July 9, 2025 • 27 mins
Chris Sibold rejoins Reality Bytes to talk about what can only be described as a whiplash year for federal IT. Just eight months after his last visit, Chris dives into the incredible transformation sweeping across U.S. federal agencies—driven by budget slashes, workforce reductions, and a new digital imperative.
Chris explains how government IT is now undergoing another 10 years of change—compressed into just a few quarters. From rising expectations around efficiency to existential questions around operational survival, this episode offers insights from inside the storm.
Download Nexthink's exclusive report, 'The Cost of Doing Nothing: Why Public Sector (PS) Productivity Lags Behind Other Industries' here
Read more about Nexthink's FedRAMP progress hereÂ
Download a free copy of the brand new Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for DEX Tools here (or head to Nexthink.com)
Register for Nexthink Experience 2025 here
Chris explains how government IT is now undergoing another 10 years of change—compressed into just a few quarters. From rising expectations around efficiency to existential questions around operational survival, this episode offers insights from inside the storm.
Download Nexthink's exclusive report, 'The Cost of Doing Nothing: Why Public Sector (PS) Productivity Lags Behind Other Industries' here
Read more about Nexthink's FedRAMP progress hereÂ
Download a free copy of the brand new Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for DEX Tools here (or head to Nexthink.com)
Register for Nexthink Experience 2025 here
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome it, change Makers to the Deck Show with Tim
Flower and Tom McGraw. Let's get into it.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Hello again, change Makers, We're back. It's the Deck Show's
famous show with in a show within a show, and
it's an unusual episode. It's an unprecedented episode, listeners, because
just eight months ago we had today's guest on Reality
by its four for the first time. Here is Chris Bold,
regional director for Federal in the USA for Next Thing,
(00:32):
And Chris, you came on the show. It was a
great show. You went away again, and your entire industry
went completely insane for the subsequent eight months. I mean,
it couldn't have been a busiest stranger eight months. I mean,
not just in the US, but there's a global news fixation.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Right absolutely, yeah, No, I blame my appearance on the
podcast eight months ago. I think it was what drove it.
But you're absolutely right. All killing side is that it's
been once in a generation, multiple once in a generation
changes going on in the government in the last eight
months here in particular.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
A cluster occurrence, you might say, And yes, we thought so,
we we better have you back on and just sue
it all down again, because you know, if you if
you unleash something, you can sometimes use the same thing
to calm it down again. But I mean, well, you've
been on the inside of all this, and certainly your
your your your customers and partners have been what how
(01:27):
would you characterize twenty twenty five in the federal sector
based on all those conversations you've been having, How are
they characterizing it? I suppose.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
So it was funny that you asked this because having
this conversation probably in the last two weeks with somebody
and the analogy I would use and looking at it
from the lens of the federal IT space and basically,
how is the IT organizations within these federal agencies? How
are they changing and adapting? Is is that you know,
obviously in the news there's a lot of change with
(01:57):
things like reductions in forced there's a drive for government
efficiency across the entire federal government, and we're seeing massive
changes in terms of headcount in some cases budget and
focus on agencies in the federal government. But I would
characterize it again looking at it from the lens of IT,
is that if you go back to the way the
pandemic really drove about ten years worth of change in
(02:20):
digital workspace in a few years because basically every organization
in the world was forced to basically figure out how
to support hybrid working or remote working, and so that
drove improvements or modernizations and technology, the move to collaborative
tools like teams and Zoom, and that really accelerated change
that was already happening, but it made ten years worth
(02:40):
of change happened in two The last eight months looks
and feels a lot similar for IT in federal as
that Federal IT now is being disrupted in that similar way.
Instead of the pandemic, they are now waking up to, hey,
my IT organization is a third smaller or half the
size it used to be, or I have a fifth
the budget that I used to have, and that's causing
(03:02):
a massive acceleration around how they do it support in
general and support the mission of their agency. So, just
like the pandemic said, hey, you've got no choice, you
have to figure out how to do this remotely, Federal
IT is now saying, great, we have no choice but
to figure out how to modernize the way that we
support and become proactive because we we do we know
(03:23):
I have the resources or the facilities to be able
to do it the old way that we did it.
So that's that's the analogy I would use, is that
it's just cramming again, probably another ten years worth of
change into the next two or three years, probably.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Hundred percent unsurprisingly. I mean, is there any other way
that this heightened attention has shaped these conversations that you're
regularly having. Would you say, was that kind of articulated?
Speaker 3 (03:46):
Yeah? So this is definitely interesting? Is that? So? You know,
I think, as you know, I've been talking to government
for the last several years around digital employee experience, and
prior to twenty twenty five, yes, there's a drive for
you know, how do we drive it efficiency? But a
lot of the conversation focused around how do we enhance
the end user experience and drive the mission of the agency,
(04:08):
and we do that by basically creating more happy, effective
employees doing that job. But in twenty twenty five, it's
much more of an existential conversation for IT operations. They're
trying to figure out how to survive in this new
what's the new normal? Basically, and so it is sharpened
the focus. It's really all about what's my return on investment?
(04:29):
What's that benefit of becoming proactive and how I do
it support, And it's it's not that nobody cares about
what the end user's experience is, but that's just again
they're just trying to figure out how to survive in
this new way of doing this. And I go back
to a good example of a bureau that we're having
a conversation with. In the last eight months, they lost
a third of their IT support headcount, so their service
(04:52):
desk is a third two thirds, excuse me, a third
of what it used to be at this point. And
they used to previously only do desk side support in office.
So you know, if Tim had a problem, I knew
where his desk was and he called me and I
would go to his desk and help fix, you know,
sort him out. Well, number one, they no longer have
(05:13):
that physical location. They actually now have more of a
hotel style office space that's not nearly as large as
it used to be. And number two, they don't have
nearly the number of support personnel. So overnight, again it's existentially,
how do I continue to do is support TEA support
without basically having the resources that I had eight months ago.
