The public sector is traditionally last to adopt new technology. Convoluted regulations, long-winded approvals processes, and a general reluctance to step away from tried-and-true procedures have kept many agencies in the Dark Ages compared to their enterprise counterparts. However, an aging workforce, systems that are approaching end-of-life, and a realization of the huge benefits that can be obtained by leveraging data and sharing insights are combining to give government agencies worldwide an impetus to embrace digital transformation as fast as possible.

“It’s pretty shocking how quickly the government has adopted and moved towards the cloud,” said Kevin Curry (pictured), senior vice president of the global public sector at Infor Inc. “Typically, they’re laggards. Everything happens in the commercial market, and then government’s a little bit of a late adopter, right? But we’re seeing them very quickly go to the cloud.”

Curry spoke with Dave Vellante (@dvellante) and John Walls (@JohnWalls21), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the Inforum event in Washington, D.C. They discussed how Infor is helping the public sector adopt cloud technology. (* Disclosure below.)

Infor is invested in government solutions

Offering software and services to the public sector means being able to market to everyone, from kindergarten classrooms to the Department of Defense. At the top level are local, state, and federal agencies, but within each are a myriad of micro-sectors with their own unique requirements.

Global enterprise software provider Infor offers a micro-vertical suite across the portfolio, incorporating artificial intelligence and robotic process automation as part of its Public Sector CloudSuites. The company is focusing on “being able to solve all the problems for the federal government and comply to all their needs,” Curry explained.

Rather than reinvent the wheel, Infor relies on Amazon Web Services Inc.’s government cloud infrastructure for hosting. Quoting Infor Chief Executive Officer Charles Phillips, Curry said: “’Friends don’t let friends build data centers.’ You know, that’s not a business we’re in. We’re a software company.”

AWS has invested in infrastructure for the public sector, providing specialized government clouds with purpose-specific, secure and regulation-compliant regions. “[AWS has] done all of the compliancy for the government, whether it be the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program [or the] Criminal Justice Information Services,” Curry said.

Infor provides services on AWS specialized government clouds, such as the intelligence community’s C2S cloud, which was built out as a private, hyper-secure cloud for the CIA. The Secret Region provides a secure environment for top secret data to be shared between government agencies.

The Department of Defense’s Jedi cloud is another project where Infor is hoping to partner with AWS, which is jockeying with other major cloud providers to be awarded the $10-billion contract. “We’re obviously riding that horse with AWS,” Curry stated.

Consolidating and analyzing the stockpiles of data currently isolated in separate government databases would bring huge benefits to government agencies, according to Curry. “ICE is a good example,” he said of the department for immigration and customs enforcement. “You heard that they have to hire thousands of people to deploy on the borders, right? How do you quickly ramp and hire these right people if you don’t have the right tools to do it?”

Designing for the future, Infor is creating workplace software as flexible and intuitive as mobile apps on a phone. “Kids today are going to go into the workforce, and they won’t settle for anything less … and that’s the kind of offering we’re bringing to the marketplace,” Curry said.

Infor’s Talent Science application uses AI to determine multiple different personality areas and maps them back to top performers within a company. “[Talent Science] determines the right people for the right job, where they’ll fit into that environment, and … thrive,” Curry stated. “There’s a real opportunity to take those types of applications and do some pretty creative things.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Inforum event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Inforum 2018. Neither Infor Inc., the event sponsor, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE