WASHINGTON – The government needs a smarter approach to using the Cloud and that may require spending more to train for federal workers due to a skills gap, the chief information officer for the Office of Management and Budget said Thursday.
Suzette Kent, speaking at the 2019 Public Sector Innovation Summit, said the government is not moving as fast as the private sector in Cloud innovation despite its more significant investment in the field.
“When we say that Cloud is smart, we also have to invest in our people working with it,” Kent said. “We cannot underestimate what we have to invest in transformation. We have to be incredibly intentional when we are making transformation in the workforce.”
Kent noted that the skills gap in the federal workforce isn’t just in Cloud technology, but also in artificial intelligence, data science and cybersecurity.
“The real citizen benefit sits in how we deliver services, what we do with our data,” Kent said. “So that’s the area where we need to continue incentivizing.”
The meeting of influential technology leaders in private industry and government focused in large part on how to fully modernize government activities and the delivery of its services to citizens by efficiently implementing Cloud technology.
The Cloud should be thought of as a team activity, Kent said, as outlined in Cloud Smart, the updated strategy released in June regarding Cloud implementation by federal agencies.
“The update intended to help agencies move more rapidly to take advantage of the tools and capabilities that are available in the market,” Kent said. “It meant to look not only at technology capabilities. How we bring those in the security aspect and what we do with our workforce was also the critical part of the update.”