Vivisimo’s fourth annual Federal Day was held June 1st at Nationals Park Conference Center. This is the second year in a row we have held this event at the home of the Washington Nationals Baseball team, and I guess you could say we are undefeated in our home park. The Nationals haven’t let us down yet at this event and neither have our line-up of speakers and participants. Federal Day is a multipurpose event for Vivisimo customers, partners, and others from the Washington DC area government business and IT communities. This year’s event focused on one of the greatest challenges in government as well as business: achieving return on investment.
Those of you who attended last year’s event know that we had the good luck to pick the day that Stephen Strasburg made his major league debut. That extra element of excitement was missing from the ballpark this year but we more than made up for it with a dynamite keynote speaker and with the bold proposition that government agencies can and should measure return on investment (ROI), and that ROI on information sharing in government can be demonstrated by methods similar to those used in the commercial world.
Our keynote speaker Susan Keen Dyer knocked the cover off the ball (OK I’ll try to keep baseball clichés to a minimum) with her discussion of how to successfully deliver large-scale government IT projects that actually achieve the results they were intended to deliver. Susan draws on a distinguished 30 year career as a civilian executive in the Department of the Navy. Not only did she hold high profile positions such as Director for the Navy Enterprise Resource Planning Program and Chief Information Officer for the Naval Air Systems Command, but she performed with such distinction that she received civilian service awards on five different occasions from the Navy as well as receiving the Government Computer News Technology Leadership Award in 2008 and the Women in Technology Award in 2009.
What I especially liked about Susan’s approach is that she boiled the topic down into six fundamental “tips,” each illustrated with examples and backed up by examples and guidelines, that can be referred to when planning and executing a project. I won’t try to do justice to the content of her talk here, but there was a heavy emphasis on the human and organizational side of the equation, learning how to mobilize and successfully lead the kind of cross-functional teams that are needed to implement projects as large as an ERP program for the U.S. Navy, involving both industry and government in the process. Perhaps the best indication of the value of this talk was the quality of the questions and comments from the audience.
The topic of return on investment in government always generates a lively discussion. Many observers of the government IT scene will say flat out that ROI analysis isn’t the right way to look at government projects. After all, many government activities are mandated by rules and regulations. Defense and intelligence agencies think in terms of mission assurance, building some “overkill” into any solution because the consequences of not achieving the mission can be dire. Some will say that nobody in government wants to do things more efficiently because they don’t want their budgets cut the following year.
And yet, as Vivisimo Federal General Manager Bob Carter demonstrated, government agencies can measure both the direct and indirect the costs and benefits of activities such as information sharing. Cost avoidance—whether by doing more with less or doing the same with fewer resources—is one way that ROI can be measured. Some of the areas in which Bob showed how value can be calculated include:
- Reduced time to train and on-board new staff members (new hires or reassigned)
- Reduced R&D costs
- Reduced cost to comply with rules and regulations
- Reduced headcount
Taking an average federal government knowledge worker salary of $74,000 and the most conservative savings verified among Vivisimo’s commercial customers in each of these areas, Bob presented a model that shows how an agency with 18,500 staff can save between $12 and $77 million per year.
Following Bob’s presentation on the financial benefits that can be attained through effective information-sharing, Vivisimo’s Senior Federal Sales Engineer Gary Mann provided a demonstration and tech talk. Gary showed some of the current Vivisimo product and technology capabilities that make these benefits possible using real-world examples and scenarios. Gary wrapped up by giving a peek at Vivisimo’s new Customer Experience Optimization suite to show the exciting possibilities of our new deployment platform for government applications.
After completion of the conference we made the day a clean sweep as some of the hardier attendees braved the 95 degree heat to watch the underdog Nationals beat the division-leading Phillies in a hard-fought game. Many thanks to those who participated and we hope to have an even bigger turnout next year. Based on the feedback from the event and the conversations that have continued over the past week we expect to continue the tradition.
[...] Federal Day at National Park Conference Center. According to the Information Optimized article “Clean Sweep for Vivisimo’s Federal Day 201l” was a success. The topic of this year’s event was achieving return on [...]
I think Vivisimo should check out the Nationals schedule and schedule EVERY conference around Stephen Strasburg’s pitching rotation.
All of your customers would be doubly happy