 From theCUBE Studios in Palo Alto in Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is a CUBE Conversation. Hello everyone, welcome to theCUBE Studios here in Palo Alto, California. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. We're here for coverage of AWS Public Sector Summit. This is theCUBE virtual with our quarantine crew going out and covering the AWS Public Sector Virtual Summit. We are next guest is Matthew Cornelis, Executive Director for the Alliance for Digital Innovation. Matthew, thanks for joining me today for part of AWS Virtual Public Sector Summit. That's great, thanks John, appreciate you having me. I know that John Wood and I have been talking about this organization and some of the ambition and the relevance of it. So I think it's a super important story. I want to get your thoughts on this and unpack kind of the mission. But for starters, tell us what is the Alliance for Digital Innovation? When were you formed? What's the mission? What do you do? Sure, yeah, so ADI was formed about two years ago to create a new advocacy group that could focus explicitly on getting cloud forward, commercial, highly innovative companies into the public sector. So the government technology space has traditionally been dominated by a lot of the legacy vendors, folks that are very happy with vendor lock-in, folks that have an outdated business model that would not suffice in the commercial sector. So why does it have to be that way for government? And ADI joined, started with about eight members, has since grown, we're approaching two dozen now. So we've had a lot of growth and I think a lot of the response that you've seen in the public sector, especially to the COVID crisis and the response and relief efforts have made this organization and our mission more relevant now than ever. There's no way that you can go back to the previous way of doing business. So adopting all these commercial technologies, changing your business model, changing your operating model and really using emerging technology to deliver all these mission services is critical. You know, one of the things that I've been reporting on for many, many years is this idea of modernization. Certainly on the commercial side with cloud, it's been really important Amazon has done extremely well from a business standpoint, we all know that where that's going. The issue that's happening now is the modernization is kicking in. So the government has started to move down this track and we've seen the procurement start to get more modernized, move from buying manuals to actually having modern stuff and incomes COVID-19. You couldn't have accelerated, you couldn't have pulled the future forward fast enough to an already struggling federal government, in my opinion. And I've talked to many people in DC and they're all the young crowd saying, hey, old government, get modern. And then this comes it's almost a throwing the rock on your back and you're sinking. This is a problem. What's your take on this? Because you're trying to solve a problem modernizing, but now you got COVID-19 coming in, it compounds the complexity in the challenge. What's your thoughts and reaction to that? Yeah, so there's a multifaceted response to this. So part of it is what I like to say is the government's done more in the past four months than it's done in the past 14 years when it comes to modernization and adopting commercial capabilities. I think with individual agencies, you've seen those agencies, I will name a couple like the Small Business Administration, the General Services Administration, where I used to work, folks that were already heavily invested in cloud, heavily invested in modern digital tools and modern digital processes, they were able to weather this storm and to deal, especially in SBA's case, with a dramatic increase in their mission. I mean, running the Paycheck Protection Program is something unlike an organization that size has ever seen. And from a technology standpoint, they had a lot of good stories that are worth telling. And I think it's because they were so cloud forward. I think one of the other interesting points that has really come to light over the past four months is so many of the issues around modernization were cultural. Now, of course there are some that are legal, there's acquisition, there's the way agencies are appropriated in finance and the way they can spend their money. But by and large, all of these agencies had to move to maximum telework. They had to get rid of all of these outdated on-premise processes, these paper-based processes that they had. And although surely there were some bumps in the road and that was not easy, especially for these folks working around the clock to keep their agencies operational to make sure citizens are getting the services they need, especially during this crisis. I think there's a lot of great success stories that you see there. But because of this, no one, even if they're allowed to go back into the office or when they're allowed to go back in the office, people are going to understand how much more productive they are, how much more technologically capable they are. And that's not just CIO offices. That's people on programs in the front lines, delivering services, that mission response. We've really seen it power forward over the last four months. You know, Matthew, I've been very vocal given that I'm kind of the old guy, get off my lawn, kind of that commentary. I've seen the waves and I remember coming in when I was in my young late twenties and thirties, old school enterprises, the commercial business wouldn't do business with startups. You had to be approved, we were entrenched vendors supporting those things. And then in comes the web, in comes the nineties and then the web came, it was more agile. You had startups that were more open and working with commercial vendors. It seems like we're seeing that movie play out in public sector where you have the entrenched incumbents, they got the town wired, who knows what's going on. It's been called the Beltway Bandits for years and Theresa Carlson, I've talked about it all the time. But now the government can be agile. And startups need to be part of, because they need new solutions like whether it's video conferencing or virtual events, things like we do. New solutions are coming that need to come in. It's hard. Can you share how a company, whether it's a startup or a new solution can come in and work with the government because the perception is it's impossible. Yeah, and part of why ADI exists is to break that down. One, to recruit more members to join us, to really help drive commercial innovation in the government. And we have some very large companies that like AWS and others that do an awful lot of work with the government. And we have a lot of smaller startups that are interested in dipping their toe in there. And so we try to help them demystify how it is that you go about working with the government. I think there have been some very, again, some good success stories on this front. I think that there are lots of places like