Part 1: Accelerating Digital Transformation for the U.S. Army
Hi. My name is Ki Lee, senior vice president at Booz Allen in our Army market. And I'm Jeanine Parker, a vice president in our Army account. Jeanine, I'm really excited about talking about one of our favorite topics, which is about accelerating digital transformation in the U.S. Army. I think they're doing a massive disruption. You know, when I think about digital transformation, I think most people think about the technology, right? The cloud, the software, the data. And I but when I think about transformation, I think there's some core tenets. First of all, it's around modular open systems approach, not necessarily the architecture, but the approach, the thoughtfulness for developing reusable components and moving away from vertically integrated to horizontally orchestrated. I think the second thing is, in around this culture, the culture of reuse, because when I think about technology, that half life of it is compressing so quickly, you know, well, you know, back in the day, right, what used to take ten years journey like you and I've gone through is taking weeks. Right. So collaborating with not only internally within Booz Allen, but actually across the entire ecosystem with industry partners and so forth. Right. What are your thoughts? Yeah, I agree. I mean, we talk a lot about the Army disrupting itself and really looking at changing technology. You know, how they buy technology, how they employ technology, but thinking about the reason they're doing it. It's fascinating to me to think about everything that's at the front lines, everything that we use to support relies on technology, relies on data. And how do you adjust the systems to be able to go at the speed that the mission requires? And I think that it's going to take that disruption that I've heard you talk about so many times, and thinking about the way that the requirements are generated today is different. The way that we feel things is different. And it's not like the way it used to be where we could take something off line fully tasks, put things in place and have a deployment schedule. The deployments are constant and we can't take things offline. So thinking about how do we truly modernize the way that software is developed and deployed in Army? You know, you and I have been in a booth for quite some time. And, you know, I think one of our special sources has always been, the intersection of our mission and domain expertise along with the technology. I think it's more relevant, even more relevant today than it has ever been. And I think it's really critical that because at the end of the day, that's what we want to focus on, right? We want to focus on those mission outcomes. And, you know, when we think about it and as we've engaged with our clients, the thing that I hear a lot from, from them is I think they need agility. I think they want agility. And when I think about agility, it's about both speed and flexibility. Any any thoughts on reaction to that? Yeah. No, I mean I agree and I think we we hear a lot about agile right. And agile software. But at the heart of it I think it's not just the mechanisms and the processes to make agile happen. It's why are you doing it? And it's what you're talking about right. It's the it's agile, the agility, the speed, being able to bring in what you need at the right time and be able to accelerate how fast you can get it to, you know, to the end users. Yeah. Let's break that apart. So speed and flexibility. You know, I talked about Mosul. One of the things that, I think we need to help and encourage is a lot of people talking about APIs. I think we've got to be very careful with that, because just because you have an API doesn't mean that you have an open system. I think we got to get much more discreet about defining the fact that those APIs has to be either government owned or industry standardized. That way, their government can really allow this plug and play and this orchestration, model from a flexibility, perspective. Janine, your thoughts on kind of how agile and, and how we can help the government with that? One of the things that the government is really going to need is the best of industry to come together. And in order to do that, I think we have to think about different ways to collaborate and to team. I think we need to think about how we can leverage vendors and their products. And one of the basic things is how are all the pieces going to fit together? So, I mean, I think that the open architectures and one stop, I think we've talked a lot about what needs to happen at the data level. Right. How are you going to allow that data to be, accessible, recognizable, be able to pull it together to, to answer what's being asked. So I think it's going to be integration and collaboration at a level that we haven't really had to do to this point. I'm glad you brought up data. I think you and I could probably talk hours on data based on our prior experiences. And one of the things that I'm really excited about with the U.S. Army's doing is this movement to decentralized. I think these data products and defining those data products to be reused by the entire Army enterprise is really interesting. Again, I think, you know, based on our mission experience and expertise, we can be advocates and evangelists of developing these reusable data products. I know that under your portfolio, the Army Data Catalog is there. I think it's a critical keystone to the entire data ecosystem. But what are your thoughts on on that? Certainly. I mean, I think there's going to be reuse and some of the models definitely reuse in some of the dashboarding capabilities. I think in order to to get to that point, we've got to have those standards in place and the standards need to be something that can be referenced and reached out to. And I think the ideas around how the data catalog will be developed, how will be leveraged in order to have that consistency that's going to be so critical if we really do want to be able to reuse some of the products. You know, based on the unified data reference architecture, and, and kind of the intent that they've actually conveyed, the US Army has conveyed, I think we have