States embrace cloud centers of excellence amid modernization push
Andriy Onufriyenko via Getty Images
By
Chris Teale
Speakers at the forefront of the move to the centers said at last week’s GovExec Cloud Summit they help build governance, best practices and employee skills.
In April, Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves signed legislation creating a Cloud Center of Excellence in the state, which will phase in over the next couple of years.
It makes Mississippi one of several states to have such a center, which the bill says will “facilitate the adoption and management of cloud computing across state agencies and governing authorities,” “provide strategic guidance, best practices, and governance frameworks for cloud migration and optimization,” and “enhance security, scalability, and cost efficiency in statewide cloud operations.”
It's still early days for the center in Mississippi, said the state’s Chief Information Officer Craig Orgeron during a panel discussion at the Nextgov/FCW and Route Fifty Cloud Summit this week. During an initial engagement period, state officials will figure out how to put the center into practice, including components like training, applications’ cloud readiness and how those applications will fit together programmatically as they migrate.
“There's a lot in the last 25 years, if you weren't in the mainframe or on an open systems environment in the state data center, you were running inside of an agency,” Orgeron said. “There are a lot of applications that we really don't know the readiness factor for. We’re being thoughtful about, do some of these need to be modernized, making some of those services available, because eventually those are going to go to the cloud, and when they do, they'll come through the CCE to get there.”
Already, Mississippi has made great progress in embracing the cloud. Orgeron credited the state’s Chief Technology Officer Brian Norwood for leading a migration assessment of the systems the state hosts on its private cloud from 32 agencies. But it can be tricky for states to “grapple with not just what a migration looks like, but is it even cloud ready,” Orgeron said, especially as some legacy systems and processes are decades old. Jobs also must be reclassified and rethought, as a technologist’s role now is very different from even a decade ago.
Maine initially stood up its own CCE after receiving a federal grant under the American Rescue Plan. Its director, David Pascarella, said during the panel discussion he has been given the budget to hire three more employees and expand the work it’s already done, including on rethinking what job descriptions look like.
“We still have our current classifications for cloud [jobs], and we have the ability to write in some cloud services into those job descriptions,” Pascarella said. “But I'm trying to look forward, look towards more. What do we need from an organization long term? How do those positions differ?”
Getting employees up to speed is one of the biggest challenges when it comes to technology and the cloud. Pascarella said it’s crucial to let employees attend events, “actually put their hands on tools” in controlled environments like sandboxes, earn certifications and take part in other training opportunities. Trust is also key, he said.
“Those are the guys that are out on the front lines,” Pascarella said. “They're the people blocking and tackling in security incidents. They're the ones coming up with the architectures. [It’s about] really listening to what they're making recommendations on, and trying to raise that to the enterprise.”
It’s a similar story for employees in Mississippi, Orgeron said. But it’s tricky, as the state still runs two mainframes and likely will for a while yet, so there will still be a role for those who are well versed in legacy technologies. And to appeal to people’s sense of public service, the state personnel board created a public cloud job description, in part to compete better with the private sector.
“We have folks that can come into a very modern IT pin, and grow a career that way, and they will get to do a lot of cool things, get their hands dirty,” Orgeron said. “There is something kind of exciting, even at the pace the government moves, about being involved with the latest and the greatest.”