders engaged throughout the procurement process.

27. Source: http://www.aoe.com/en/services/agile-project-contracts.html 28. https://playbook.cio.gov/techfar/

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• Finding a way to get more insights about a technology or approach before getting too far down the road in the procurement process. “Many of the practices that still exist today evolved from efforts to reduce collusion and corruption in the procurement cycle. It is not cost effective to create an adversarial relationship between the buyer and the seller by encouraging arm’s-length relationships throughout the process.”29 Get vendors involved earlier in the process and give them insights to the whole business process that is impacted and might need to change—not just the segmented, narrowly focused area that might be the planned procurement scope. Even if the scope remains more narrowly focused, the bidders have better insight into the business needs and will propose better solutions that consider the broader business context.

Case Study

GSA

Since 2009, when it introduced a social media policy for its own employees, the General Services Administration (GSA) has been moving to expand its offerings in the services marketplace, beyond its traditional commodity supply, telecommunications, and real property services. The GSA’s Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) is an assessment process for agencies, government-wide, to obtain secure cloud computing services. FedRAMP is an early example of the kinds of government procurement policies needed to take advantage of SMAC convergence technologies. Nevertheless, within the GSA SMAC service portfolio, there is a legacy of stovepipe acquisitions/ organizations offering what appear to be duplicative services, in some cases publishing overlapping hotlinks from one acquisition subject to another within the GSA portal.

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29. Procurement Innovation Task Force (2013). Strategies for Procurement Innovation and Reform. IJIS Institute. Retrieved from: www.ijis.org/docs/procurement_report.pdf

Procurement Implications – Creating a System that Works

RECOMMENDATIONS Develop a knowledge management capability for sharing acquisition best practices across government. GSA should be asked to develop this capability within six months, after which all federal agencies should contribute to and reference this knowledge base. Agile procurement approaches should be part of these best practices. Within nine months, build a web portal capable of connecting government and private-sector knowledge workers—especially procurement personnel. Collaboration should be encouraged by building threaded discussions orchestrated by leaders like public- and private-sector CIOs. In particular, best practices for sharing IT assets and devising mutual IT solutions should be discussed. Such a system could make a large impact on government procurement by providing a continuous training tool for acquisition staff. It is critical that clear, two-way communication be established in instances where it is necessary to improve the results of a procurement goal—and that this communication occurs before a solicitation is issued, during the procurement process and during the contract execution. Buyers should identify precisely when and why communication must be limited in the procurement process. Moreover, jurisdictions should reexamine and evaluate their current procurement policies, as well as processes to identify opportunities to include meaningful communication between buyer and seller. They should leverage communication for the benefit of the project, rather than adopting a policy prohibiting communication. Some jurisdictions limit communication between buyer and seller by statute, but in cases where that is not mandated, buyers should encourage frequent interaction and communication with sellers to ensure there are no questions about expectations, scope, or other issues in the procurement. Sellers need to be inquisitive and ensure they fully understand what buyers are asking for in addition to the parameters for delivery. Longer term, look for ways to create an electronic acquisition process that does not require a written technical proposal with all the time and cost for the government to read, evaluate, and score the results. The ideal model is one in which the proposal is the solution, while the solution is validated and scored through a proof-of-concept. The award is then made based on a capability demonstrated rather than a lengthy written proposal.

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Appendix: Summary of Recommendations This Appendix summarizes the recommendations from each of the previous chapters. Recommendations are characterized by their timeframe: near term (less than one year), intermediate term (one to three years), or long term (three to five years). CHAPTER 2: INTERNATIONAL OUTLOOK Internationally, SMAC convergence will bring about a bottom-up approach to inter-organizational and multi-governmental collaboration. Recommendations for implementing a holistic way of gathering intelligence, understanding threats, and co-creating partnerships with other countries: 1. Draft and publish an International Data Exchange Governance Standards document based on NIEM and NIST cybersecurity framework for data. (Near Term) 2. Create a training program for government and civil society representatives in best practices for using SMAC-converged technologies to build relationships between the U.S. and individual people as well as governments abroad. (Near Term)

