In this episode of the GovFuture Podcast we feature a panel discussion from the June 15, 2023 GovFuture Forum DC event that took place in Washington, DC. The hot topic panel was focused on “Advancing IT Modernization in Government”. The panel discussed how federal agencies can and should harness the power of data to drive informed decision-making and improve citizen services. Also how federal agencies can foster a culture of data-driven innovation and collaboration as well as effectively leverage emerging technologies such as AI and automation to enhance IT modernization efforts. We also discuss the idea of risk, especially as it related to adoption of new technology. There were so many incredible nuggets of knowledge shared throughout this entire panel it's worth listening to the whole thing. The panelists at this event represented the GAO, IRS, Dept. of Interior, and the US Air Force.

Show Notes:

• GovFuture resources
• June 2023 GovFuture Forum DC event
• GovFuture Community and membership

Trimmed Episode Transcript: (note there may be transcription errors or mis-attributions, so please consult the audio file for any potential errors)

[Kathleen Walch] Welcome everybody. I'm Kathleen Walch, I'm an executive director here at GovFuture.

We're so excited to have this panel today on IT modernization. So I will start by letting each of you introduce yourselves for about one minute. Share your name, agency, maybe a fun fact.

[Taka Ariga] I'm Taka Ariga, I am from the government accountability office (GAO), not as an auditor, but as chief data scientist, also in the director of our innovation lab. Great.

[Mitch Winans] Good morning, everybody. Again, my name is Mitch Winans. I'm a senior advisor with the IRS's enterprise digitalization office. I'm a good fortune of giving a demo for one of our mobile app prototypes we have right now.

Let me see. Fun fact about me, originally from Southern California in the LA area, but been in DC for 15 years. And last week was the first time that I remember seeing a California type wildfire, smoky haze in the district of Columbia. So it was kind of a weird surreal experience. But anyways, glad to be here. Look forward to the conversation.

[Andrea Brandon] Thank you. Hi, everybody. So I'm Andrea Brandon. I'm with the department of the interior and I'm the deputy assistant secretary for budget finance grants, and positions property, small business, suspension department.

And I also have an integration and innovation office, which I call the, we're renaming it to the BI squared. But it's really good to be with you guys here. I am a huge trekkie, a big giant nerd.

And I love to talk about this stuff constantly. Yeah. Wow. Okay. Taka's got me beat on that. He's got a pin, that's messed up. You know, really happy to be here.

[Stuart Wagner] Hi, I'm Stuart. I presented earlier, chief digital transformation officer at the department of the Air Force.

Fun fact about me. I have a three year old daughter and I've told her she can, I'll basically buy her a computer which she can identify all the parts of the computer. And then we'll build it together. So we've been walking around Micro Center.

She's pointing at stuff like motherboard, graphics card and things like that. She's really been rewarding and fun. So she's basically there.

So we're gonna have to, we're gonna have to buy her all the components of the computer, build it with her this summer. All right, that's awesome. You stood up. Hey. That's a great coffee.

[Kathleen Walch] All right, so, Taka, we'll start with you. In the context of IT modernization, how can federal agencies harness the power of data to drive informed decision making and improve citizen services? I'll answer that question maybe from a GAO perspective.

[Taka Ariga] Within GAO, we have this three pronged strategy. Using data is nothing new, but in the sort of the data and age of AI, we wanna make sure that we do so at a greater speed, greater effectiveness, greater accuracy.

So within GAO, the three prong strategy involves data science, data governance and data literacy. Spoiler alert, data science is the easiest part. When you have good data, everything is essentially possible. So yes, we're working on the technical aspects of enhancing data science capacity, but part of the thing that we're really trying to address are the foundational issues around data governance, otherwise garbage and garbage out. How do we make data assets visible? How do we make sure that we have policy surrounding access of that information? How do we make metadata exposed in a way that user can't trust the information? We're even even exploring an idea, giving a Yelp review for certain data assets so that people can understand the difference between let's say a one star data asset versus like a four point five star, depending on the usage of that information.

But the other part I'll emphasize is the notion of data literacy. Up till very recently, we've been operating in this sort of deterministic world, like self-sufficiency, everything is zero than one, yes or no. And it's sort of the age of machine learning we're talking about 62 % likelihood that somebody committed fraud.

62%, is that a yes, is that a no? So does your employee know how to interpret that information to try whatever that you're doing, policy making, auto decision evaluation, et cetera. So I think digital literacy is an important part of not just using the data, but how you interpret the information coming out of that narrative.

This may be a controversial statement. I never mentioned analyzing data science as a sort of an exercise of seeking truth, right? Give me a set of data, I will spin any narrative you want me to do. The idea here is how do we then use that data to support the kind of policy direction that we want to get to the kind of evaluation sort of the quality that we want to achieve.

And so that certainly has a technical element of it, but data literacy helps us to then take action based on that. Yeah, I like that you say that. I think that those are really important. Our data footprint in general, people are understanding that now and it's like, you can take that data and you can spin it in any direction, right? So you can, you know, interpretation of that.

[Kathleen Walch] So those are great things. Mitch, the next question is for you. How can federal agencies foster a culture of data driven innovation and collaboration to accelerate IT models and initiatives?

[Mitch Winans] Great question. Thanks, Kathleen. And Taka definitely wins the sock game today. I love it. I love it. I like it.

I like it. But yeah, thanks, Kathleen. It's a great question. I think, you know, a few things that come to mind for us, I think that really focus on, we call questions zero. What are you trying to accomplish?

You know, what's the point, figure out the why and the why based off the data or the information that you have, you know, is it justifying a certain direction, you know, what's the problem you're trying to solve and actually have the support for that so you can make a good data driven decision. And then from there, I think executive sponsorship is really, really key. The last three years that I've been with the digitalization team at the IRS, I've just seen how that holds true. I was actually reading a change management study recently and it said the number one factor for success of a project is an active and visible executive sponsor, which I thought was really interesting.

It was a good reminder. We're very fortunate to have that with Harrison Smith and Molly Kay and our execs and our team as well as Commissioner Danny Werfel and some other folks across the IRS. Beyond that, I think really finding champions is key to creating that forward thinking culture at all levels, not just the senior level, but people actually working in the trenches every day. And I think that I think that with that, it's, yeah, well, yeah, kind of a section of that.

But I think another area kind of from there that we think about within our team, we have some core cultural principles that again, got to give kudos to Harrison Smith, our leader for thinking of them. But the first one is to be pro digitalization, not anti status quo. So really try to acknowledge some of those challenges that are out there, but be positive about it, be approachable about it. Another thing is to be transparent and acknowledge those challenges. A third principle is to find balance. The work is really hard, but it's worth it.

Then we got to stick with it together. The fourth one is to build partnerships, events like this, right? I mean, externally, we're literally not mandated or she or not authorized or appropriated to do our jobs on her own. We need to partner with private sector, with academia, with other partners to be able to do our job and get it done, but also internally make sure we're finding the right program offices and the key people that can help us build that culture and put that diverse team together to make it happen. And then the last cultural principle and highlight is to be kind. A lot of the work can be very frustrating and a lot of people have some very important perspectives and backgrounds for where they're coming from. So just approach everything with empathy and respect. And I think that's a key, those are some key ingredients for us to be successful with that.

[Kathleen Walch] Yeah, I love that one. We had a podcast actually with all of our panelists, they will be publishing and we talked about those in greater details. I encourage