 Live from Washington D.C., it's theCUBE. Covering AWS Public Sector Summit. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services. Welcome back everyone to theCUBE's live coverage of the AWS Public Sector Summit here in our nation's capital. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, co-hosting with John Furrier. We have two guests for this segment. We have George Gagne. He is the Chief Information Officer at Defense, POWMIA Accounting Agency. Welcome, George. And we have Christopher McDermott, who is the CDO of the POWMIA Accounting Agency. Welcome, Chris. Thank you. Thank you both so much for coming on the show. Thank you. So I want to start with you, George. Why don't you tell our viewers a little bit about the POWMIA Accounting Agency? Sure. So the mission has been around for decades actually. In 2015, Secretary of Defense Hagel looked at the accounting community as a whole and for efficiency gains, made decision to consolidate some of the accounting community into a single organization. And they took the former JPEC, which was a direct reporting unit to Paycom out of Hawaii, which was the operational arm of the accounting community responsible for research, investigation, recovery, and identification. They took that organization. They looked at the policy portion of the organization, which is here in Crystal City, DPMO. And then they took another part of the organization, our Life Sciences Support Equipment Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio, and consolidated that to make the Defense POWMIA Accounting Agency under the Office of Secretary of Defense for Policy. So that was step one. Our mission is the fullest possible accounting of missing U.S. personnel to their families and to our nation. That's our mission. We have approximately 82,000 Americans missing from our past conflicts of service members from World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and the Cold War. When you look at the demographics of that, we have approximately 1,600 still missing from the Vietnam conflict. We have just over 100 missing, still missing from the Cold War conflict. We have approximately 7,700 still missing from the Korean War, and the remainder are from World War II. So, you know, one of the challenges when our organization was first formed was we had three different organizations, all had different reporting chains. They had their own cultures, disparate cultures, disparate systems, disparate processes, and step one of that was to get everybody on the same backbone and the same network. Step two to that was to look at all those on-prem legacy systems that we had across our environment and look at the consolidation of that. And because our organization is so geographically dispersed, I just mentioned three. We also have a laboratory in off of Nebraska. We have detachments in Southeast Asia, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, and we have a detachment in Germany. And we're highly mobile. We conduct about this year, we're planned to do 84 missions around the world, 34 countries, and those missions last 30 to 45 day increments. So, highly mobile, very globally diverse organization. So, when we looked at that environment, obviously we knew the first step after we got everybody on one network was to look to cloud architectures and models in order to be able to communicate, coordinate, and collaborate. So, we developed a case management system that consists of a business intelligence software along with some enterprise content software coupled with some forensics software for our laboratory staff that make up what we call our case management system that's cloud hosted. So, business challenges, the consolidation, the reset or set up for the mission, but then the data types, it's a different kind of data problem to work to achieve the outcomes you're looking for. Christopher, talk about that dynamic because you know, this is historical different types of data. That's right, and a lot of our data started as IBM punch cards or it started from paper files. When I started the work, we were still looking things up on microfiche and microfilm. So, we've been working on an aggressive program to get all that kind of data digitized, but then we have to make it accessible. And we also had, as George was saying, multiple different organizations doing similar work, so you had a lot of duplication of the same information, but it kept in different structures, searchable in different pathways. So, we have to bring all of that together and make it accessible so that the government can all be on the same page. Because again, as George said, there's a large number of cases that we potentially could work on, but we have to be able to triage that down to the ones that have the best opportunity for us to use our current methods to solve. So, rather than look for all 82,000 at once, we want to be able to navigate through that data and find the cases that have the most likelihood of success. So, where do you even begin? What's the data that you're looking at? What have you seen have had the best indicators for success of finding those people who are prisoners of war or are missing in action? Well, for some degrees, as George said, our mission's been going on for decades. So, a lot of the files that we're working from today were created at the time of the incidents. For the Vietnam cases, we have a lot of continuity. So, we're still working on the leads that are the strongest out of that set. And we still send multiple teams a year into Vietnam and Laos, Cambodia. And that's where you're trying to build upon the previous investigations. But that's also where, if those investigations were done in the 70s or the 80s, we have to then surface what's actionable out of that information. Which pathways have we tried that didn't pay