And that's the kind of kind of conversation that we're
(05:35):
mostly having at this point. The end user thing is
is a benefit of that, but it's really about it
operations at this point.
Speaker 4 (05:44):
So Chris, i'll offre you my welcome back to the
show as well. It's been real fun, not only working
with you over the last couple of years, but especially
over the last six months working closely with the team
traveling to different events. You and I, you know, we've
talked a lot about our acceleration in this space and
how close we were, so seeing where we are today
is I know it's exciting for the team and it
(06:05):
is for me too.
Speaker 3 (06:08):
I think the.
Speaker 4 (06:09):
Way I'm looking at this is that the federal space
that we're now working with is famously and maybe even
paradoxically known for both efficiency and inefficiency, waste and waste reduction. Right,
if you ask any American on the street about the
urban legend, where in the United States can you buy
(06:30):
a ten thousand dollars hammer, They're probably going to say
a federal agency somewhere. So there couldn't be a better
place for next thing to bring tremendous value than to
our federal workforce. Where do you see decks and the
insights that we can enable playing into the broader missions
of efficient operations, data driven intelligence, and like you just
(06:52):
pointed out, doing more with less.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
So you're absolutely right that you know that that kind
of the those stories exist for a reason is that
there's been you know, government is not necessarily always operated
like a business where there's a very fine focus on
return on investment and the bottom line and profitability. And
obviously profitability is not a concept in government, but there
(07:17):
is now you know, to your point, there's just a
lot more focus on accountability of the investment. Am I
getting a return for the money that we're spending and
how we're spending it and how we're going about doing it?
And so two things is that number one, and this
was something that had already begun, but government has become
digital and it's it's increasingly becoming more digital. Is that
(07:40):
on the defense side, you know, there's the term, there's
the digital warfighter. Is that all the processes, the ways
that the US military goes and carries out its mission,
it's becoming much more digital. On the civilian side of government,
the exact same thing is that the way that citizens
want to engage with government is more of a digital
fashion again. I keep that I hate having to bring
(08:01):
up the pandemic again. But you know, if I want
to go and get my driver's license and the only
option is an in person option and the office is closed,
well what do I do about it? Then the government
was already basically learning the lessons of the pandemic and
digitizing a lot of these processes. So DEX is a
natural extension is that we're already heading in that direction.
(08:21):
How do we make digital government more efficient? But then
I go back to that challenge is now there's more
oversight and more interest on accountability for funding than ever before.
So DEX does two things. Is DEX is the GPS
that that charts, Hey, we're going to make this investment.
We're going to use this technology to solve this problem
in our agency. And the GPS charts the path and
(08:43):
you want to go from A to B, here's where
you need to go. It actually charts it out. But
DEX is now also the referee because it's the referee
in the terms of are we accountable, Like you know,
we said that we'd score five points by now have
we actually done that? How many points do we have?
So DEX is really actually measuring the result and the impact,
and again not from a profitability perspective, but from just
(09:06):
still a return is that you know, I put this
money in am I getting a capability in return? And
there's really not been a good way to do that
in the past. We've actually seen government organizations like the
US Navy. The US Navy's actually shifted how they even
do their portfolio management of their IT projects and it's
called World Class Alignment Metrics or wams, and the world
(09:29):
class alignment metrics are actually things like this like dollars
saved per end user or number of minutes spent supporting
an end user, and it's very practical terms. So decks
can help actually measure those, but as you know, des
can also help chart the best way to get to
where you want to go as well.
Speaker 4 (09:45):
Yeah, so let's talk about what the team has been
working so hard on for a number of years, but
like we talked about most recently in the last six
months or so and getting to a place where we
are now in process for fed ramp. So we've been
asking for a long time, when will it be now?
(10:07):
For all of your Spaceballs fans out there, it's right now,
right for those who don't live and breathe in that
compliance world, what does it mean?
Speaker 3 (10:19):
So? Yeah, I love that. That spaceball reference is that
when will then be now?
Speaker 4 (10:24):
So you just missed it?
Speaker 3 (10:25):
Yeah, yeah, so when is now? And so fed RAMP
for those who do not know, FedRAMP is now. Actually
of twenty twenty three, it's the law of the land.
And so before it was founded about and I think
twenty eleven I believe, or twelve, and it was actually
a certification in industry, certification for cloud computing technology. So basically,
(10:48):
if a cloud computing technology and a federal agency wanted
to ulize it, it was highly suggested that it be
fed RAMP compliant. Fed RAMP is basically a security certification
built off the missed eight hundred fifty three control families.
It looks and feels a lot like ISO or SOCK
Type one and Type two in terms of the types
of controls and the levels of security and details it
(11:10):
gets into. It's actually even more robust as I understand it.
It's it's extremely difficult to prepare for and to harden
your product and then to operate your SaaS product in
a manner that is FEDERMP compliant. So it is not
something that's taken lightly. It takes a lot of investment
to do. It is the law of the land now.
So now, as of twenty twenty three, if a federal
(11:30):
agency wants to use a cloud product, especially a SaaS product,
it must be FEDERAMP compliant. So now we're bringing the
only soon to be only FEDERMP authorized dex platform to
market to solve these challenges we've been discussing for the organization.
The impact for federal is the number one is that
they're legally compliant. It's the easy button to consume this
(11:53):
technology versus trying to figure out how to do something.
It may be more of a legacy type of deployment model. Two,
all of that investment in security and operations trickles down
into all of the way that next thing operates our technologies,
even in the commercial sector. So it's gonna you know,
kind of the rising water makes all boats rise, is
(12:13):
that it's going to improve compliance and security for all
the customers that we serve. But really the big one
is again it's the easy button, is that if they're
security concerns, compliance concerns, regulatory concerns. When you're FEDERAMP authorized.