CHAPTER 3: FEDERAL PUBLIC-SECTOR COMMUNITY IMPACT Taking full advantage of SMAC convergence requires a digital and organizational infrastructure capable of meeting the shared needs of multiple cooperating departments and agencies. Recommendations for encouraging a public/private-sector infrastructure capable of decentralized governance, a single view of distributed citizen services, and interoperable services: 1. Initiate a software development effort with the goal of building 100 mobile apps, each of which takes an existing government service and optimizes it for delivery over the Internet using smart phones or tablets. (Near Term) 2. Renew the commitment to linking data across agencies by developing a network of initiatives at all levels of government designed to encourage and engage agencies in coordinated efforts to share high-value data. (Near Term) 3. Update the national digital government strategy with best practices designed to bring about the digital infrastructure required for SMAC convergence. (Intermediate Term)

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Appendix - Summary of Recommendations

CHAPTER 4: CONVERGENCE AND THE INDIVIDUAL SMAC convergence will give citizens new opportunities for an extended engagement. Recommendations for enabling the same level of integrated digital service from government that citizens have come to expect from the private sector: 1. Direct CIOs from the Departments of State, Treasury, Defense, Justice, Agriculture, Commerce, Labor, Health and Human Services, as well as Homeland Security to begin an 18-month initiative with the goal of providing an NSTIC-aligned solution to at least 20% of registered citizen portal subscribers. (Intermediate Term)

CHAPTER 5: TIPS FOR CIOS SMAC convergence will force the existing role of technology management to evolve into a role focused on innovation management and collective intelligence. Recommendations to help government CIOs support in addition to spurring the creation of the public/private-sector infrastructure and interoperable citizen services: 1. Establish a governance structure to assist in regulating the SMAC technologies and service models present across the enterprise. (Near Term) 2. Increase the accessibility of information for mobile devices for both internal and external audiences. (Intermediate Term) 3. Implement identity management to enable smart access into systems to safeguard the convergence of data and information. (Intermediate Term) 4. Build open API access for internal and external data sources. (Near Term) 5. Create an ecosystem map of potential private-sector partners capable of providing converged technologies along with a reference architecture describing general patterns for integrating partner technologies into government enterprise infrastructure. (Near Term) 6. Incorporate evidence-based decision making into system designs to enhance outcomes and usability. (Long Term)

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CHAPTER 6: WORKFORCE Recommendations for building and maintaining the SMAC-savvy workforce needed to support the ecosystem of private-sector platforms of convergence: 1. Establish a Commission led by the Federal Chief Operating Officers (or Chief Management Officers) in coordination with the Department of Education and the Department of Labor to define the core elements of education necessary to succeed as a “knowledge worker” in the 21st century workforce. In addition, define, or outline, specialty educational needs for specific disciplines that government requires. (Near Term) 2. Direct the Office of Science and Technology Policy to establish a roadmap of transactional (repetitive) labor functions that would likely be automated in government over the next five to ten years. This may include traditional automation and the new “Internet of Things.” (Near Term) 3. FLSA will become less relevant as the services to goods ratio widens. Avoid reclassifying service positions as “hourly” as this may stymie productivity and foster an environment in which industry could seek to accelerate automation of those functions thereby increasing unemployment. (Intermediate Term) 4. Direct the Bureau of Labor Statistics to complete a study on the impacts of changing today’s 40 hour work week to the ACA stipulated 30 hour work week at a lower pay rate for government non-FLSA service workers. Ostensibly, if ten individuals, on a voluntary basis only, were to accept a 10% pay cut in exchange for a flexible 30 hour schedule, government could hire one additional person. Assuming that half of the non-military workforce accepted this proposition, we could add 138,000 full time positions and, if this were extended to the U.S. as a whole, we could add 2.75 million jobs. (Intermediate Term)

CHAPTER 7: PROCUREMENT IMPLICATIONS Recommendations for adopting the visionary and best procurement practices needed to allow the government to benefit from the emerging ecosystem of private-sector platforms: 1. Develop a knowledge management capability for sharing acquisition best practices across government. (Near Term) 2. Build a web portal capable of connecting government and private-sector knowledge workers – especially procurement personnel. (Near Term)

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Appendix - Summary of Recommendations

3. Find a way to get more insights about a technology or approach before getting too far down the road in the procurement process. Get vendors involved earlier in the process and give them insight into the whole business process that is impacted and might need to change. (Intermediate Term) 4. Establish clear, two-way communication in instances where it is necessary to improve the results of a procurement goal. (Intermediate Term) 5. Create an electronic acquisition process that does not require written technical proposals with all the time and cost for the government to read, evaluate, and score the results. (Long Term)

Table E-1 categorizes the recommendations of this report as near term (less than one year), intermediate term (one to three years), and long term (three to five years). The recommendations are designated in the table by the chapter number in bold font and recommendation within the chapter as numbered in this appendix.

