Strengthening digital government capability is a central priority for public services today. US governemnt leaders discussed how to adopt new technologies to improve services, and build the digital workforces that governments need
On a recent Global Government Forum webinar, US government leaders discussed digital transformation progress, the size of the prize, and how to build the right capability and capacity for success.
They shared a vision for effective digital transformation that increases efficiency, improves services and experiences for citizens, and establishes a continuous cycle – making major standalone modernisation overhauls a thing of the past.
One aspect of this is using digital technology to bolster existing capability.
Dan Pomeroy, deputy associate administrator for the US General Services Administration’s Office of Technology Policy, commented: “We know that through new disruptive technology, through AI, our digital workers now have a very strong tool set to help them develop code or to check code or to integrate in cyber activities, that we just didn’t have in previous iterations.”
He said agencies have succeeded where they have a “clear, aligned environment for AI experimentation” and “trial and error work can happen in a safe and policy-compliant way”.
GSA built the USAi platform and made it available to other agencies.
“I think the concept here is to make sure that you have the ability for folks at lots of different levels of maturity in the IT stack to experiment, to look for efficiencies,” he added.
Pomeroy noted that persuading people to work in new ways can be challenging and long-term adoption is more likely if new tools clearly address existing problems or accelerate existing work.
Technology for scale
Ankur Saini, chief product and technology officer at the US Department of Transportation (DOT), agreed that technology that bolsters human capacity is especially beneficial for organisations such as DOT, which needs to manage both safety and scale.
Almost 6,000 people in the US die every year on roads due to crashes involving large trucks or buses. DOT’s vision to reduce this to as close to zero as possible is challenging, with “6 million drivers, 10 million trucks on the road, and 1,000 people regulating”, Saini said, noting the number of staff at the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration within DOT. “There’s a huge gap…this is where technology comes in.”
This includes using sensors and a “mesh of technology” to “ensure that people that are in the trucking business are safe to start, safe to operate, and if they’re not, there is enough enforcement.”
“Having a technology strategy that allows us to regulate at scale is very important,” he said.
Departments are also rethinking how services are delivered and experienced by citizens.
Dr Nikki Collier, who was recently appointed as the US Department of Justice chief information officer, described how the department has been “getting back to basics” by rationalising the number of public-facing websites and prioritising systems and services for modernisation as part of a broader ambition to be a “premier service provider” focused on “digital experience and customer experience”.
“We’ve had significant reductions in the workforce, we’ve had budget reductions… [we are] taking a look at how we can best use the tools that industry has to offer to fill those gaps,” she said.
The IT Strategic Plan for the 2026 fiscal year emphasises reliable and predictable services, such as flagging and fixing issues before people have to report them, protecting personal data, and upskilling the workforce.
The digital workforce
The panellists also discussed how to ‘right-size’ the specialist digital workforce in government, and how to make decisions on whether to build or buy digital tools and services.
The Digital and Customer Experience Programme Office, established in the Department of Justice, is not just focused solely on technology. but also human-centred design, communications, and programme management.
“I want to start with that in thinking about the workforce,” Collier said.
Saini described how DOT made a “strategic shift” to reorganise around products rather than functions. This means analysing the personas that need to be served, rather than structuring siloed teams around development, testing, operations and security.
Team size and resources are determined by the complexity and labour intensity of each product area.
Saini added that agencies must also maintain existing systems and continuously modernise products to avoid creating new legacy technology, noting that technology cycles now move in months rather than years.
Building or buy in?
On build versus buy decisions in government, Saini said products may need to be built if they relate to a unique strategic function but where commercial options are widely available, buying is usually better.
He noted that “even the stuff that we are building, these are not all-or-nothing decisions” and “the way we’re architecting our applications is they’re very modular… and component based”.
Pomeroy agreed, saying that: “My default setting is always to look at buy first because the laws of economies of scale are very real.”
“One of the reasons we’ve been able to keep technology moving forward is by leveraging economies of scale,” he added. “That’s what cloud computing is: economies of scale. That’s what software as a service is.”
He said there are scenarios where buying commercial solutions versus building may fulfil 95% of the requirement, and organisations must understand their “pain threshold” for trade-offs.
Digital successes
On key successes with digital transformation, speakers flagged cross-government collaboration in particular.
“I’m a big fan, even in my own small team, of starting multiple sandboxes for different purposes and seeing what works and what doesn’t work,” said Pomeroy, adding that through partnerships with industry and temporary licences, “we’ve been able to share sandboxes across agencies, under MOU agreements”.
Collier also highlighted sharing across the federal government and the ability to interconnect systems and improve data sharing.
“That reduces the cost of paying for similar systems,” she said.
Saini explained that the Department of Transportation previously had a programme, where people could pay a small fee for data they needed to be curated. The department put commonly requested datasets online in accordance with the principle that “the producer of the information and the consumer… should be as close to the data source as possible.” Now, users can access data for free, on demand, updated daily, with built-in visualisation, eliminating both cost and delay.
Another DOT example enables law enforcement agencies to carry out truck safety inspections using a phone or tablet, replacing older PC-based systems with a progressive web app that works offline. Saini said this means that truckers spend less time off the road, inspectors can process more checks, and agencies get “more accurate data faster”, improving policy decisions and road safety.
However, he noted a key challenge remains: the mismatch between the speed of technological change and government processes, with rules and laws often taking years to implement.
The size of the transformation prize
The speakers closed by sharing their visions for digital transformation.
Saini said: “If we build digital capacity the right way and we approach digital transformation the right way, it means we never do modernisation projects ever again… That, to me, is a successful technology organisation: always aligned with its user base, delivering services that are current, relevant and contemporary to the times.”
Collier added: “Digital transformation is a continuous lifecycle… it allows us to tie our priorities and our resources to measurable impacts; it’s a demonstration of us being a good steward of taxpayers’ adollars; it’s transparency; it reduces, minimises and just simply removes the burden on the citizens.”
Pomeroy concluded: “If there’s anything technology can do to maintain the integrity of the public administration while also reducing friction and accelerating things that don’t need to take as long as maybe they did in a previous generation, that I think that’s what this win would look like.”
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Sarah Wray
Dieser Artikel ist neu veröffentlicht von / This article is republished from: Global Government Forum, 05.05.2026
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