A common refrain among IT leaders is “people, process, technology.” In other words, change starts with the people who implement the processes that technology helps achieve. It’s a relationship that applies to all kinds of IT reform, including migrating to everything-as-a-service (XaaS) or other cloud services.
Everyone in the agency needs to support the transformation. Leaders must make a clear case for the reform and address financial, technical and political considerations, among others. Employees need to understand what’s happening and why, and how it will affect their jobs. And managers must instill trust.
“Listen to your staff,” said Susan Little, Director of the Division of Records and Information Systems at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ Records Officer. “Everyone wants the shiny object. At the end of the day… the technology is fantastic and we all love it, but we have to understand that if our people are the implementers, then we can’t just buy that system, because that’s the easy piece.”
“To move our staff along and to have them comfortable with that change…that’s what success looks like,” she said.
As CIO at the National Science Foundation, Dorothy Aronson and her team have found a somewhat organic way of getting staff to embrace new technology. “Our trick in implementing change is getting it to be subliminal, getting [people]…to use tools to do their jobs and then tell other people about them,” she said. “All of that is a way of implementing change without being a disruptive change agent.”
“You can’t get innovative solutions with the culture that designed, delivered and supported the legacy application,” added Ann Dunkin, CIO of the Energy Department. “You can’t get to a new place by taking the old way.”
To see more of our experts’ ideas on using cloud and cloud-based services to help your agency adapt to change, download our guide, “How to be a Pivot-Ready Organization.”