Those are now just a process that you've got to
go through and take the box and really focuses the
conversation around the capability the value that we can bring
(12:36):
to that federal agency.
Speaker 4 (12:39):
So when I hear Federal, my brain normally just goes
right to DoD. But Federal is so much bigger than
Department of Defense. But even just in a couple of
those segments, right Air Force, I think we talked about
eight hundred thousand people in devices, Army one point two million.
(12:59):
As an IT person, I can't imagine managing environments that
big and even just deciding where to start. Where does
this huge cohort start first? Right, we're hardened for compliance,
but what what in your view, what specific problems or
inefficiencies do you feel that inefficiency solves right out of
(13:20):
the gate now that it's tailored for Federal?
Speaker 3 (13:23):
Well, so so with Infinity and INFINITY is you know,
the leading decks platform here to allow organizations to see, diagnose,
and fix issues that impact user experience at scale. So
it's it's this best in class capability that the government
will now get be able to access and use within
their environments. And so the the what I call kind
(13:44):
of the meat and potatoes capabilities of decks of being
able to you know, move in that reactive model. Somebody
does take time out of their job, calls in with
a ticket, we can much more quickly figure out what
is the problem, what's the issue, how many people are
affected other than the person calling, and then use automations
to solve those problems at scale. But with Infinity in particular.
(14:06):
The other really two interesting things that I see is
that it's all of the AI and machine learning that's
built into that suggestion. So as you know, you know,
as we've become proactive, you know, we don't want to
gather data for data's sake. We want it to be actionable,
and we want to actually have recommendations of hey, you know,
everybody in an organization might be using a version of
a software that it's less stable than another version that's
(14:29):
known to be much better, much more performant, and gathering
that data and insight and an actual manager manage a
way for an organization like the Army that's gotten millions
of end users to be able to figure out, hey,
this is the problem we have, and AI is telling
us that if we fix that problem, it's going to
have the most amount of kind of positivity for our
(14:51):
end users than another one. It really helps rack and
stack the way and the investment and the things that
they're doing tactically, and then even more strategic and kind
of projects that they invest in. Prior to that, we've seen,
just like everybody else, tho's IT organizations really had to
take a best guess. And I go back to the
one that you know, we talked about a few years
(15:13):
ago is that the hashtag fixed our computers with the
US Air Force, and that was a poor performance issue
that got escalated out into the world. It was a
Twitter rant buy and employee and the initial solution was, oh, well,
we're just going to spend more money on endpoint hardware,
We're going to refresh it. Well, when they got in
there and actually got the metrics and understood that, well, sure,
(15:35):
maybe in hardware was causing some of the issue, but
the majority of the issue was actually other areas with
the network and applications that were loaded on the device.
And that's the kind of capability we can provide them
now at scale, is that let's get to the root
cause so you can figure out how to better spend
taxpayer's dollars basically on that. The other thing I mentioned
(15:55):
in particular is that again the world's already gone hybrid.
Government is doing that. As we mentioned, government's going digital,
an area that we can do very well with Infinity
as things around collaboration tools and collaboration platforms, so teams, zoom,
other things like that, because those are now mission critical
systems that honestly weren't even really considered kind of main
(16:16):
use about four or five years ago. Now it's something
that every federal employee uses in some aspect, just like
the rest of the world on a daily basis. That's
something we can really help them with the Infinity platform
in a way that we could not do before bringing
our sas capabilities to government.
Speaker 5 (16:31):
Hey Chris, and welcome back to the podcast. And I
also want to say thank you for your input. I
think it was a month ago, it feels like a
year ago. But with the report that we put together
you and your teammates on it's called the cost of
doing Nothing by public sector productivity lags behind other industries.
You can find it on the next thing dot com
slash resource page. If you search for productivity or public
(16:54):
sector that will pop up, So thank you for the
work that you guys put into that report.
Speaker 3 (17:00):
Question.
Speaker 5 (17:00):
So you're in the currently during the FedRAMP process. Now
I'm curious like what comes next, what comes after this?
What's the roadmap I suppose in terms of next think
government offerings and how you're continuing to partner with agencies
through these digital shifts.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
Yeah. No, So for us, so, as I mentioned, we're
FedRAMP and process, and for those who aren't familiar, that
means that we have our environment, we have hardened it,
we've fully documented it, which is actually thousands of pages
of documentation for those who aren't aware. So it's it's
no mean fee to be able to do that, and
we're now in the process with our third party auditor.
(17:38):
The federanp process itself, in the last eight months has
also undergone significant change. The Federant program has rolled out
what they call FEDERMP twenty x, which is a modernization
of the process. We're being certified under FedRAMP federrot excuse me, rev. Five.
But the big benefit with these changes is that we
the timeline to finalize the authorization has been greatly shortened,
(18:01):
so we fully expect to be authorized by early fault,
so we'll be fed REMP moderate in the marketplace, where
in the marketplace today's in process, but we'll be fully
authorized by early fall. So again that basically means that
any organization can then consume us and can go out
to the marketplace to pull down our security package and
do their own security review at that point. So we'll
(18:22):
have that. That's the first step, and that really opens
the floodgates and being able to support organizations the other
thing that we intend to do as we move forward.
So FEDERANP moderate was the first step that we've got.
There are several levels of security classification and in FEDERM
we intend to go higher up. We intend to actually
go up to Aisle four or Aisle five to support
(18:43):
our DoD customers. Today. We also actually have another version
of the platform called next Thing self Manage. This is
a virtual appliance architecture for organizations. As we discussed that
maybe have aren't ready to use the cloud or have
too many security requirements. Maybe it's an air gap network
that's offline and can't connect to the cloud, and so
(19:03):
self Manage exists and it solves a lot of these problems.
