The Art of the Possible: Meeting Innovation Demands in the Public Sector

This content is sponsored by Cognitio Synergy Forum

A former intelligence community innovation officer’s advice for federal agencies

By Roger Hockenberry

Government agencies face increasing pressure to be “innovative,” but as is the case with most big ideas, defining exactly what that means is difficult, at best. Most don’t consider that innovation doesn’t necessarily mean creating something new, but can simply mean doing something you already do, differently. For most enterprises, innovation is really about increasing effectiveness.

When considering how to approach meeting innovation demands from Congress, the White House, and the mission, agencies need to ask a few key questions:

• How do we make what we do more effective to the mission?
• How can we reduce cycle time and increase responsiveness, allowing for improvement through iteration, versus making a complete solution with fully mapped out requirements from the start?
• How can we allow implementation of commodity services, without impeding mission focus, and enable reallocation of people to higher value work?

While effectiveness is table stakes, another key component to innovation is bridging the competency gap and cycle time disparity between commercial and government adoption of technology in support of mission needs.

In this regard, the typical goals of innovation are to:

• Support reduction in dependency on government designed, or GOTS, IT solutions in favor of lightly-customized commercial solutions
• Reduce vendor lock-in and dependence on costly support models
• Evaluate emerging technologies and quickly map them to mission needs
• Drive adoption of commercial technology to reduce cycle time for mission delivery

While government agencies across defense, intelligence, and civilian departments rush to open offices in Silicon Valley and other innovation hubs in pursuit of the holy grail of “innovation,” they often overlook a few critical points:

• Innovation is the job of everyone in an agency – not one location, one department, or one cell, and certainly not one person. It has to become part of the DNA of the organization.
• Innovation isn’t something to be sourced and imported from some distant geography, rather it must be born of and driven by mission with dedicated groups of contributors from public sector, government services, and purely commercial domains who bring diverse competencies and experiences together in support of common goals.
• Innovation requires not just the heroics of a few, rather, it demands a fundamental culture shift, backed both by policy at the top, and persistent action at all levels.

Agile innovation requires a unique blend of mission engagement, commercial partnerships, and creativity in procurement.

At Cognitio, we advocate a simple set of guiding principles for agencies seeking to institute a culture of innovation:

1. Do not focus on fixed solutions
2. Focus on competency
3. Build a program to focus on outcomes, not process
4. Focus on your people. Understand that true innovation will fundamentally transform workforce needs.
5. Build reference architectures and allow for customization
6. Partner with mission and contracting
7. Create a continuous exploration cycle unafraid of revolution and changing the market
8. Allow commodity to be commodity
9. Allow things to fail early and at low cost
10. Focus on the art of the possible, allowing curiosity to lead to exceptional results

Roger Hockenberry, former Innovation Officer at the Central Intelligence Agency and Chief Technology Officer of the National Clandestine Service, is a founding partner and Chief Executive Officer of Cognitio, a management consulting and engineering firm focused on cyber security, big data, cloud, and innovation consulting supporting both government and commercial customers. On Tuesday, October 4, Cognitio’s Synergy Forum conference brings together public servants, government contractors, and commercial innovators at the Renaissance Washington Downtown hotel to further collaboration among these communities on innovation and cyber security. For more information, visit thesynergyforum.com.

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