The digitization of the public sector

Published: 
May 15, 2018

Over the past few years, cloud-based computing and storage have been known as ‘the next big thing’ for companies spanning across all industries. It stands to reason that adoption of said technology has been rapidly expanding. The ‘cloud’ not only centralizes data to a secure location, but also allows read and write access to information with just internet access, and supreme collaboration among others.

The growing prevalence of such technology has prompted various public, federal agencies, such as the Department of Defense, to procure contracts that will assist the agency with updating their current technology.

The JEDI contract

The procurement of one of the largest cloud contracts is crucial in bridging together cloud use in the public sector, and procurement-related firms such as Fairmarkit.

The JEDI cloud seeks to move most, if not all of the Defense Department’s data and data services onto the cloud. Worth potentially more than $10 billion during the next decade, an article from Nextgov describes the cloud service acting as the primary source for deployed troops to retrieve information and instantaneously communicate with one another. Due to the varied sources of data — from personnel to jet fighters — the cloud service must be capable of handling any form of data.

The cloud and the procurement industry

With the Defense Department harnessing the potential of cloud technology, they are taking steps forward in digital transformation, one of the “ingredients for innovation,” in procurement. While data analysis tools such as machine learning are effective, they can be so much more augmented with the application of cloud-based storage and computing.

Digital transformation is a necessary change for a company to thrive. While the changes may not always be the easiest, 84% of procurement organizations believe that digital transformation will fundamentally change the way their services are delivered”.

The path to digitizing a company is a multi-faceted issue that may not be able to be tackled simultaneously. Cloud-computing is just a single piece to a puzzle, and eventually it will be necessary for procurement companies to take advantage of the cloud.

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