Comments on approach and pilot

_Implementation Approach Issues:_
Agile development and automated deployments are briefly mentioned in the report, however the execution issues within the government exceed just directing these tactics, which most the government isn’t experienced or knowledgeable in. For any of the policy and strategy in this report to succeed and make an actual impact on the user experience, security posture, and maintainability, it will require integrated efforts across multiple business lines and departments within and across agencies.

Right now, various silo’ed units (e.g. HR, legal, security, etc.) can greatly slow development and any kind of implementation, regardless of desires to use agile, DevOps, or automated deployments. The government is not structured to empower cross unit teams that could cut through the bureaucracy the way the private sector. Unfortunately much of the contracting to industry fails to solve this, as it just exacerbates the silo’ed nature of agencies and can even make it worse when multiple specialized vendors breakdown agency units further by functional area.

A major part of this modernization needs to be the execution approach that can change the culture and success of the federal government in IT. This will require teams or initiatives that can move quickly and execute. Those business units that hamper development and modernization may need to be modified or removed for mission success; though in no way should security or regulatory requirements be avoided. The key is having all involved stakeholders and units be mission oriented and focused on fast delivery and improving security.

_Feasibility of proposed acquisition pilot:_
The feasibility of going to cloud based email government wide is a nice idea, however the timeline to actually accomplish this pilot will be several years. During that time, commercial technology will continue to evolve, user patterns will change (e.g. products such as Slack could replace some or near all of the need for email), and security risks will evolve. The issues in government IT are currently so enormous, that a single multi-year pilot, does not address the myriad of transformations necessary. At minimum a multitude of pilots should be initiated, preferably with timeframes less than 6 months, to get quick feedback on what works and what doesn’t.