As we talked about of being able to see diagnosed
and fixed. But we're going to take infinity, which is
the best to breed, and bring it all the way
up to a version that can be consumed by the
DoD and that will happen over over time here as
we work with those clients as well.
Speaker 5 (19:23):
That's great to hear, and it sounds you actually answered
some of the questions I had. I was curious about
the second half of the twenty twenty five, But I
have another good question. I'm curious what advice would you
give to federal IT teams trying to make progress amid
all the noise that's happening.
Speaker 3 (19:39):
So I think I would go back to what we
talked about a moment ago. That decks is both the
GPS and the referee. It's you know, what's our path
and then are we actually making progress? Are we scoring
goals the way we intended to? I would suggest you
(20:00):
can deploy it to assess what's going on and baseline
what your issues are. It's something that is very easily
done that we've even worked with an organization just to
give them that snapshot to show them where they want
to go and what the problems are. As I mentioned
a moment ago back to the Air Force example, several
years ago they thought, oh well, we'll just buy more hardware.
(20:22):
We'll turns out in the actual problem with something different.
That's something we can actually get tangible proof of in
a very short order and be able to help an
organization chart that path for their way forward. So that
would bring that And I would also add is that
this is something I think, as you guys know you
talked to a lot of dexperts in the years here
(20:43):
that this move to proactive IT and the use of
decks to drive IT operations is something that is now
widely adopted and commercial and now is one of those
times I would suggest to really lean in and see, well,
what is the commercial best practice, how are the best
ways that large organizations are doing this, even if or
not a government agency, and maybe don't have some of
the similar security concerns or process concerns in there, because
(21:06):
again I believe that much of what the of the
challenges were solving for commercial organization are very relevant today
given the new focus around efficiency and accountability on budgets
as well.
Speaker 6 (21:23):
Hey, Chris, welcome back. So one of the standout benefits
mentioned in the announcement was helping agencies reduce software waste
and increase it automation. How are these outcomes translating in
the real world and can you share any early feedback
or expectations.
Speaker 3 (21:42):
Sure. So that's a very that's one that's driven a
lot of interest out of the gate in the last
several months. And with the size and the scale of
a government agency typically you know, in some cases it's
far bigger than a global enterprise, and they use even
more softa where than a commercial entity. That the result
(22:04):
here is that there are a couple of organizations we've
spoken to that believe that, hey, we know we're over
licensed in our subscription software. We think that we could
save between five hundred million and a billion dollars a
year in kind of normalizing and rationalizing our software spend
if we deployed a tool like this. Now, that is
that's on the far side of the scale. That's one
(22:25):
of the really large organizations. But every single entity we've
spoken to within the federal government has some level of
interest in rationalizing their hardware and their software spend and
usage and being able to actually see, you know, what's
licensed and what are people actually using it? Can have
a massive impact, maybe not necessarily a billion dollars a year,
(22:46):
but commensurate to the size of an organization, it's a
similar level of impact for them. So it's a a
big deal for them, potentially.
Speaker 6 (22:56):
Totally agree, not just from a compliance perspective, also from utilization,
under utilization, or even over utilization. It would give them
a lot of perspectives, just even starting from the sea aspect,
and then you move on to diagnosing and fixing afterwards.
How important is it for agencies not just to meet
compliance standards, but to use that secure environment to push
(23:19):
towards a continuous digital improvement And what does that evolution
look like in practice? How does next thing support it?
Speaker 3 (23:28):
So, as I mentioned before, government is already modernizing, is
already going digital, and so it is very important. So
compliancy obviously matters from a legal point of view. Is
that you know these are this is the law of
the land that these agencies have to follow. But it's
also the most secure way to do this to protect
citizens data and information and the mission of these agencies.
(23:51):
So it is very critical that they follow these from
a compliance perspective. But this continuous digital improvement is because
everything has become digital. So the workflows that were maybe
manual or analog are now all becoming digital. And so
the idea that we've got to it can't be a
one and done because more and more of the mission
(24:12):
is becoming digital. It needs to be continuous in the
way that they see and refine and fix issues in
delivering those capabilities. So it is it is becoming more
and more important. And I go back to you know,
it's the roadmap, it's the GPS that actually charge. What's
the underlying problem? It is the no kidding way that
(24:33):
somebody can figure out where are our issues? Where do
we invest? Because otherwise I think Tim mentioned that is
that the breadth of responsibility for these organizations is so broad.
I don't understand how else they would really figure out
where to start without just taking a guess.
Speaker 6 (24:50):
At that point, totally agree to that. And when you
talk to federal IT leaders, how much of the DEX
conversation is about user sets faction since now we're starting
to go more and more, like you just mentioned, into
the depth of digitalization, right or making everything super digital?
So how much is about mission readiness or public service delivery?
(25:12):
And is there a mind shift or a mindset shift underway.
Speaker 3 (25:18):
Yes, so they go hand in hand. Is that that
mission readiness and mission capability, that and that is always
the focus of these IT organizations. It's carrying out the mission.
But again as they're realizing that the mission is greatly
affected if the end user has a poor experience, has
a problem and a challenge, especially if their entire workload
(25:39):
is moving towards the digital the digital side of the house.
So they're very much tied together, but the focus is
always framed around mission capability and mission delivery. It's not
that people don't care about the end user experience, is
that the end user experience really means it really equates
to the mission capability These federal agencies phenomenal.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
Chris, you know you've not been it's not been a
long time since you were back. But there's been plenty
to talk about, and not only in your sector but
inside next Think and the capabilities were offering and thanks
to Sean not only for reminding us to draw attention
to the report he mentioned on the IT in the
(26:27):
FED sector and the impact of ai AI preparedness there,
but for offering that report. It's an excellent read. The
cost of doing nothing why public sector productivity lags behind
other industries. You can get it for free, download it
from the show notes, and will also include links so
(26:48):
interested listeners can learn more about fed ramp. Chris always
a pleasure. Let's hope the sector comes down a little bit,
although if it doesn't, it would be a pleasure to
have you on in another six to eight months, my friend.
