 Live from Washington, D.C., it's theCUBE. Covering AWS Public Sector Summit. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services. Welcome back to theCUBE's live coverage of the AWS Public Sector Summit here in Washington, D.C. It's the 10th annual AWS Public Sector Summit. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, along with my co-host, John Furrier. We're joined by Adelaide O'Brien. She is Research Director, Government Digital Transformation Strategies at IDC Government Insights. Thanks so much for coming on the show, Adelaide. Thank you, Rebecca, for having me. It's, I'm pleased to be here today. So I want to just start, really, with just picking your brain about the topic of this conference, which is about modernization of government IT. What is the state of play? Where do you see things from where you sit? Well, as you know, the federal government right now has been under about a 10-year directive to go cloud first. And what we've seen is, a lot of agencies, not all, but some of them have struggled with that. And it hasn't really had the momentum or the velocity that as an analyst, I'd like to see. And so last year, the current federal CIOs is at Kent, put out a policy, and it was about actually moving to cloud smart. So it wasn't just to do cloud to be more efficient, to save some of that money, that about 75 billion that's spent on maintaining legacy equipment, but it was actually thinking about using cloud to be very, very agile, to help deliver better citizen services. And what's interesting is this whole concept of cloud smart is also very supportive of the IT Modernization Technology Act, as well as the report to the president on IT Modernization. So last year, we saw both executive and legislative support for agencies to move to cloud. So as you said, but it's still, from where you sit as an analyst, it still doesn't quite have the momentum and the velocity that you'd like to see. What do you see as the biggest obstacles? Well, and this was actually identified in cloud smart. And yesterday and today, I heard a lot of agencies talking about these three aspects. And I think AWS is a great place to help them. So one of the first is security. And we know when agencies were first asked to go to the cloud, security was the biggest barrier in their organization to cloud. And so I think it was the third AWS conference. It was actually in this building. And I know there's been 10, but I wasn't at the first two. And I can remember as an analyst, I was so pleased that Teresa had Roger Baker, the CIO of Health and Human Services on stage. And they were talking about getting FedRAM certification. And I think it was one of the first. And it was thrilling that such a large agency had invested so much time and money in working with AWS to get FedRAM certification. So to me, that was like an initial push and a start. So security is just so, so important. And now you've got so many different software providers working with AWS on security. And even today at one of the breakout sessions, the Census Bureau talked about, because the CIA moved to AWS and they put their most sensitive information in the cloud, they felt comfortable with putting the personally identifiable information in the cloud, i.e. our census data information. Yeah, if it's good enough for that kind of information, I can put my business information there too. Exactly. The first thing I want to get on the research side is competition of opportunities is old, what about old gar, Amazon always said old gar, the old way of doing things. They're pretty much in the new class dev ops. We've seen that on the enterprise side. Certainly startups, Indie Jazz, they use examples like Airbnb. You see those at conferences over the years. So look at the example of these cloud native companies. How does government now look at suppliers as partners? Because the big debate is, you pick the right cloud for the right workload. Workload should define cloud architecture. You can't just split clouds up amongst Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Oracle's of the world. The whole multi-vendor equation shifts in this new paradigm. How do you see that playing out? Yes, it does. But I also see, and what I've heard today over the last two days is, agencies are actually looking for a partner who can grow with them and learn with them. And I heard that over and over again. They want a cloud provider that has skin in the game and that actually helps them. And we've seen that. They also want a cloud provider that's innovative. And one of my concerns is I learned about how, everything's about scale today, right? And how Amazon now has, AWS has scaled up. So fast over the last couple of years and all the innovations that they're able to provide. And so the question is, how can you keep that culture alive? And it's kind of like that startup culture at AWS, right? How can you keep that alive? And I think Andy answered it today. And I wish I would have thought about the question and the way he talked about it. When you get big, you get conservative, right? Because you have too much to lose and too much is at stake. And as an analyst, I'm seeing AWS, not only is it growing fantastically, but it's innovating. And I think that's what gives you then this innovation. You don't have to be a Silicon Valley software company to innovate. And I think part of it comes from, I think Teresa said that 95% of AWS's roadmap is based upon what they hear from their customers. So that ear to the ground, knowing that the government, business, federal, state and local is so, so important. And this trend that's