>> live from Washington, D. C. It's the Cube covering a ws public sector summit. She wrote to you by Amazon Web services. >> Welcome back to the cubes. Live coverage of the ES W s Public Sector summit here in Washington D. C. At the 10th annual eight of the U. S. Public sector summit. I'm your host Rebecca Night, along with my co host, John Farrier. We're joined by Adelaide O'Brien. She is research director. Government digital transformation strategies at I. D. C. Government incites Thanks so much for coming on the show. Adelaide. >> Rebecca for having me. It's I'm pleased to be here today, >> so I want to just start really with just picking your brain about about the topic of this conference, which is about modernization of government. What is the state of play? How Where do you Where do you see things from where you sit? >> Well, as you know, the federal government right now has been under about a 10 year directive to go cloud first. And what we've seen is, you know, a lot of agencies not all but some of them have a struggled with that, Uh, and it hasn't really had the momentum of the velocity that as an analyst, I I'd like to see and s o last year. The current federal seo says that can put out a policy, and it was about actually moving to Cloud Smart. So it wasn't just to do cloud to be more efficient to save some of that money. That about 75,000,000 that's spent on maintaining legacy equipment. But it was actually thinking about using cloud to be very, very agile to help deliver better citizen services. And what's interesting is this. This whole concept of cloud smart is also very supportive. The Modernization Technology Act as well as the report to the president on it. Modernization. So last year we saw both executive and legislative support for agencies to move to cloud. >> So, as you said, it doesn't. But it's still from where you sit. Doesn't analyst. It still doesn't quite have the momentum and the velocity that you'd like to see. What do you see as the biggest obstacles? >> Well, and this was actually identified in Cloud Smart and yesterday and today I heard a lot of agencies talking about thes three aspects, and I think you know, 10 a W s is a great place to help them. So one of the first is security. And we know when agencies, you know, were first Ask Goto the cloud security was, you know, the biggest barrier in their organization to cloud. And and so I think it was the 3rd 8 of US Conference. It was actually in this building, and I know there's been but I wasn't the first to and I could remember is an analyst. I was so pleased that Teresa had Roger Baker, the CEO of Health and Human Services on stage, and they were talking about getting fed Reum certification, and I think it was one of the first. And it was it was thrilling that such a large agency had invested so much time and money about working with eight of us to get February certification. So to me that that was like, you know, an initial pushing a start, so security is just so so important. And now you've got, you know, so many different software providers working with Amazon. Eight of us on security on DH. Even today, at one of the breakout sessions, the senses really talked about because the CIA moved to eight of us, and they put their most sensitive information in the cloud they felt comfortable with putting the personally identifiable information in the cloud. I'II our census data information. >> If it's good enough for that for that kind of information, I can I can put my business >> exactly there, Tio. Exactly >> the question I want to get on the comm on the research side is competition of opportunities. Is Old Wick about old gore Amazon? Always the old guard, The old way of doing things. They're pretty much in the new class. Dev Ops. We've seen that on the enterprise side Certainly start ups, any jazz, these examples like Airbnb. You see those at conferences over the years that we have the example of these cloud Native Cos. How does government now look at suppliers as partners? Because the big debate is you picked the right cloud for the right workload. Work lotion to find cloud architecture. You can't just split clouds up amongst Microsoft, Google, Amazon and oracles of the world. The whole multi vendor equation shifts in this new paradigm. How do you see that playing out? >> Yes, it does. But I also see and what I've heard today over the last two days is, you know, agencies are actually looking for a partner who can grow with them and learn with them. And I heard that over and over again. You know, they want a cloud provider that you know, has skin in the game, and that actually helps them. And we've seen that they also want a cloud provider that's innovative. And, you know, one of my concerns is I learned about how you know, scale. Everything's about scale today, right? And how Amazon now has eight of us has scaled up so fast over the last couple of years and all the innovations that they're able to provide. And so the question is, how can you keep that culture alive? And, you know, it's kind of like that start up culture at eight of us, right? How can you keep that alive? And, you know, I think the answer did today and, you know, I wish I would have thought about the question in the way he talked about it. You know, when you get big, you get conservative right, because you have too much to lose and too much is at stake. and, you know, as an analyst, I'm seeing eight of us. Not only is a growing fantastically, but it's innovating, and I think that's what gives you than this innovation. The you know, you don't have to be a a Silicon Valley software company to innovate, and I think part of it comes from I think Theresa's said that 95% of A W S's roadmap is based upon what they hear from their customers. So you know that that ear to the ground knowing the government business, federal, state, local, is so, so >> important. This trend that's helping them to also is the move to sass with capabilities on digital using suffers a