Speaker 3 (27:01):
I appreciate it. I hope it comes down as well.
But thank you so much for having me twice this year.
I really appreciate it. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
Take it to make sure that you never miss an episode.
Subscribe to the show in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your
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If you'd love to learn more about how next Think
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(27:28):
to next think dot com. Thank you so much for listening.
Until next time,
Welcome it, change Makers to the Deck Show with Tim
Flower and Tom McGraw. Let's get into it.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Hello again, change Makers, We're back. It's the Deck Show's
famous show with in a show within a show, and
it's an unusual episode. It's an unprecedented episode, listeners, because
just eight months ago we had today's guest on Reality
by its four for the first time. Here is Chris Bold,
regional director for Federal in the USA for Next Thing,
(00:32):
And Chris, you came on the show. It was a
great show. You went away again, and your entire industry
went completely insane for the subsequent eight months. I mean,
it couldn't have been a busiest stranger eight months. I mean,
not just in the US, but there's a global news fixation.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Right absolutely, yeah, No, I blame my appearance on the
podcast eight months ago. I think it was what drove it.
But you're absolutely right. All killing side is that it's
been once in a generation, multiple once in a generation
changes going on in the government in the last eight
months here in particular.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
A cluster occurrence, you might say, And yes, we thought so,
we we better have you back on and just sue
it all down again, because you know, if you if
you unleash something, you can sometimes use the same thing
to calm it down again. But I mean, well, you've
been on the inside of all this, and certainly your
your your your customers and partners have been what how
(01:27):
would you characterize twenty twenty five in the federal sector
based on all those conversations you've been having, How are
they characterizing it? I suppose.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
So it was funny that you asked this because having
this conversation probably in the last two weeks with somebody
and the analogy I would use and looking at it
from the lens of the federal IT space and basically,
how is the IT organizations within these federal agencies? How
are they changing and adapting? Is is that you know,
obviously in the news there's a lot of change with
(01:57):
things like reductions in forced there's a drive for government
efficiency across the entire federal government, and we're seeing massive
changes in terms of headcount in some cases budget and
focus on agencies in the federal government. But I would
characterize it again looking at it from the lens of IT,
is that if you go back to the way the
pandemic really drove about ten years worth of change in
(02:20):
digital workspace in a few years because basically every organization
in the world was forced to basically figure out how
to support hybrid working or remote working, and so that
drove improvements or modernizations and technology, the move to collaborative
tools like teams and Zoom, and that really accelerated change
that was already happening, but it made ten years worth
(02:40):
of change happened in two The last eight months looks
and feels a lot similar for IT in federal as
that Federal IT now is being disrupted in that similar way.
Instead of the pandemic, they are now waking up to, hey,
my IT organization is a third smaller or half the
size it used to be, or I have a fifth
the budget that I used to have, and that's causing
(03:02):
a massive acceleration around how they do it support in
general and support the mission of their agency. So, just
like the pandemic said, hey, you've got no choice, you
have to figure out how to do this remotely, Federal
IT is now saying, great, we have no choice but
to figure out how to modernize the way that we
support and become proactive because we we do we know
(03:23):
I have the resources or the facilities to be able
to do it the old way that we did it.
So that's that's the analogy I would use, is that
it's just cramming again, probably another ten years worth of
change into the next two or three years, probably.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Hundred percent unsurprisingly. I mean, is there any other way
that this heightened attention has shaped these conversations that you're
regularly having. Would you say, was that kind of articulated?
Speaker 3 (03:46):
Yeah? So this is definitely interesting? Is that? So? You know,
I think, as you know, I've been talking to government
for the last several years around digital employee experience, and
prior to twenty twenty five, yes, there's a drive for
you know, how do we drive it efficiency? But a
lot of the conversation focused around how do we enhance
the end user experience and drive the mission of the agency,
(04:08):
and we do that by basically creating more happy, effective
employees doing that job. But in twenty twenty five, it's
much more of an existential conversation for IT operations. They're
trying to figure out how to survive in this new
what's the new normal? Basically, and so it is sharpened
the focus. It's really all about what's my return on investment?
(04:29):
What's that benefit of becoming proactive and how I do
it support, And it's it's not that nobody cares about
what the end user's experience is, but that's just again
they're just trying to figure out how to survive in
this new way of doing this. And I go back
to a good example of a bureau that we're having
a conversation with. In the last eight months, they lost
a third of their IT support headcount, so their service
(04:52):
desk is a third two thirds, excuse me, a third
of what it used to be at this point. And
they used to previously only do desk side support in office.
So you know, if Tim had a problem, I knew
where his desk was and he called me and I
would go to his desk and help fix, you know,
sort him out. Well, number one, they no longer have
(05:13):
that physical location. They actually now have more of a
hotel style office space that's not nearly as large as
it used to be. And number two, they don't have
nearly the number of support personnel. So overnight, again it's existentially,
how do I continue to do is support TEA support
without basically having the resources that I had eight months ago.
And that's the kind of kind of conversation that we're
(05:35):
mostly having at this point. The end user thing is
is a benefit of that, but it's really about it
operations at this point.
Speaker 4 (05:44):
So Chris, i'll offre you my welcome back to the
show as well. It's been real fun, not only working
with you over the last couple of years, but especially
over the last six months working closely with the team
traveling to different events. You and I, you know, we've
talked a lot about our acceleration in this space and
how close we were, so seeing where we are today
is I know it's exciting for the team and it
(06:05):
is for me too.
Speaker 3 (06:08):
I think the.