helping them to also is the move to SaaS with capabilities on digital using software as a service, business model. So again, it's all kind of timed up beautifully for these agencies that were slow to move in the past. This is an analyst. Yeah, so security is one of the things on CloudSmart. And I think that was one of the biggest barriers to momentum, but the other is acquisition. So there's three things about CloudSmart that agencies are to pay attention to. And I think what's really helped in the acquisition is the standardization and not only the FedRAMP certification, and AWS is helping cloud providers, softwares and service providers get FedRAMP certification. And this was announced at the conference last year of ATO and AWS, right? Because it's an arduous process. If you don't know what you're doing, it can cost you a lot of money and take a lot of time. So AWS is working with its partners and that's all good for the government sector, right? Because the more vendors that go through certification, the more they trust them and the more they can trust the integrity of their data in the cloud. So the acquisition is the second one, but the third one is the workforce. And I think Andy mentioned it today, a lot of the resistance and a lot of the inertia to cloud is not just the technology, it's training the workforce. And that is so, so important because it's not just an IT conversation any longer. Going to cloud is part of digital transformation, it's the foundation of it. And so that has to be a conversation with all levels of agency executives. And they have to agree otherwise, if you're innovating, you've got islands of innovation and on the cloud, you can start to, yes, you can pilot, but you can start to really get scale there and transform your whole business. And it's all about serving citizens better and innovating to serve them better and automating your processes. That's so important as well. So how would you describe the workforce? I mean, when you think about the private sector workforce in terms of cloud computing versus the government, you tend to think one is more bureaucratic, there is obviously more red tape, maybe slower moving. What are you seeing, what are you hearing? Well, you know, at all levels of the workforce and especially in government, there's a big push now to automate everything. And you know, the government at all levels, federal, state and local realizes they're actually competing with the private sector for workforce. And so, you know, historically government would say, well what's the next skill and we better start preparing for that, right? What's coming down the pike and we need, and now it's like how do we prepare for people who will enter government and move in various different jobs and move in and out of government. And so when you think about that, that's a skill development and technology can help with that, but it's also a mindset of accepting the fact that people join government to serve and they might leave and come back. And so that's very important, but also in terms of cloud smart, the workforce has to be able to understand cloud and how to work with vendors. And it's not necessarily owning your own equipment, but it's trusting your vendors and trusting them with your business. And how do you provide these solutions to the line of business folks? And in a way, I've actually seen the IT department become much more, say, responsive to the line of business folks. And my advice to government executives, especially the IT folks, is always think of yourself as a service, right? Think of yourself as a service, that as a service to the line of business folks and help them understand what they need, how they accomplish their mission, maybe give them a short list of solutions to help them out, but really start tracking then what they're accomplishing. And that'll help fuel then your reinvestments, helping you know where to spend your money next and really just fuel this whole mission accomplishment. One of the things that we've been talking a lot about on theCUBE for years is the new role of the chief data officer in organizations. A lot of federal agencies are now also putting in their own chief data officers. Can you talk a little bit about what you've seen and how they're being used? Yeah, so there are chief data officers in the organizations. And again, that's one of those skills where government's going to compete with the private sector for them. And there's probably not enough to go around. And so it's a very precious commodity. And especially like in your research organizations, you've got chief data officers there. But in a lot of the other areas, especially in the civilian government, you may not be able to have your own chief data officer. You certainly have all the data, but you may not have someone like that. And that's where some of the things that I'm advising agencies to look for is who can help you then give you some of these big data and AI and ML solutions that your line of business folks can start to interface and work with. And maybe you have chief data officers set up the data fields initially, but that's where you've got to start to democratize AI and ML. And because you're never going to have enough chief data officers in any one organization to possibly comb through all of that data. And so that's again where technology can help. Great, well Adelaide, thank you so much for coming on theCUBE. It's been a pleasure having you. It was great being here. Thank you so much. I'm Rebecca Knight for John Furrier. Stay tuned. We will have more of theCUBE's live coverage of AWS Public Sector Summit.