the Department of Defense, a lot of the folks, the intelligence community, some other agencies, they have authorities, they have partnership programs that make it easier for folks to adopt commercial innovation. They have unique authorities like other transaction authorities or commercial solutions offerings that really lower the barrier for new technologies to be piloted and potentially scaled inside government. But that's not the case across lots of agencies. And that's why we advocate broadly for getting the acquisition process to move at the speed of technology. If there are good authorities that work in some agencies, let's get them to everybody. Let's have everybody try it because the people in the agencies, the acquisition professionals, the technical professionals, they have to be committed to working with industry. So the industry is committed to working with them. And as a former federal employee myself, I worked at the Office of Management Budget and the General Service Administration. I always was upset at the fact that the government is very good at speaking to industry but not very good at working with industry and listening. And so we see a lot more of that now. And I think part of that is a response to COVID but it's also the recognition that you can't do things the way you used to do it. The traditional butts in seats contracting business model where everybody in between a federal employee and that outsourced service provider, you don't need all those people there. You can do it yourself and be just as effective and get all the real outcomes you're looking for with commercial innovation. It sounds like ADI, your priority is to make things go fast, could be modernized. So I have to ask you the question that's on my mind, probably on everyone's mind is, what are the key conversations or messages you provide to the agencies, heads or members of Congress to get them excited about this, to take action to support what you're doing because let's face it, most of these guys up in the hill or gals now, most of them come from a law backgrounds. They don't have a tech background. So that's a complaint that I've heard in the hallways in DC is the guy making all the decisions doesn't know Jack about tech. No, it's a great point. And when we advocate up on the hill, there's a law that I don't think a lot of folks paying off a lot of attention to. Everybody likes the night, new things that are coming from Capitol Hill. But there's a great piece of legislation from 1994 for the Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act. We actually did some tremendous original research at ADI about a year ago and released an interesting report that got a lot of uptick here. And most people don't even understand that the law requires you to do market research and see if there's a commercial product or service that meets your need before you go down building any sort of specific requirements or building out some sort of long procurement process. And so a lot of what we are doing is educating folks, not just on what the law says, but on why these can lead to better outcomes for agencies. I mean, I truly believe that most of the folks in government, whether they're technical folks or not want to do the best thing. But if you're a company trying to do business with the government, you have to go through what is often a five or six or sometimes 10 person human supply chain. There's someone in government who wants your solution because it addresses a particular problem. And between them and you the company, there's all sorts of additional bureaucratic overlays and folks that are not technical, that have other incentives and other priorities that don't always lead to the most optimal procurement outcome. So there's an educational component. There's a cultural component. We need more champions inside government. We need not just better technology that's wanting to work with the government, but we also need smarter, better people inside that understand the technology and can get to it the way they need to get to it so that they can deliver mission. As someone like me who's in the technology business loves entrepreneurship, loves business, loves impact of technology. I'm not a public servant. I'm not that up to speed on all the government kind of inside baseball. So I kind of look at it a little bit differently. I've always been a big proponent of public private partnerships. That's been kicked around in the past. Kind of like digital transformation kind of cliche, but there's been some pockets of success there. But if you look at the future, the role of influence and the commercial impact, just China for instance, I was just riffing the other day with someone around, China doesn't necessarily go through government channels for how they deal with the United States. There's a little commercial, they have intellectual property issues going on, people saying they're stealing, they're investing in the United States. So it's a commercial influence. So as the government has to look at these commercial influences, they then have to modernize their workforce, their workloads, their applications, their workplaces. The work is not just workloads, it's workplace, workforce. So if you had your way, how would you like to see the landscape of the federal technology piece of this look like in five years because there's now new influence vectors coming in that are outside the channels of federal purview? No, it's a great question. And I appreciate you bringing up the other complexities around nation state actors and China and everything else. Obviously supply chain security and being able to deal with legitimate security threats is critical when you're inside government. I mean, your first sort of purpose is to do no harm and to make sure that you're keeping citizen data, whether it's classified or unclassified secure. We think at ADI that there's a great balance to be had there. And part of that is if you're working with American companies and you're adopting the best and most agile and most innovative commercial technology that America has to offer, that's gonna make our industry more competitive and position it better on the commercial market. And it's also gonna make government agencies more effective. They're gonna be able to meet their mission faster. They're gonna be able to lower costs. They're gonna be able to shift what are gonna be tighter and tighter budgets over the next four or five or 10 years to other areas because they're not wasting so much money on these old systems and this old business processes, this old way of doing business. So that is one of the balances that we have to take from an advocacy standpoint. We have to understand that supply chain security, cyber security are real issues, but security can also be an enabler to innovation and not an impediment. And if a lot of the commercial capabilities that are coming out now and a lot of these companies like the ones ADI represents want to do business with the government and their commercial products can inherently be more secure than a lot of these old bespoke systems