Speaker 4 (06:09):
Way I'm looking at this is that the federal space
that we're now working with is famously and maybe even
paradoxically known for both efficiency and inefficiency, waste and waste reduction. Right,
if you ask any American on the street about the
urban legend, where in the United States can you buy
(06:30):
a ten thousand dollars hammer, They're probably going to say
a federal agency somewhere. So there couldn't be a better
place for next thing to bring tremendous value than to
our federal workforce. Where do you see decks and the
insights that we can enable playing into the broader missions
of efficient operations, data driven intelligence, and like you just
(06:52):
pointed out, doing more with less.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
So you're absolutely right that you know that that kind
of the those stories exist for a reason is that
there's been you know, government is not necessarily always operated
like a business where there's a very fine focus on
return on investment and the bottom line and profitability. And
obviously profitability is not a concept in government, but there
(07:17):
is now you know, to your point, there's just a
lot more focus on accountability of the investment. Am I
getting a return for the money that we're spending and
how we're spending it and how we're going about doing it?
And so two things is that number one, and this
was something that had already begun, but government has become
digital and it's it's increasingly becoming more digital. Is that
(07:40):
on the defense side, you know, there's the term, there's
the digital warfighter. Is that all the processes, the ways
that the US military goes and carries out its mission,
it's becoming much more digital. On the civilian side of government,
the exact same thing is that the way that citizens
want to engage with government is more of a digital
fashion again. I keep that I hate having to bring
(08:01):
up the pandemic again. But you know, if I want
to go and get my driver's license and the only
option is an in person option and the office is closed,
well what do I do about it? Then the government
was already basically learning the lessons of the pandemic and
digitizing a lot of these processes. So DEX is a
natural extension is that we're already heading in that direction.
(08:21):
How do we make digital government more efficient? But then
I go back to that challenge is now there's more
oversight and more interest on accountability for funding than ever before.
So DEX does two things. Is DEX is the GPS
that that charts, Hey, we're going to make this investment.
We're going to use this technology to solve this problem
in our agency. And the GPS charts the path and
(08:43):
you want to go from A to B, here's where
you need to go. It actually charts it out. But
DEX is now also the referee because it's the referee
in the terms of are we accountable, Like you know,
we said that we'd score five points by now have
we actually done that? How many points do we have?
So DEX is really actually measuring the result and the impact,
and again not from a profitability perspective, but from just
(09:06):
still a return is that you know, I put this
money in am I getting a capability in return? And
there's really not been a good way to do that
in the past. We've actually seen government organizations like the
US Navy. The US Navy's actually shifted how they even
do their portfolio management of their IT projects and it's
called World Class Alignment Metrics or wams, and the world
(09:29):
class alignment metrics are actually things like this like dollars
saved per end user or number of minutes spent supporting
an end user, and it's very practical terms. So decks
can help actually measure those, but as you know, des
can also help chart the best way to get to
where you want to go as well.
Speaker 4 (09:45):
Yeah, so let's talk about what the team has been
working so hard on for a number of years, but
like we talked about most recently in the last six
months or so and getting to a place where we
are now in process for fed ramp. So we've been
asking for a long time, when will it be now?
(10:07):
For all of your Spaceballs fans out there, it's right now,
right for those who don't live and breathe in that
compliance world, what does it mean?
Speaker 3 (10:19):
So? Yeah, I love that. That spaceball reference is that
when will then be now?
Speaker 4 (10:24):
So you just missed it?
Speaker 3 (10:25):
Yeah, yeah, so when is now? And so fed RAMP
for those who do not know, FedRAMP is now. Actually
of twenty twenty three, it's the law of the land.
And so before it was founded about and I think
twenty eleven I believe, or twelve, and it was actually
a certification in industry, certification for cloud computing technology. So basically,
(10:48):
if a cloud computing technology and a federal agency wanted
to ulize it, it was highly suggested that it be
fed RAMP compliant. Fed RAMP is basically a security certification
built off the missed eight hundred fifty three control families.
It looks and feels a lot like ISO or SOCK
Type one and Type two in terms of the types
of controls and the levels of security and details it
(11:10):
gets into. It's actually even more robust as I understand it.
It's it's extremely difficult to prepare for and to harden
your product and then to operate your SaaS product in
a manner that is FEDERMP compliant. So it is not
something that's taken lightly. It takes a lot of investment
to do. It is the law of the land now.
So now, as of twenty twenty three, if a federal
(11:30):
agency wants to use a cloud product, especially a SaaS product,
it must be FEDERAMP compliant. So now we're bringing the
only soon to be only FEDERMP authorized dex platform to
market to solve these challenges we've been discussing for the organization.
The impact for federal is the number one is that
they're legally compliant. It's the easy button to consume this
(11:53):
technology versus trying to figure out how to do something.
It may be more of a legacy type of deployment model. Two,
all of that investment in security and operations trickles down
into all of the way that next thing operates our technologies,
even in the commercial sector. So it's gonna you know,
kind of the rising water makes all boats rise, is
(12:13):
that it's going to improve compliance and security for all
the customers that we serve. But really the big one
is again it's the easy button, is that if they're
security concerns, compliance concerns, regulatory concerns. When you're FEDERAMP authorized.
Those are now just a process that you've got to
go through and take the box and really focuses the
conversation around the capability the value that we can bring
(12:36):
to that federal agency.
Speaker 4 (12:39):
So when I hear Federal, my brain normally just goes
right to DoD. But Federal is so much bigger than
Department of Defense. But even just in a couple of
those segments, right Air Force, I think we talked about
eight hundred thousand people in devices, Army one point two million.
(12:59):
As an IT person, I can't imagine managing environments that
big and even just deciding where to start. Where does
this huge cohort start first? Right, we're hardened for compliance,
but what what in your view, what specific problems or
inefficiencies do you feel that inefficiency solves right out of
(13:20):
the gate now that it's tailored for Federal?