an opportunity to kind of re-envision that Army data catalog model, the internet, into what I'll call the data DNS. And I think it's kind of a exciting time because it's I mean, it's a very disruptive way to think about about data. I want to get your thoughts on on agile. You know, I've talked about this, quite a bit. Partnering with our colleagues down in Charleston and, and our Charleston hub there where they're really delivering agile at scale. Your thoughts on how we can kind of help the U.S. Army, do that because, you know, they're going through massive sulfur modernization as well. When we think about our digital hub down in Charleston and what they've been able to develop, it's taken time to get there. And I think the investment that's needed for the Army and for us to support the Army is very similar, will be able to leverage a lot of the lessons learned, and I think be able to pull in those capabilities and some of the resources to teach and train. And I think that's going to be key to, what the Army needs as well. So this is a different way to think about developing software and to be able to have the right products and project lead at the various levels throughout the government is going to be an important element to the success. So leveraging again what we've got and figuring out how to team with the Army to deliver what they need and supplement where there may be some deficiencies in training and capacity, capability, among the team? Yeah, certainly. Our, colleagues, have shown how they can scale the workforce supporting agile a scale across 48 continental United States in a very distributed fashion, while maintaining velocity and quality. I think one of the things that we learned down there is their product line management approach. As it relates to agile, I think aligned to how, you know, always thought about outcomes. Can you kind of go into a little bit of details of that and your thoughts on that? The digital hub down in Charleston has done such a great job of creating this product line management process, which I really think is what the Army could consider doing as well. There's just such success to be able to measure outcomes at the various levels, whether it's at the portfolio level, the product line down to individual agile team outcomes being able to measure the outcomes at a lower level as well as at that higher level, allows you to tie it to mission and really shows the impact allowing the government to measure the consultants and contractors that are supporting agile, but also allowing us, as we're developing to to measure the successes, see where there may be challenges and be able to react to that more rapidly. So, Janine, as you said, this approach, I think, is value to the government because it's actually a risk mediator, because they can actually have measurable outcomes, as you said. And I think it's also a win for industry because we can actually deliver against a product or a product line and actually deliver those outcomes, because we don't we want to be delivering mission outcomes, not delivering capacity. I agree, I mean, I think the idea of having outcomes and being able to measure how you're doing towards those outcomes at the various levels, whether it's at the portfolio, the product level or the individual agile team, lets us kind of course correct to your point, I think it does reduce risk for the Army. I think it also really helps probably with from an efficiency and a cost effectiveness standpoint, because it will encourage reuse when you have some of the common elements together in a product line, it'll allow for leveraging different portions of the team, different agile teams to be able to reach that success and that outcome also across product lines, right at that portfolio level, where the reuse can it can occur when you again have things organized into products. Well Ki, it's been wonderful talking about this. I mean, there's so much to do. It's an exciting time to be, you know, supporting the Army. And I think at the end of the day, we know that data and technology are important, but it's really mission first, right? How do we support the mission? How do we help advance the needs of the Army. So I look forward to continuing to work in this space with you. You know, great dialog. Thanks.
Part 2: Accelerating Digital Transformation for the U.S. Army
Hi. My name is Ki Lee, senior vice president at Booz Allen in our Army market. And I'm Jeanine Parker, a vice president in our Army account. There's a lot of talk about, nontraditionals. We've been tracking that for, for decades. Again, back to our culture of collaboration. And this mindset that no one can do it alone. You know, we've been doing that, you know, from the inception of actually, our strategic innovation group over a decade ago. I want to get your thoughts on and in our experiences and, and actually supporting and partnering with those nontraditional companies. I mean, I think the nontraditional bring really a best of industry into the government, but they might not know how to work with the government. They might not know how to do the contracting. And that's something that's just a normal course for us. And so developing those relationships that we can bring in their technologies and their expertise, but not having that huge barrier of entry for them of, you know, really understanding and having all of the security and cost accounting requirements in place to be able to work directly with the federal government requires us to really have a great partnership. One of the things that we've been challenged with is that speed of technology, and there's new companies coming up, and there's new technologies coming into play all the time. And how do we stay ahead of that? So leveraging our tech scouting capability to use that to identify some of the right partners for certain client needs has really paid dividends for us. And I think it's something that we need to consider doing more of and continue to be doing for the Army. I think at Booz, tech scouting is is a recurring and ongoing thing. It's not a time based milestone, activity. What have I really appreciated is that we take it one step further, what we've done with our venture through in identifying