or old business practices, that's good for not just federal agencies, that's good for citizens and that's good for our national defense and our economy. You know, I look at our landscape and being an American born here and looking at other emerging countries, certainly China is one example of becoming the very world digital. Even other areas where 5G and telecom has made great internet access, you're seeing digital native countries. So as we modernize and our lawmakers have more tech savvy and things become digital native, the commercial enabling piece is a huge thing. Having that enabling technology because it creates wealth and jobs and other things. So you got three things, digital native country, enabling technologies to promote good and wealth and an engine of economic value and then societal impact. What's your take on those three kind of pillars because we're kind of as a country coming into this world order and look at the younger generation, they're all screaming for it. We're digital native and all kinds of arbitrage there, fake news, misinformation. Then you got enabling technology to the cloud and then you got societal benefits, future of elections and everything else. So what's your thoughts? Because it sounds like you're thinking about these things in your digital innovation alliance. Yeah, absolutely. The one thing I will say and as someone that was a former federal employee, the one thing we need more of whether you're on the executive branch or in Congress, we need more people that like you said are digital native that understand technology that also want to be inside government either running programs or dealing with policy issues. We need as many good new ideas and folks with real legitimate, necessary and current skills in there. Because if you don't understand the technology, you don't understand like you said, the societal impacts, you don't understand the business impacts of government decision making and the government can drive markets. I mean, we are especially in the middle of coronavirus we're spending trillions of dollars to keep folks afloat and we're using technology primarily as a way to make that happen. So the first thing I would say is we need to continue to recruit and retain and train the best and the brightest to go into government service because it is a joy and a privilege to serve government and we've got to have better, smarter technical people in there or we're going to keep getting these same outcomes like you've mentioned over the past 30 plus years. I think we're in a John F.K. moment where John F. Kennedy said, ask not what your country can do for you, what you can do for your country, moment in a modern era and that was the 60s. That was, we saw the revolution that happened there. We're kind of having a digital version of that now where it's an opportunity for people to get involved, younger generations and make change rather than arguing about it. So I really feel strongly about this. So I think this is an opportunity, your reaction to that. No, that's a fantastic point. I hadn't really thought about the JFK resemblance but it is, from an industry standpoint, I think that that is what is happening with these emerging technology companies and even some of the large companies. They understand that this is their way to contribute to the country whose R&D dollars and these public-private partnerships helped a lot of these folks grow and become the companies they are now. At least started them down that road. And so for us at the Alliance for Digital Innovation and the companies that are a part of us, that is sort of purposeful to who we are. We do what we do and we want the government to build stronger relationships and to use this technology because it does serve mission. I mean, we exclusively focus on the public sector focus of these companies and it's tremendously valuable when you see a federal agency who has spent five or 10 years and hundreds of millions of dollars and still not solving a problem. And then they can pick up the commercial off-the-shelf technology from a company that we represent and can solve that problem for $5 billion and do it in six months. I mean, that's truly rewarding and whether you're inside government or out we should all celebrate that and we should find ways to make that the norm and not the exception. And take all that hate and violence and challenge towards voting and getting involved and I'm a big proponent of that. Matthew, thank you so much for taking the time. I'll give you the last, we'll take a minute to put a plug in for the Alliance for Digital Innovation. Who are the Charter members? Who's involved? I know John Wood from Telos is a Charter member. Who's involved? How did it all start? Give a taste of the culture and who's involved. Yeah, thanks John. So yeah, like you mentioned, we have tremendous members. AWS is obviously a great partner. We have a lot of big companies that are involved, Google Cloud, Salesforce, Palantir, Palo Alto Networks. We also have great mid-size and small companies. You think of a Telos, you think of a SAP NS2, an IronNet, you think of a Seldrone. We've got companies that whose technology, product and service offerings run the range for government needs. And we all come together because we understand that the government can and should and must do better to buy and leverage commercial technology to meet mission outcomes. So that is what we focus on. And frankly, we have seen tremendous growth since COVID started. I mean, we are 24 members now. We were at 18 just four months ago. But I like to say that ADI is an organization whose mission is more important and more resonant now, not just in the technology parts of government, but at the secretary level, at the chief acquisition officer level in Congress. We are folks that are trying to paint the future. We're doing a positive vision for change, for what government can and should be. And for all of those other technology companies that want to be a part of that, that understand that the government can do better. And that has ideas for making it work better and for getting commercial innovation into government faster to solve mission outcomes and to increase that trust between citizens and government. We want you. So if folks are interested in joining, you got people that are watching out there, you can go to Alliance for Digital Innovation.org. We're always accepting interested applicants and we look forward to continuing this message, showing some real outcomes and helping the government for the next year, five years, 10 years, really mature and modernize faster and more effectively than it has before. Great mission. Love what you're doing. I think the future of democracy depends on these new models to be explored, candidly and out in the open. And it's a great mission. We support that. Thanks for taking the time, Matthew, appreciate it. Thanks, John. Have a great public sector summit. Okay, this is theCUBE's coverage of AWS public sector virtual summit. I'm John Furrier here in theCUBE Virtual. Thanks for watching and stay tuned for more coverage.