Giving over control of IT systems to a contractor can be a hard transition, but a few best practices can help lessen any unease agency IT managers might feel. Consider these:
- Do an inventory assessment to find out what systems are in house. Operation Server Lift gave the FCC the opportunity to retire old systems and identify ones to move to the cloud.
- Think beyond your IT infrastructure. At the FCC the goal is to avoid custom infrastructure or code as much as possible. The IT team should be looking at ways to put the application or system in a commercial cloud solution that can be remixed in an appropriate and secure format.
- Develop a good procurement team. The Federal Acquisition Regulation permits the cloud procurements the FCC wants to do, said FCC CIO David Bray. The team should be comprised of people willing to test the limits, that understand there’s no one size fits all with the cloud. “Sometimes what we are buying has a series of agile sprints, but along the way what will be delivered at the end may change,” Bray said.
Learn more about transitioning to a contractor-owned model, including management best practices to complement these, in our new whitepaper. Download here.
BONUS: David Bray recently hosted a Federal Times webcast on IT Transformation. Go here to view it on-demand.