off? So, a lot of it is what can we reanalyze today? What new techniques can we bring? Can we bring in remote sensing data? Can we bring in GIS applications to analyze? Where's the best scenario for resolving these cases after all this time? I mean, it's interesting. One of the things we hear from the Amazon, I mean, we've done so many interviews with Amazon executives, we kind of know their messaging. So, here's one of them. Eliminate the undifferentiated heavy lifting. You hear that a lot, right? So, there might be a lot of that here. And then, Teresa had a slide up today talking about Colbaul and Mainfreeze, talking about punch cards. So, you have a lot of data that's different types, older data. So, it's a true digitization project that you got to enable. As well as other complexity. Absolutely. When the agency was formed in 2015, we really began the process of an information modernization effort across the organization. Because like I said, these were legacy on-prem systems that were their systems of record that had specific ways and didn't really have the ability to share the data, collaborate, coordinate, and communicate. So, it was a heavy lift across the board getting everybody on one backbone. But then, going through an agency information modernization evolution, if you will, that we're still working our way through because we're so mobile-ly diversified as well, our field communications capability and reach back into the cloud and being able to access that data from geographical locations around the world. Whether it's in the Himalayas, whether it's in Vietnam, whether it's in Papua New Guinea, wherever we may be, not just our fixed locations. George and Christopher, if you each could comment for our audience, I'd love to get this on the record, so you guys are really doing a great modernization project. Talk about, if you each could talk about key learnings and it could be from scar tissue, it could be from pain and suffering to an epiphany or some breakthrough. What were some of the key learnings as you went through the modernization? Could you share some from a CIO perspective and from a CDO perspective? Well, I'll give you a couple takeaways of what I thought I think we did well in some areas that I thought that we could have done better. And for us, as we looked at building our case management system, I think step one of defining our problem statement, you know, it was years in planning before we actually took steps to actually start building our infrastructure in the Amazon cloud or our applications. But building and defining that problem statement, we took some time to really take a look at that because of the difference in cultures from the disparate organizations and our processes, so on and so forth. Defining that problem statement was critical to our success in moving forward. I'd say one of the areas that I say that we could have done better is probably associated with communication and stakeholder buy-in. Because we're so geographically dispersed and highly mobile, getting the word out to everybody and all those geographical locations and all those time zones with our workforce that's out in the field a lot at 30 to 45 days at a time, three or four missions a year, sometimes more. It certainly made it difficult to get part of that, get that messaging out with some of that stakeholder buy-in. And I think probably moving forward and something we still deal with regarding challenges is data hygiene and that's, for us, something else I think we did really well was we established the CDO role within our organization because it's no longer about the systems that are used to process and store the data. It's really about the data and who better to know the data but our data owners, not custodians and our chief data officer and our data governance council that was established. This is for your learnings, takeaways. And that's what we're trying to build upon is you define your problem statement but the pathway there is you have to get results in front of the end users. You have to get them to the people who are doing the work so that you can keep guiding it toward the solution that actually meets all the needs as well as build something that can innovate continuously over time because the technology space is changing so quickly and dynamically that the more we can surface our problem set the more help we can get to find ways to navigate through that. So one of the things you said is that you're using data to look at the past where so many of the guests we're talking to today and so many of the people here at the summit are talking about using data to predict the future. And are you able to look at your data sets from the past and then also sort of say, and this is how we could prevent more PODL, I mean are you thinking at all, are you looking at the future at all with your data? Certainly, especially from our laboratory science perspective, we have probably the most advanced human identification capability in the world and recovery and so all of those lessons really go a long ways to what information needs to be accessible and actionable for us to be able to recover individuals in those circumstances and make those identifications as quickly as possible. But at the same time, the cases that we're working on are the hardest ones, the ones that are still left. But each success that we have teaches us something that can then be applied going forward. What is the human side of your job like? I mean, because here you are, these two wonky data number crunchers and yet you are, these are people who died fighting for their country. How do you manage those two sort of really two important parts of your job and how do you think about that? I will say that it does amp up the emotional quotient of our agency and everybody really feels passionately