Speaker 3 (13:23):
Well, so so with Infinity and INFINITY is you know,
the leading decks platform here to allow organizations to see, diagnose,
and fix issues that impact user experience at scale. So
it's it's this best in class capability that the government
will now get be able to access and use within
their environments. And so the the what I call kind
(13:44):
of the meat and potatoes capabilities of decks of being
able to you know, move in that reactive model. Somebody
does take time out of their job, calls in with
a ticket, we can much more quickly figure out what
is the problem, what's the issue, how many people are
affected other than the person calling, and then use automations
to solve those problems at scale. But with Infinity in particular.
(14:06):
The other really two interesting things that I see is
that it's all of the AI and machine learning that's
built into that suggestion. So as you know, you know,
as we've become proactive, you know, we don't want to
gather data for data's sake. We want it to be actionable,
and we want to actually have recommendations of hey, you know,
everybody in an organization might be using a version of
a software that it's less stable than another version that's
(14:29):
known to be much better, much more performant, and gathering
that data and insight and an actual manager manage a
way for an organization like the Army that's gotten millions
of end users to be able to figure out, hey,
this is the problem we have, and AI is telling
us that if we fix that problem, it's going to
have the most amount of kind of positivity for our
(14:51):
end users than another one. It really helps rack and
stack the way and the investment and the things that
they're doing tactically, and then even more strategic and kind
of projects that they invest in. Prior to that, we've seen,
just like everybody else, tho's IT organizations really had to
take a best guess. And I go back to the
one that you know, we talked about a few years
(15:13):
ago is that the hashtag fixed our computers with the
US Air Force, and that was a poor performance issue
that got escalated out into the world. It was a
Twitter rant buy and employee and the initial solution was, oh, well,
we're just going to spend more money on endpoint hardware,
We're going to refresh it. Well, when they got in
there and actually got the metrics and understood that, well, sure,
(15:35):
maybe in hardware was causing some of the issue, but
the majority of the issue was actually other areas with
the network and applications that were loaded on the device.
And that's the kind of capability we can provide them
now at scale, is that let's get to the root
cause so you can figure out how to better spend
taxpayer's dollars basically on that. The other thing I mentioned
(15:55):
in particular is that again the world's already gone hybrid.
Government is doing that. As we mentioned, government's going digital,
an area that we can do very well with Infinity
as things around collaboration tools and collaboration platforms, so teams, zoom,
other things like that, because those are now mission critical
systems that honestly weren't even really considered kind of main
(16:16):
use about four or five years ago. Now it's something
that every federal employee uses in some aspect, just like
the rest of the world on a daily basis. That's
something we can really help them with the Infinity platform
in a way that we could not do before bringing
our sas capabilities to government.
Speaker 5 (16:31):
Hey Chris, and welcome back to the podcast. And I
also want to say thank you for your input. I
think it was a month ago, it feels like a
year ago. But with the report that we put together
you and your teammates on it's called the cost of
doing Nothing by public sector productivity lags behind other industries.
You can find it on the next thing dot com
slash resource page. If you search for productivity or public
(16:54):
sector that will pop up, So thank you for the
work that you guys put into that report.
Speaker 3 (17:00):
Question.
Speaker 5 (17:00):
So you're in the currently during the FedRAMP process. Now
I'm curious like what comes next, what comes after this?
What's the roadmap I suppose in terms of next think
government offerings and how you're continuing to partner with agencies
through these digital shifts.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
Yeah. No, So for us, so, as I mentioned, we're
FedRAMP and process, and for those who aren't familiar, that
means that we have our environment, we have hardened it,
we've fully documented it, which is actually thousands of pages
of documentation for those who aren't aware. So it's it's
no mean fee to be able to do that, and
we're now in the process with our third party auditor.
(17:38):
The federanp process itself, in the last eight months has
also undergone significant change. The Federant program has rolled out
what they call FEDERMP twenty x, which is a modernization
of the process. We're being certified under FedRAMP federrot excuse me, rev. Five.
But the big benefit with these changes is that we
the timeline to finalize the authorization has been greatly shortened,
(18:01):
so we fully expect to be authorized by early fault,
so we'll be fed REMP moderate in the marketplace, where
in the marketplace today's in process, but we'll be fully
authorized by early fall. So again that basically means that
any organization can then consume us and can go out
to the marketplace to pull down our security package and
do their own security review at that point. So we'll
(18:22):
have that. That's the first step, and that really opens
the floodgates and being able to support organizations the other
thing that we intend to do as we move forward.
So FEDERANP moderate was the first step that we've got.
There are several levels of security classification and in FEDERM
we intend to go higher up. We intend to actually
go up to Aisle four or Aisle five to support
(18:43):
our DoD customers. Today. We also actually have another version
of the platform called next Thing self Manage. This is
a virtual appliance architecture for organizations. As we discussed that
maybe have aren't ready to use the cloud or have
too many security requirements. Maybe it's an air gap network
that's offline and can't connect to the cloud, and so
(19:03):
self Manage exists and it solves a lot of these problems.
As we talked about of being able to see diagnosed
and fixed. But we're going to take infinity, which is
the best to breed, and bring it all the way
up to a version that can be consumed by the
DoD and that will happen over over time here as
we work with those clients as well.
Speaker 5 (19:23):
That's great to hear, and it sounds you actually answered
some of the questions I had. I was curious about
the second half of the twenty twenty five, But I
have another good question. I'm curious what advice would you
give to federal IT teams trying to make progress amid
all the noise that's happening.
Speaker 3 (19:39):
So I think I would go back to what we
talked about a moment ago. That decks is both the
GPS and the referee. It's you know, what's our path
and then are we actually making progress? Are we scoring
goals the way we intended to? I would suggest you
(20:00):
can deploy it to assess what's going on and baseline
what your issues are. It's something that is very easily
done that we've even worked with an organization just to
give them that snapshot to show them where they want
to go and what the problems are. As I mentioned
a moment ago back to the Air Force example, several
years ago they thought, oh well, we'll just buy more hardware.
