The De-risking Government Technology Project provides expert, actionable guidance to the public sector for delivering federally-funded, custom technology projects successfully. Such technology projects stand to benefit from an agile and human centered approach to planning, budgeting, buying, implementation and oversight. Putting these approaches into practice lead to better outcomes for US taxpayers and decrease the failure rate of custom IT work.
Implementing custom software projects can be extraordinarily costly and risky in a government setting. Decision makers tasked with funding and overseeing custom technology projects have often not been exposed to modern software development techniques before. These stakeholders often rely on outdated procurement processes better suited to physical infrastructure than modern software. According to the Standish Group, only about 13% of large government software projects succeed.
Today, waterfall software development remains standard at all levels of government. Outdated budgeting and oversight processes have been designed around these very waterfall processes. Adapting to a new, agile approach involves supporting autonomous product teams within government. It also involves training for government leadership on how to budget for, and provide oversight on Agile software procurement, to reduce wasteful spending. Moving toward a user-centered, agile approach to this work can prevent millions of dollars in spending on bad software.
Building on several years of research and learning from procurement and technology professionals at all levels of government, TTS has developed a robust training series and a set of field guides for state, local and federal government partners.
TTS published a set of field guides - designed to provide state and federal decision-makers with actionable strategies to yield more successful custom technology projects. Dozens of best practices are documented, including budgeting for software as an operational expense, limiting contract size, measuring success iteratively, and hiring in-house tech talent. Additionally, the field guides can help leaders identify better outcomes, empowering them with basic knowledge of software design principles.
40-page guide for executives, budget specialists, legislators, and other decision makers who fund or oversee state government technology projects. Published August 2019
Field guide for federal executives, product owners, budget specialists and agency staff who fund or oversee state government technology projects. Coming soon: July 2020
Key stakeholders responsible for making project decisions (funding, scoping or oversight) may lack specific technical knowledge necessary for evaluating requests for custom software funding, how to write a successful RFP for agile projects or how to balance feasibility, user need and regulatory mandates as a product owner.
To address this knowledge gap - TTS piloted an interactive training series on how to deliver successful technology projects in government. Training series are targeted toward budgeting and procurement staff, legislative aides, departments and agencies requesting funds for IT projects. Training leads to a common vocabulary around agile across government - with an in-depth introduction to agile, user centered design, budgeting and oversight approaches on agile software projects.
The series involves four, 2-hour sessions (remote or in-person), designed to include a cross-section of government staff involved in the end-to-end cycle of planning, budgeting, overseeing and implementing technology projects:
- Delivering Software in Government - The Fundamentals: An introduction to agile, user centered design, modular contracting and DevSecOps. Provides a common vocabulary and understanding of core approaches to software delivery in the public sector. Broad attendance suggested.
- Product Ownership in the Public Sector: A workshop for emergent product owners in government. Includes discussion of the role of a PO in government, relationship to leadership, vendor team management and using product strategy.
- Agile Scoping, Budgeting & Solicitation (RFx) Writing: Interactive workshop session designed to help improve budget requests and scope of work. After deciding what you need to procure, you can then begin to design a successful solicitation. Brainstorm approaches tailored to the unique realities of your organization.
- Agile Oversight: A workshop designed for legislative staff, legislators and federal funders on the importance of adjusting oversight of agile IT projects. Best practices and an interactive discussion of what is working across government.
“This workshop series was crucial to building foundational knowledge, shared language, and buy-in for modern software development processes across different stakeholder groups. Leading up to the workshops, the 18F team provided guidance on numerous topics like relationship management, procurement and contracting, and product strategy.” —State of Colorado
-
Improve Customer Experience: Incorporating user-centered design and agile approaches yield better functioning software. Agile and user-centered approaches ensure the software government funds and procures functions as it is intended to - delivering high quality services to the American public.
-
Save funds and improve outcomes: Billions of dollars are spent each year on technology in the public sector. This is met with an alarming rate of failure. By reducing the size of contracts, and using approaches to lower the risk of implementation, governments can avoid spending millions of dollars on software that doesn't work.
In phases 1 & 2, 10x researchers met with state legislators, legislative fiscal staff, budget and contracting officers, as well as gubernatorial policy advisors. Our aim was to reduce risk and deliver value faster to people using IT systems, both inside and outside of government. We learned about their challenges and developed the handbook to provide a comprehensive guide to share insights and best practices.
Since publication, the state field guide has been translated into multiple languages, been written into proposed law and used to inform quality assurance guidelines in multiple state governments. See Waldo's testimony on this work to the Michigan State Senate Appropriations Committee in February 2020
If you are a state, local or federal agency in need of advice or training on de-risking your custom IT project - please get in touch with [email protected] or [email protected]
Current Team
- Alicia Rouault
- Rebecca Refoy
- Randy Hart
- Mark Hopson
- Vicki McFadden
- Igor Korenfeld
Founding contributors and 18F Alumni
- Waldo Jaquith
- Robin Carnahan
This work is funded by the U.S. General Services Administration’s 10x program.
See CONTRIBUTING for additional information.
This project is in the worldwide public domain. As stated in CONTRIBUTING:
This project is in the public domain within the United States, and copyright and related rights in the work worldwide are waived through the CC0 1.0 Universal public domain dedication.
All contributions to this project will be released under the CC0 dedication. By submitting a pull request, you are agreeing to comply with this waiver of copyright interest.