about all the work that they do. About 10 times a year, our agency meets with family members of the missing at different locations around the country and those are really powerful reminders of why we're doing this and you do get a lot of gratitude but at the same time, each case that's waiting still, that's the one that matters to them. And you see that in the passion our agency brings to the data questions and how quickly they want us to progress. It's never fast enough, there's always another case to pursue. So that definitely adds a lot to it but it is very meaningful when we can help tell that story and even for a case where we may never have the answers, being able to say, this is what the government knows about your case and these are the efforts that have been undertaken to this point. In fact, there's an effort going on, it's really a wonderful thing for everybody involved, good outcomes can count from that. The interesting angle as a techie, IT, former IT, techie back in the day in the 80s, 90s. I can't help but marvel at your perspective and your project because your historians in a way too, you got type punch cards. You know, you got, I never used punch cards. I mean I was the first generation post-punch cards but you have a historical view of IT state-of-the-art at the time of the data you're working with and you have to make that data actionable in an outcome scenario, workload, work stream for today. Another example we have is we're reclaiming chest x-rays that they did for induction when guys were screened for tuberculosis when they came into service. We're able to use those x-rays now for comparison with the remains that are recovered from the field. So you guys are really digging into the history of IT. So I'd love to get your perspective. I mean to me, I marvel and I've always been critical of Washington's slowness with respect to cloud but you see it catch up now with the tailwinds here with cloud and Amazon now, Microsoft's coming in with AI and you kind of seeing the visibility at least to value. As you look back at the industry of federal, state, local governments and public sector over the years, what's your view of the current state of the union of modernization? Because it seems to be renaissance. Yeah. Yeah, I would say the analogy I would give you, it's similar to that of the industrial revolutions we went through in the early 20th century but it's more about the technology revolution that we're going through now. That's how I'd probably characterize it. If I were to look back and tell my children's children about, hey, the advent of technology and that progression of where we're at, cloud architecture certainly take down geographical barriers that before were problems for us. Now we're able to overcome those. We can't overcome the time zone barriers but certainly the geographical barriers of separation of an organization with cloud computing has certainly changed. Do you see your peers within the government sector, other agencies kind of catching wind of this going, wow, I could really change the game and will it be a step function in your kind of mind or do you kind of have to project kind of for where we are? Is it going to be a small improvement, a step function? What do you guys see? What's the sentiment around town? I'm from Hawaii so Chris probably has a better perspective of that with some of our sister organizations here in town. But I would say there's more and more organizations that are adopting cloud architectures and understanding very few organizations now that are co-located in one facility in one location. Right, you take a look at telework today, cost of doing business, remote accessibility regardless of where you're at. So I say it's a force multiplier by far for any line of business, whatever it is public sector, federal government or whatever but it certainly enhanced our capabilities and it's a force multiplier for us. And I think that's where the expectation increasingly is that the data should be available and I should be able to act on it wherever I am whenever the opportunity arises. And that's where the more we can democratize our ability to get the data out to our partners, to our teams in the field, the faster those answers can come through and the faster we can make decisions based upon the information we have, not just the process that we follow. And it feeds the creativity and the work product of the actors involved, getting the data out there. Horting it, wall guarding it, siloing it. Right, yeah, becoming the lone expert on the sack of papers in the file cabinet, doesn't have as much power as getting that data accessible to a much broader swath and everybody can contribute. We're doing our part. That's right, open sourcing it right here. That's right. To your point, death by PowerPoint, I'm sure you've heard that before, right? Well, business intelligence software, now by the click of a button, reduces the level of effort for manpower and resources to put together slide decks where business intelligence software can reach out to those structured data platforms and pull out the data that you want at a click of a button and build those presentations for you on the fly. Exactly. Think about, I mean, if that's not a force multiplier and advances in technology, I think the biggest thing is we understand as humans how to exploit and leverage the technologies and the capabilities. Because I still don't think we've fully grasped the potential of technology and how it can be leveraged to empower us. That's great insight and really respect what you guys do, love your mission. Thanks for sharing. Yeah, thanks so much for coming on the show. Thank you for having us. I'm Rebecca Knight for John Furrier. We will have much more coming up tomorrow on the AWS Public Secretary Summit here in Washington DC.