(20:22):
We'll turns out in the actual problem with something different.
That's something we can actually get tangible proof of in
a very short order and be able to help an
organization chart that path for their way forward. So that
would bring that And I would also add is that
this is something I think, as you guys know you
talked to a lot of dexperts in the years here
(20:43):
that this move to proactive IT and the use of
decks to drive IT operations is something that is now
widely adopted and commercial and now is one of those
times I would suggest to really lean in and see, well,
what is the commercial best practice, how are the best
ways that large organizations are doing this, even if or
not a government agency, and maybe don't have some of
the similar security concerns or process concerns in there, because
(21:06):
again I believe that much of what the of the
challenges were solving for commercial organization are very relevant today
given the new focus around efficiency and accountability on budgets
as well.
Speaker 6 (21:23):
Hey, Chris, welcome back. So one of the standout benefits
mentioned in the announcement was helping agencies reduce software waste
and increase it automation. How are these outcomes translating in
the real world and can you share any early feedback
or expectations.
Speaker 3 (21:42):
Sure. So that's a very that's one that's driven a
lot of interest out of the gate in the last
several months. And with the size and the scale of
a government agency typically you know, in some cases it's
far bigger than a global enterprise, and they use even
more softa where than a commercial entity. That the result
(22:04):
here is that there are a couple of organizations we've
spoken to that believe that, hey, we know we're over
licensed in our subscription software. We think that we could
save between five hundred million and a billion dollars a
year in kind of normalizing and rationalizing our software spend
if we deployed a tool like this. Now, that is
that's on the far side of the scale. That's one
(22:25):
of the really large organizations. But every single entity we've
spoken to within the federal government has some level of
interest in rationalizing their hardware and their software spend and
usage and being able to actually see, you know, what's
licensed and what are people actually using it? Can have
a massive impact, maybe not necessarily a billion dollars a year,
(22:46):
but commensurate to the size of an organization, it's a
similar level of impact for them. So it's a a
big deal for them, potentially.
Speaker 6 (22:56):
Totally agree, not just from a compliance perspective, also from utilization,
under utilization, or even over utilization. It would give them
a lot of perspectives, just even starting from the sea aspect,
and then you move on to diagnosing and fixing afterwards.
How important is it for agencies not just to meet
compliance standards, but to use that secure environment to push
(23:19):
towards a continuous digital improvement And what does that evolution
look like in practice? How does next thing support it?
Speaker 3 (23:28):
So, as I mentioned before, government is already modernizing, is
already going digital, and so it is very important. So
compliancy obviously matters from a legal point of view. Is
that you know these are this is the law of
the land that these agencies have to follow. But it's
also the most secure way to do this to protect
citizens data and information and the mission of these agencies.
(23:51):
So it is very critical that they follow these from
a compliance perspective. But this continuous digital improvement is because
everything has become digital. So the workflows that were maybe
manual or analog are now all becoming digital. And so
the idea that we've got to it can't be a
one and done because more and more of the mission
(24:12):
is becoming digital. It needs to be continuous in the
way that they see and refine and fix issues in
delivering those capabilities. So it is it is becoming more
and more important. And I go back to you know,
it's the roadmap, it's the GPS that actually charge. What's
the underlying problem? It is the no kidding way that
(24:33):
somebody can figure out where are our issues? Where do
we invest? Because otherwise I think Tim mentioned that is
that the breadth of responsibility for these organizations is so broad.
I don't understand how else they would really figure out
where to start without just taking a guess.
Speaker 6 (24:50):
At that point, totally agree to that. And when you
talk to federal IT leaders, how much of the DEX
conversation is about user sets faction since now we're starting
to go more and more, like you just mentioned, into
the depth of digitalization, right or making everything super digital?
So how much is about mission readiness or public service delivery?
(25:12):
And is there a mind shift or a mindset shift underway.
Speaker 3 (25:18):
Yes, so they go hand in hand. Is that that
mission readiness and mission capability, that and that is always
the focus of these IT organizations. It's carrying out the mission.
But again as they're realizing that the mission is greatly
affected if the end user has a poor experience, has
a problem and a challenge, especially if their entire workload
(25:39):
is moving towards the digital the digital side of the house.
So they're very much tied together, but the focus is
always framed around mission capability and mission delivery. It's not
that people don't care about the end user experience, is
that the end user experience really means it really equates
to the mission capability These federal agencies phenomenal.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
Chris, you know you've not been it's not been a
long time since you were back. But there's been plenty
to talk about, and not only in your sector but
inside next Think and the capabilities were offering and thanks
to Sean not only for reminding us to draw attention
to the report he mentioned on the IT in the
(26:27):
FED sector and the impact of ai AI preparedness there,
but for offering that report. It's an excellent read. The
cost of doing nothing why public sector productivity lags behind
other industries. You can get it for free, download it
from the show notes, and will also include links so
(26:48):
interested listeners can learn more about fed ramp. Chris always
a pleasure. Let's hope the sector comes down a little bit,
although if it doesn't, it would be a pleasure to
have you on in another six to eight months, my friend.
Speaker 3 (27:01):
I appreciate it. I hope it comes down as well.
But thank you so much for having me twice this year.
I really appreciate it. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
Take it to make sure that you never miss an episode.
Subscribe to the show in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your
favorite podcast player, and if you're listening on Apple podcasts,
make sure to leave a rating of the show. Just
tap the number of stars you think the podcast deserves.
If you'd love to learn more about how next Think
can help me improve your digital employee experience, head over
(27:28):
to next think dot com. Thank you so much for listening.
Until next time,
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