While newly released spending reports are helping bolster public faith in government's desire to maintain transparency, the successful launch of the reporting project shows the value of agile, user-centered development methods.
As agencies seek to fill the void of knowledgeable staff inside federal IT shops, agile methods can help non-technical government workers better understand and monitor the products of IT contractors.
Innovation groups within the White House, such as the U.S. Digital Service (USDS), are looking to build on IT modernization momentum and reverse recent backsliding.
With a DevOps approach, the creation of compliance and security content can happen alongside development, involving input from many different stakeholders.
The Joint Improvised-threat Defeat Organization (JIDO) has been working for 5 years to implement agile processes and contracts, but it is harder at the Department of Defense enterprise level.
Agency heads such as Department of Defense CIO Terry Halvorsen are focusing strongly on key strategies from the private sector that transform organizations from the inside out.
Government should be striving to close the innovation gap between the public and private sectors by focusing on continuous learning and responding to change based on customer feedback.
Multi-vendor competition for agile sprints and the idea of having individual sprints done on a fixed-price basis could revolutionize gov IT the way SpaceX has revolutionized rocket and satellite building.
IT leaders at the Department of Homeland Security don't expect a shake-up to the procurement innovation within the agency, even with the upcoming change in administration.
Rather than being purely infrastructure focused, the modern federal CIO must adopt an application development and management mindset.