those key nontraditional companies and actually investing in them and partnering with them. And, as you said, actually helping them get adopted into, government contracting because, as you said, it's it's not an easy, process. But again, it goes back to, I think, our culture of collaboration and our mindset that we can't do it alone. What I've appreciate about the US Army, that I haven't seen it actually across any of the other departments or services, from a defense or in civilian space is they've actually identified a strategy supported by policies and actually seen in action in acquisitions. What I'm seeing also as part of this digital transformation is not just the technology, it's about the approach. We talked about agile, but they're really being innovative in their acquisitions as well. I'd like to get your thoughts, you know, based on your experience or, you know, your views on on that. No, I think you're spot on. I mean, as the Army is disrupting itself and you hear the leaders talking about where they want to take technology to meet the mission demands acquisition as a support that. And I think the Army's been very deliberate in that approach. So, you know, where we're seeing the changes in the contract vehicles that they'll be able to leverage to modernize their software to more rapidly deploy. I think it's been really interesting to see, but also the innovation, right. It's just a different way to buy, and it's going to take some time to get it right. I think the back and forth with industry and the discussions have been really fruitful for us to understand that the Army really wants to do it differently, and for the contracting organization to be hearing from industry, from the non traditional about how can they bring all of this together to, to everything we just talked about. Right. How do you create agile at scale. How do you deploy more rapidly. How do you continuous provide updates at the edge without impacting operations and mission. So it's a challenge, and I think that the Army acquisition, community is really stepping up and working with all of us to come up with a better way to procure these kind of technologies in the future. I've been extremely, impressed with how transparent the, RPG contracting community has been, and how they are really collaborating with industry, listening and actually adapting, the acquisition strategy. So it's actually been, it's been a pleasure working with them. So as we were talking about the nontraditional, we really want to take that whole approach, right? We want to bring together other large businesses, small business, nontraditional, and our vendors. Right, in order to bring the best of industry to solve the problems of the Army, it's not going to be one company or one technology. And we have to think about not only how we bring together to work on a particular contract, but how we leverage that whole of nation to continue to educate our team and our staff and continue to upskill. It's a great point when we think about scaling the workforce, even in that context. Something that I have appreciated about something we've done is not only partner with our vendors, but we've actually scaled our workforce and training them, in the in those tools, because these partnerships with these companies, they want a Booz Allen to help scale their workforce and actually increase the adoption and the successful implementation of their of their products. One of the things, you know, we think about back to the agile scale that I'm really proud of is that we just recently were awarded actually as a first, safe, government solutions partner elite. I think that it's just proof point, that we are delivering agile at scale. You and I could probably talk about data for, for hours on, on end. One of the things that, I see Army trying to do, especially based on the Unified Data research architecture, is to really move into a decentralized approach, but also move away from this stovepipe proprietary platform into an open ecosystem. I know that you've had experience with, Advanta, probably one of the largest duty implementations of a data platform. Any thoughts or lessons learned that you want to share? We're in a great position. Booz Allen, because we have the experience on the platforms, right? Whether it's Advanta, whether it's PDG. But that coupled with our understanding from our functional mission perspective, is really to be what makes the data work, right. It's one thing to be able to bring together the right technologies, to create a data platform. It's the decentralized focus of, you know, leave the data where it is and be able to access it as needed. But really to bring it all together, it takes that functional understanding of not only what the data is, but what's the question being asked so we can go find the right data. We, you know, we can leverage the data engineers to be able to access the right information, pull it together, presented in a way where decisions can be made. And that's really at the end of the day, what what it's about. Right? I mean, the the data is there in order to make the best informed decisions to support the mission. Let's say something we said is critical, as we try to disrupt, the data ecosystem. We've been deconstructing the entire data, platforms for a couple of years now. It really is about how do we extend this data architecture so that we can actually leave that data where it says and only move it when you need to? There will always be times where we have to move the data. But with today's technology and latency becoming an issue where time is a weapon, I think having that as another quiver, in the arsenal is critical. When I look at the what the U.S. Army has done with the Unified Data Reference architecture, I view that actually as the most, for data. Well Ki, it's been wonderful talking about this. I mean, there's so much to do. It's an exciting time to be, you know, supporting the Army. And I think at the end of the day, we know that data and technology are important, but it's really mission first, right? How do we support the mission? How do we help advance the needs of the Army. So I look forward to continuing to work in this space with you. You know, great dialog. Thanks.
