Digital Services and
modernizing the enterprise
Video Transcript
George Jackson and
Kathy Conrad
Introduction: Tech Matters brought
to you by Century Link
George: A lot of the momentum
around digital services in
government has been focused on
public-facing front-end systems. That
is a much-needed transformation,
but the technology behind the
scenes may be more urgent.
Government spends nearly 80
percent of its IT budget on legacy
systems. Kathy Conrad is the
Director of Digital Government at
Accenture Federal Services. She is
the former Principal Deputy
Associate Administrator of GSA’s
Office of Citizen Services and
Innovative Technology.
Kathy, that momentum is important
and it seems to me we want to
break it into two pieces:
1. Legacy-to-modernized systems.
2. Modernized systems to digital
systems.
Is that a better way for government
to look at things than trying to move
everything from old legacy systems
to the very latest technology?
Kathy: Well, I think it’s really about
thinking in a comprehensive way
about how we can take the tools,
techniques and approaches that
have been so successful and are
being so successful in transforming
public-facing front-end systems to
thinking about how we modernize
legacy systems.
George: When you talk about the
success too, I think that might be a
place where we get bogged down a
lot. We hear about systems in
government that are 50-60 years old
but they are working, and the
reason they are still working is
because they do what the agencies
need them to do. They are difficult to
maybe interface with other systems,
but for the individual purpose that
they are being used for, they are still
doing the job.
legacy systems, leaving very little
room for innovation.
George: The innovation piece of
this is something we hear all the
time. How are you seeing agencies
successfully use innovation as more
than just a buzzword? Everybody
Kathy: There are many cases like
talks about innovation and the
that. I think one of the most
question is do people actually know
important things on the whole legacy it when they see it?
system modernization discussion is
being thoughtful about when and
Kathy: And can you deliver services
how you modernize, and being able in ways that improve mission
to prioritize by understanding what
delivery and improve the
are the options going forward are
effectiveness of the service being
and where it is both cost effective
delivered? One way that I think it is
and mission critical to do so.
important to measure innovation or
even look at innovation is what
George: What are the most
impact does it have on users:
important things do you think in
setting that priority list, in deciding:
• Does it enable services to be
delivered with better throughput?
1. Which ones do we want to try to • Can claims be processed more
do first?
quickly?
2. How do we go about doing that? • Can more users accomplish
How far do we want to take it in
something within a given amount
one shot?
of time?
It’s thinking about not just improving
efficiency or effectiveness, but also
being able to deliver services that
would not otherwise be possible,
harnessing technologies like cloud
Kathy: You don’t want to necessarily or mobile or even in memory
do it as a big bang, one-shot deal.
processing and really being able to
These are generally longer,
leapfrog ahead generations. So,
incremental projects where maybe
instead of putting something online
you abstract a data layer and be
through a desktop application, it’s
able to harness the value of that
thinking about how to make it
data while you are addressing
available through cloud and mobile
underlying architecture. Some of the so that anyone can take advantage
things that are important to consider of it no matter where they are at any
are:
given time of the day or night.
The thing people forget sometimes is
the system that we are modernizing
has to work and do its function while
it’s being modernized.
1. Security. Many of these systems
were designed and put into place
at a time when today’s security
tools and techniques would not
have been available and could
not necessarily be applied, so
that is important.
2. Cost is obviously important. In
some cases, these legacy
systems are eating up the
civilian agency budget. About 71
percent of civilian agencies’
budgets are being taken up by
George: Strategically, all of that
makes a lot of sense. How are the
agencies that are implementing that
kind of a strategy doing it
successfully? The ones that are
doing it well, what steps are they
taking?
Kathy: If we are talking about
legacy system modernization, I think
one of the first things that is
important to do is an assessment of
alternatives:
• Should the system be rearchitected?
• Should you take advantage of
new platforms like cloud
platforms?
• Are there chunks of it that you
can simply do a code conversion
to be able to migrate them to a
new platform?
In doing all of that, one of the things
that is critical to think about and to
really study—and I do not mean
study in a long 18 page thick study, I
mean do research—is how user
needs have changed. Since these
systems were put into place 20, 30
or more years ago, the way they are
used has changed. How do you use
the same techniques of user
research, user-centered design,
service design transformation to
really reimagine the system. If you
could throw all the balls in the air on
this big legacy system and from a
user standpoint re-design it, what
would that look like?
I think that re-imagination, or what
we have been calling it at
Accenture, Service Design, from a
user standpoint, should be applied
to legacy systems in the same way it
is to public-facing front-end systems
because when those systems were
designed, technology was a
constraint. Now, it is an advantage
and there are lots of choices that
could not have even been
considered at the time these
systems were put in place, or even
as they have evolved and been
adjusted and improved over the
years.
George: Kathy Conrad of
Accenture, thanks very much for
coming on the program.
Kathy: Thank you. It was my
pleasure to be here.
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