One thing the coronavirus pandemic has taught businesses is that the faster the response, the better. But this is also true for the government and its agencies, which are at the forefront of combating COVID-19 and have had to make major adjustments to day-to-day operations while running economic stimulus packages and individual financial assistance.

Making government systems more agile to respond promptly to society’s needs, even in times of crisis, is the goal of the Alliance for Digital Innovation, an association of commercial technology enterprises that helps shape innovation in the public sector.

“We all come together because we understand that the government can, and should, and must do better to buy and leverage commercial technology to meet mission outcomes,” said Matthew Cornelius (pictured), executive director of the Alliance for Digital Innovation. “So that is what we focus on, and, frankly, we have seen tremendous growth since COVID started.”

Cornelius spoke with John Furrier, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during the AWS Public Sector Summit event. They discussed how the Alliance for Digital Innovation drives the modernization of IT in the public sector, the importance of ensuring security in this process, and the progress seen during the COVID-19 pandemic. (* Disclosure below.)

Cloud enables innovation

The Alliance for Digital Innovation was formed about two years ago as an advocacy group that focuses on bringing the cloud and highly innovative business solutions to the public sector.

“The government technology space has traditionally been dominated by a lot of legacy vendors, folks that are very happy with vendor lock-in, folks that have an outdated business model that would not suffice in the commercial sector,” Cornelius said. “Why does it have to be that way for government?”

The organization started with about eight members and has grown since then, approaching 24 today. Some members are giant tech groups, such as Amazon Web Services Inc., Google Cloud and Salesforce.com Inc., and others are medium and small businesses.

Although the organization has been working with the government for the past two years, the biggest advance in public-sector innovation has been felt just recently, because of the need for a rapid response to the pandemic. “The government’s done more in the past four months than it’s done in the past 14 years when it comes to modernization and adopting commercial capabilities,” Cornelius stated.

Some government agencies have already invested heavily in the cloud, modern digital tools, and digital processes. “They were able to weather this storm and to deal, especially in the [secure payment system] case, with a dramatic increase in their mission,” he explained. “I mean, running the Paycheck Protection Program is something unlike an organization that size has ever seen.”

An interesting point that has surfaced in recent months is that much of the resistance around modernization was cultural, according to Cornelius. For this reason, the education of government officials is an essential part of the modernization process.

“Most people don’t even understand that the law requires you to do market research and see if there’s a commercial product or service that meets your need before you go down building any sort of specific requirements or building out some sort of long procurement process,” Cornelius pointed out. “And so, a lot of what we’re doing is educating folks, not just on what the law says, but on why these can lead to better outcomes for agencies.”

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

Photo: SiliconANGLE