DevOps For Federal Agencies: Importance, Benefits and Challenges

By Veritis

DevOps For Federal Agencies: Importance, Benefits and Challenges

Technology penetration is transforming every sector, globally, and the government is no exception to that.

To the changing needs and part of smart governance, many governments are already using technology solutions. However, they are yet to touch the full potential.

The US Government is now facing a similar scenario waiting for more in-depth technology up-gradation to serve public needs during the COVID-19 crisis.

The federal agencies are seeing this demand given two critical factors: Security challenges arising out of remote working culture and breakeven point for their existing tech infrastructure due to overloaded traffic.

DevOps And DevSecOps Come As Savior!

With more users plugging to the virtual environment during the COVID-19 crisis, the government networks need continuous patches and security updates for effective functioning.

‘DevOps’ and its security addition ‘DevSecOps’ can be the immediate solution for the government agencies.

The Air Force could achieve stability through DevOps agile practices by releasing at least 10-30 updates per day. More other government agencies are also looking for scalable technologies and tools to support their mission.

Together, DevOps CI/CD mechanism and DevSecOps together ensure higher productivity, seamless delivery, and service continuity in a secure environment. DevOps tools help achieve continuity in security, operations, and maintenance in a distributed workforce environment.

DevOps And DevSecOps Come As Savior!

Around this scenario in the COVID-19 crisis, the government must opt for external solutions in a ready state rather than waiting to build its systems that would consume time. Many government agencies are also eyeing at IT modernization as part of their capacity building and laying down new budgets.

So, it’s a good demand time for DevOps and DevSecOps services and solutions providers to win government contracts.

4 Ways DevOps Help Federal Agencies in US

1) High Scalability and Performance

Implementing agile methodology has augmented the technology and technical capabilities of many firms. DevOps’ collaborative approach improves process scalability through the continuous gathering of requirements and development activities while speeding up the development process.

Building Dev-Ops gaps, DevOps principles improved the speed of deployment into production, delivering new performance levels.

2) Address Technical Debts

Faulty IT architecture and development code cause unnecessary costs. Many federal agencies are feeling this pressure of accumulated technical debts as they move to adopt new technology. Unaddressed technical debts make your IT unpredictable and build pressure on future IT investments.

DevOps helps design systems with scalability to fit in the changing demands and, through continuous integration, improves response time in case of an unexpected event. These activities are backed by CI/CD process and automated testing.

3) Reduced Time to Delivery

With continuous improvement in place, there are fewer chances for errors. If at all they exist, they are addressed at the same point, avoiding iterations. Dev teams focusing on the development process and Ops teams working on reliability in parallel make the DevOps a streamlined approach to reducing delivery time.

4) Quality Delivery

As Dev teams continue to focus on development, Ops teams remain focused on ensuring their effectiveness and stability in the pipeline. With these responsibilities streamlined and followed from the beginning of the process, there is hardly any scope for defective code and failures. This only leads to quality delivery.

There are many other ways that DevOps can benefit federal agencies. But for successful DevOps implementation, four challenges need to be considered.

4 Challenges Behind DevOps Implementation

1) Openness to Risks

The most common hurdle that DevOps implementation faces in the federal sector are lack of openness to risks. Given their commitments and partner network, federal agencies prefer DevOps adoption only after in-depth examination.

So, the increased DevOps adoption in the federal sector is purely dependent on its quantifiable and measurable factors.

2) Governance

The first and foremost thing that DevOps demands are the change in organizational culture. Given this factor, DevOps adoption in the government sector requires changes in governance structure and integrated Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) frameworks.

3) Contracts and Incentives

Team integration is the core aspect of DevOps success. But this could face a federal structure challenge, where incentives are defined separately for Dev and Ops teams. Moreover, these two teams are often chosen from different partners, which breaks the core aspect of collaboration in the overall process.

4) Immediate Vs. Long-term Priorities

Project duration and consistent efforts are two challenging factors in the government sector. Federal agencies face constant challenges in deciding about the focus on long-term and short-term projects. In case of projects that involve high technical debts, the decisions over recovering legacy projects or invest in new ones consume more time.

In Conclusion

Readiness to face these challenges for DevOps adoption will deliver a productive path for federal agencies. Right expertise support can help you alleviate primary challenges and lay down a perfect roadmap for successful DevOps adoption.

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