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While the corporate world is astute at keeping pace with technological leaps in these fast-moving times, state and local governments are often perceived to be sluggish and outdated in terms of innovation.
Appointed by Governor Glenn Youngkin in 2022, CIO of the Commonwealth Robert ‘Bob’ Osmond, who leads the Virginia Information Technologies Agency (VITA), is working to revamp this stale image of state governance as he drives public service into the 21st century with a slew of modernizing projects that are strengthening the technological foundation of the state irrevocably.
“Public service is incredibly rewarding. We have big challenges. We solve big problems and directly affect the lives of Virginians.”
After all, strong governance is woven into the fabric of the Old Dominion state, which has delivered eight presidents.
Osmond’s prowess in transforming VITA, since taking on the CIO role only two years ago, stems from his 20-year tech career in the private sector, where he recast business systems, led large-scale change projects at IBM and was responsible for human capital development and application innovation for many of IBM’s customers in the public sector.
A commitment and passion for public service saw Osmond steer away from the commercial sector in 2015 when he spotted the perfect opportunity at the Virginia Department of Transportation to lead information technology transformation from the inside for the wider community and give back to the state, which helped him growing up.
“Public service at the state level is incredibly rewarding. We have big challenges. We solve big problems and directly affect the lives of Virginians,” he tells The CEO Magazine. “There are very few places where you can provide that level of support for your fellow citizens, neighbors and friends at scale in a meaningful manner.
“I’ve always had a strong affinity for government. I was a beneficiary growing up in Virginia of many government services, including the people that mentored me along the way. I received grant funding to help me obtain an advanced education, and I’ve always felt that sense of gratitude for their help. They helped launch my career.”
With a blueprint set by Governor Youngkin to make Virginia the best place to live, work and raise a family, Osmond set out to replicate some of the best technology practices that are common in the commercial world.
Understanding that technology had to be at the forefront of the way government operates and delivers services has been fundamental to Osmond’s success, and he believes the state is more innovative, resilient and competitive as a result.
“Digital services and state services are built with a strong technology foundation. The more we can do our job here at the Virginia IT Agency, the better the outcomes and experiences are for all of the Virginians that work in and rely on the state government,” he says.
But the journey hasn’t been smooth sailing, with the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic creating multiple challenges for the CIO shortly after taking over the reins.
“We had to pivot as the IT agency to support our customers where they are, which are the agencies that directly provide services,” Osmond says.
The first task was to reform outdated processes, systems, services and solutions. This included: moving out of an outdated legacy data center (a traditional computing facility); migrating to the Microsoft 365 platform and modernizing the entire network; overhauling messaging collaboration platforms; moving to software-defined wide area network at a thousand locations, which increased capacity and improved the website and cybersecurity; modernizing Commonwealth websites to make them more trusted, secure and accessible; and transforming the procurement process to save money.
“I’m proud of the major improvements in all of those areas. These are all things that we did in the first 18 months to establish a strong foundation for even more transformation,” Osmond says.
“We have to transform together in partnership with our agency customers and vendor partners. And so, a lot of my work is education, collaboration and relationship building.”
Changing the nuts and bolts of the government’s technology framework has only been one side of Osmond’s success story; the other has been building crucial relationships with supporting agencies and ensuring their visions align.
“We have to transform together in partnership with our agency customers and vendor partners. And so, a lot of my work is education, collaboration and relationship building,” he says. “It’s creating those one-on-one conversations to make sure that the things that they’re doing are understood by my team to ensure that the technology is ready, so that we’re not the weakest link in the chain, so that our customers can get their projects done to accelerate value to Virginians.”
Now that the foundational improvements have been made, Osmond outlines his plan for the next year, which is to home in on transforming its cloud systems, cybersecurity and build its AI capabilities and identity management.
“The hyperscalers like AWS, Microsoft, Google, Oracle and IBM are building out platforms of innovation and advanced functionality, we need to more directly provide those capabilities to our agencies so they can improve their business operations, citizen services and modernize their technologies and applications,” he says.
With AI at the heart of cutting-edge innovation globally, Osmond says the agency has been leveraging the capabilities of these technology giants to build various AI platforms in the state.
“We’ve created simple chatbots and virtual systems to help users navigate large informational sources,” he adds. “As capabilities like AI become more practical and affordable, the barriers to application will disappear. And we’re going to more readily apply that technology to improve our digital services. To ensure that AI is being used ethically, responsibly, transparently and securely, we’ve had to make sure that both the capability and the regulatory frameworks are in place.”
“We’re not profit motivated; we just want to make sure that we do a great job for all Virginians.”
But cybersecurity is also high on the list of enterprise challenges; Osmond says there has been a 10-to-20 percent increase, year over year, on the number of attacks.
“Our cyber adversaries are working hard to steal data,” he says. “We have to stay ahead of these bad actors and it’s a constant battle and a constant challenge to protect our capabilities and secure our citizen data.”
In order to keep pace with the rapidly changing landscape, Osmond says VITA must focus on understanding the customer experience so it can provide the right support, and then build its enterprise architecture.
“I’ve never seen so many products and services and innovations. I feel like every day I learn about something new,” he says. “So, navigating the landscape quickly becomes complicated because you have to know how to make some good decisions.
“And so, we see our role at VITA to not just provide those goods and services and capabilities and infrastructure, but also to serve as consultants to our customers that are completely unbiased and only care about their best interests. We’re not profit motivated; we just want to make sure that we do a great job for all Virginians. That service ethos is in our VITA DNA.”
None of these advancements would be possible without hiring the right people to drive this staggering change. Under his leadership, Osmond has transformed the workforce of the department, to bring in more entry level talent and people that are otherwise new to state government. Today, 10 percent of the VITA workforce are new university graduates, a first for the agency.
“The rate of change is so fast that we need to build a whole pipeline of talent that can come into VITA, grow in VITA, learn at VITA, but then also move on and support the agencies as they want to transform themselves because there is a huge need for talent,” he says.
“I think that’s absolutely where the magic happens because you get emerging talent, which means they haven’t developed any habits that you need to untrain and retrain. I think that’s also great and that you naturally build a long-term workforce, which is very exciting.”
Underpinning Osmond’s leadership style throughout his career has been his forward-thinking approach and outlook on risk.
“I received some advice one time from leaders that I valued and they gave me advice that if you don’t feel a little bit of fear, if you’re not scared of your vision, then it’s not bold enough,” he says.
“If you don’t feel a little bit of fear, if you’re not scared of your vision, then it’s not bold enough.”
“If there are capabilities out there that can really substantially improve the way we’re operating, I think we should try them and push ourselves to accept them. I think it’s a huge disservice to basically sit back and kind of wait for something to become so mature as to be irrelevant. I think you have to balance risk with reward.”
The biggest risk to date, he adds, has been to build out a public cloud, which is designed to be an infinitely scaled cloud environment where every single customer gets their own customized data center in that cloud. Called Commonwealth of Virginia (COV) Cloud, it has been launched with new services and functions being added every few weeks.
Proud of the relationships VITA has built with its partners, Osmond says whether you’re a contractor, technology partner or agency, everyone is on the same team.
Instead of building capabilities from scratch, Osmond says the organization leverages those of its technology partners to bring best practice and accelerate value.
“Our network transformation was a result of strong collaboration among VITA, Verizon, Cisco and the customers that we serve, and our messaging transformation was the result of collaboration of our suppliers, VITA and our customers,” Osmond says.
“Our cloud transformation was focused on AWS, it involves SAIC, Unisys and our customers. This is the customer-centric theme. We’re One VITA and One Commonwealth for our customers and Virginians.”
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