Federal Government Depends Increasingly On Tech Collaboration, Microsoft Solutions

Running an innovative government agency while saving taxpayer dollars can be two goals that seem to oppose each other, but the General Services Administration has turned to collaboration and partnerships to enable its future growth.

’If somebody else is building it and we can use it, let’s use it. Now that’s an amazing cultural hurdle to get over,’ said Kris Rowley, chief data officer of the General Services Administration, the independent agency that supports the basic functioning of federal government agencies.

Rowley said his agency increasingly depends on sharing content and tools with other agencies, and is on the lookout for outside solutions that can be applied to government tasks.

’When you’re out of money and you’re out of people, you start looking for other ways,’ he added.

Rowley said the chief productivity software used by most employees in federal government remains Microsoft Office.

’That’s it,’ he said.

It’s imperative to the department to keep all information within the department's IT systems and applications trackable and organized, so the CDO can utilize all data.

’We’re trying to build systems to get people to do their work in those systems, and then architect them in a way so that we can make that data transparent [and] findable,’ Rowley said.