MORE THAN an independent agency, the U.S. Small
Business Administration is a full cabinet-level agency
dedicated to American small business. It provides capital,
contracting expertise, counseling, and is the nation’s go-to
voice for small business advocacy. Maria Roat was named
as the agency’s CIO in October 2016, bringing to her role
30 years of IT leadership and professional experience.
IT MODERNIZATION AND CLOUD MIGRATION
ARE A TOP PRIORITY FOR EVERY CIO IN
GOVERNMENT TODAY. WITH GAO ESTIMATING
MORE THAN 80 PERCENT OF IT SPENDING
OBLIGATED TO LEGACY SYSTEMS, WHAT
ARE THE CHALLENGES YOU FACE AT SBA IN
MODERNIZING YOUR IT PORTFOLIO TO INCLUDE
YOUR CLOUD MIGRATION STRATEGY?
When you talk about cloud migration strategies, or IT
modernization generally, it is not just about moving to the cloud.
I look at the entirety of IT modernization as the opportunity for
a critical review and rationalization of our entire technology
stack—what do we have, what do we need, what is our
application portfolio, and how does all of it support the many
missions of SBA? I wanted to ensure that what we moved to
the cloud was directly relevant to priority SBA operations.
Once you take account of your IT portfolio—your assets—you
need to understand the processes governing its use across
the enterprise. How are applications used? How relevant are
they? What works and what doesn’t? In a word—process.
We continually evaluate our processes as we transform
our acquisition and deployment of new technologies.
In developing our IT modernization and cloud strategy, we
asked the next important question: Do we have the talent to
do the work, employees who understand cloud environments
and how these environments operate and scale?
I just outlined three challenges that also comprise the framework
against which we execute. It’s a trusted framework and a very
relevant one. In short: people, process, and technology.
We have a strong team and are making great
progress at SBA in all three areas.
STAYING WITH CLOUD MIGRATION, WHERE
DID YOU BEGIN? WAS IT EASY TO START?
Pretty simple, really. I started with a prohibition
on new hardware in the data center, which forced
the discussion and moved the ball forward.
REGARDING YOUR IT ASSETS AND ACTUAL
SPEND, YOU ARE IDENTIFIED AS A LEADER
IN IMPLEMENTING TECHNOLOGY BUSINESS
MANAGEMENT (TBM), WHICH OMB IS NOW
GUIDING DEPARTMENTS AND AGENCIES TO
ADOPT. THIS IS A TOPIC COVERED AT CES
GOVERNMENT 2020, SO WHY TBM AT SBA?
When I arrived at SBA, I was more or less old school in terms
of understanding my IT portfolio. From acquisition strategies,
procurements, knowing my operations—network, security,
general enterprise architecture—I always had data points, an
ability to understand my operations, my IT portfolio. It was
very manual, though, and now that we are marching down
the path of TBM, I see a more complete picture of actual
costs and spend. Now that we have participation from all
major SBA program offices, we are able to see more data,
other cost factors, understand and evaluate these, and include
them in solicitations and thereby receive better results.
So, yes, I am an advocate of TBM, but TBM also has
challenges, such as data integrity. We started pulling data from
across disparate financial systems—from sources across the
enterprise, actually—it took a lot of work and cleanup. Data
had to be entered into tools and this took time. Data had to be
coded properly. So, data quality and data integrity are very
important. We’re 18 months down the road with TBM and
making great progress, incorporating more automation into
the TBM framework. We know what is important to collect
and we know what isn’t. We are able to make better decisions
because we have a better view—a larger and more visible
view—of our assets and the actual spend these encompass.
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