TABLE E-1. Timeframes of the Report Recommendations.

Near Term

2-1, 2-2; 3-1, 3-2; 5-1, 5-4, 5-5; 6-1, 6-2; 7-1, 7-2

Intermediate Term

3-3; 4-1; 5-2, 5-3; 6-3, 6-4, 6-5; 7-3, 7-4

Long Term

5-6; 7-5

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Federal Technology Convergence Commission Report

Technology Convergence Commission Participants Leadership – Chairs

Vice Chairs

David Zolet (Co-Chair) Executive Vice President and General Manager, Americas Region, CSC

Stacy Cleveland (Cloud Vice Chair) Vice President, Global Practices Public Sector Hewlett Packard

Kay Kapoor (Co-Chair) President AT&T Government Solutions Chris Smith (Deputy) Vice President, Technology AT&T Government Solutions Yogesh Khanna (Deputy) Chief Technology Officer, North American Public Sector, CSC Jerry Overton (Executive Writer and Researcher) Data Scientist, Distinguished Engineer CSC Bennett Karp (Executive Writer and Researcher) Technical Architect AT&T

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Greg Sanchez (Mobile Vice Chair) Chief Technology Officer General Dynamics IT Lisa Donnan (Social Vice Chair) Vice President, Marketing & Technology TASC Steve Perkins (Analytics Vice Chair) U.S. National and Global Managing Director, Technology Industry Grant Thornton

Commissioners

Commissioners Tom Anderson envisionIT

Valerie Perlowitz International Holding Company

Gregg “Skip” Bailey Deloitte

Joe Portale Lockheed Martin

Fred Baradari Xerox Federal Solutions

Sean Rhody Capgemini

Mark Bohannon Red Hat

Tom Romeo MAXIMUS

Greg Gardner NetApp

Leo Ring Daon

Fasisal Iqbal Citrix

Steven Schneider Logi Analytics

John Keese Autonomic Resources

Suresh Shenoy IMC

Lawrence Littleton CACI

Hank Steininger HJS Associates

Brian Love Booz Allen Hamilton

Flavio Villanustre LexisNexis

James Mielke Rutgers University, The Center for Dynamic Data Analytics

Thomas Woteki, PhD Acentia

Neville Pattinson Gemalto

Sue Yu Data Networks Corporation

Bill Perlowitz STG, Inc.

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Federal Technology Convergence Commission Report

Deputy Commissioners Dave Ani AT&T

Marc Hollander Xerox Federal Solutions

Rachel Askew Autonomic Resources

Kirk Kern NetApp

Charles Caldwell Logi Analytics

Mark Klingensmith AT&T

Tina Chester AT&T

Atul Mathur IMC

Scott Clarke MAXIMUS

William McChesney (Chapter Lead) General Dynamics IT

Jeff Daniels Lockheed Martin

Gary Monetti (Chapter Lead) TASC

George DelPrete (Chapter Lead) Grant Thornton

Kenny Nguyen Rutgers University, The Center for Dynamic Data Analytics

Ken Devansky HJS Associates Mark Dillon STG, Inc. Dan Dunn Capgemini Cordero Fowler CACI Margaux Frazitta (Chapter Lead) Grant Thornton David Gagliano Acentia Nyla Gawel Booz Allen Hamilton Adel Harris Data Networks Corporation Gunnar Hellekson Red Hat

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Doug Orton MAXIMUS Jose Padin Citrix Ganesh Rajagopal B2BEnable Richard Rogers RCG LLC Robert Shea Grant Thornton Aurobindo Sundaram LexisNexis Jon Taillan Deloitte Wayne Wright (Chapter Lead) Hewlett Packard

A Special Thanks

A Special Thanks to Our Government and Industry Advisors Rich Beutel House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Steve Cooper Department of Commerce Matt Goodrich General Services Administration Jeremy Grant National Institute of Standards and Technology Tom Kalil Office of Science and Technology, White House Nick Maynard Office of Science and Technology, White House Chris Metts Federal Aviation Administration Ben Rhodeside Congressman Gerry Connelly Donna Seymour Office of Personnel and Management Keith Trippie Trippie Group Barry West Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Fen Zhao National Science Foundation

Technology Convergence Commission Staff David Logsdon Executive Director

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