service business model. So again, it's all kind of timed up beautifully for these agencies that were slow to move in the past. This is an analyst, er, >> yeah, so So security is one of the things on Cloud Smart, and I think that was one of the biggest, biggest barriers to momentum. But the others acquisition. So there's three things about clouds smart that agencies are to pay attention to, and I think you know what's really helped in the acquisition is, you know, the standardization and not only the federal up certification. And, you know, eight of us is healthy cloud providers. Software's the service providers get Fed Ram certification. And so, in the end, this is announced at the conference last year of a TIO on a W s. Right, because it's an arduous process. If you don't know what you're doing, it can cost you a lot of money and take a lot of time. So, you know, eight of us is working with his partners, and that's all good for the government sector, right? Because the more vendors that go through certification, the more they trust them and the more they can trust, you know, the integrity of their data in the cloud. So the acquisition is the 2nd 1 But the 3rd 1 is the workforce, and I think you know, And he mentioned it today. You know, a lot of the resistance, and a lot of the inertia of cloud is not just the technology, it's training the workforce, and I, you know, I thought, it's so so important because it's not just an conversation any longer. Going to cloud is part of digital transformation. Is the foundation of it. And so that has to be a conversation with all levels of agency executives. And they have to agree Otherwise, you know, if you're innovating, you've got, you know, islands of innovation and you on the cloud you can start to Yes, you can pilot, but you can start to really get scale there and transform your whole business. And it's all about serving citizens better and innovating to serve them better and automating your processes. You know that's so important as well. >> So how would you describe the work force? I mean, when you think about the private sector, workforce, women, when in terms of cloud computing versus the government, you tend to think one is more bureaucratic. There is obviously more red tape may be slower moving. How What are you seeing? What are you hearing? >> Well, you know, at all levels of the workforce and especially in government, there's a big push now to automate everything. He and you know, the government at all levels. Federal state local realizes they're actually competing with the private sector for work source. And so, you know, historically, government would say, Well, what's the next skill and we better start preparing for that, right? What's what What's coming down the pike and we we need. And now it's like, How do we prepare for people who enter government and move in various different jobs and move in and out of government? And so when you think about that, that's a skill development and technology can help with that. But it's also a mindset of accepting the fact that people join government to serve, and they might leave and come back. And so that's very important, but also the in terms of cloud smart. The workforce has to be able to understand cloud and howto work with vendors, you know, and it's not necessarily, you know, owning your own equipment. But it's it's it's trusting your vendors and trusting them with your business and and how do you, you know, provide these solutions to the line of business folks? And in a way, I actually seen you the IT department become much more responsive to the line of business folks. And my advice, Teo government executives, especially the folks, is always think of yourself as a service right. Think of yourself as a service. You know that as a service to the line of business folks and, you know, help them understand what what they need, how they accomplished their mission. Maybe give them a short list of solutions to help them out, but really start tracking them. You know what they're accomplishing, and that will help fuel. Then you reinvestments help. You know where to spend your money next And really, you know, just fuel this whole mission accomplishment. >> One of the things that we've been talking a lot about on the Cube for for years is the new role of the chief data officer in any organizations. A lot of federal agencies air now, also putting in their own chief date officers. Can you talk a little bit about what you've seen and what and how they're being used? >> Yeah, so they're our chief data officers in the organization's it again. That's one of those skills were you know, government's going to compete with the private sector for them, and there's probably not enough to go around Andi. And so it's a very precious commodity. And, you know, it is especially like in your research organizations. You've got chief data officers there, but in a lot of the other areas. And, you know, especially in the civilian government, you may not be able to have your old, you know, chief Data officer. Right? You certainly have all the data, but you may not have someone like that. And that's where you know some of the things that that I that that I'm advising agencies to look for us who can help you, then give you some of these big data and you know, a I and ML solutions that your line of business folks Khun, start to interface and work with. And maybe you have Chief data officers set up the data fields initially, but that's where you've got to start to democracy eyes, you know, a I and m l. And because you're never gonna have enough Chief data officers in anyone organization to possibly calm through all of that data on DSO, that's again where technology can help. >> Great. Well, Adelaide, thank you so much for coming on the Cube. It's been a pleasure. Having you >> was great being here. Thank you so much. >> I'm Rebecca Knight for John Furrier. Stay tuned. We will have more of the cubes. Live coverage of a ws public sector summit