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The Buzz with ACT-IAC
Unlocking Government Tech Innovations with Pega
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In this episode of The Buzz, we chat with Ben Barton and Jeremy Peterson from Pega Systems to discuss the latest innovations in government technology. They delve into practical applications of AI in the public sector and highlight Pega Systems' groundbreaking tool, Pega Blueprint. The conversation covers experiences from the recent ACT-IAC conference, shifts towards outcome-centric solutions, and the balance between innovation and risk in government tech.
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(Episodes 1-159: Intro/Outro Music: Focal Point/Young Community
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Yohanna: [00:00:00] Hey there. In this episode of The Buzz, we get to sit down with Ben Barton and Jeremy Peterson from Pegasystems to discuss the latest trends in innovations in government technology. They share their experiences from the recent ACT, IAC conference a few weeks back. They talk about the practical applications of AI in the public sector, and they highlight the groundbreaking Pega Blueprint tool.
Yohanna: We had a really great conversation. I hope you enjoy.
Ben: Alright. Alright. Thank you so much for your
Yohanna: time. So why don't you all, uh, introduce yourselves.
Ben: Alright. Hey, thanks so much for having us. Uh, really thrilled that you, you invited us on today. My name is Ben Barton with Pega Systems. Been with Pega for 10 years and I'm an account executive supporting Veteran Affairs.
Jeremy: Uh, I'm Jeremy Peterson. I'm also glad to be here. I've been with Pega Systems for 14 years, uh, as an architect and a solutions consultant. I've mostly spent that time working on [00:01:00] federal systems.
Yohanna: All right, so we met at, uh, govtech Next. It, it feels like a really long time ago because we're, we're coming out of, you know, the holidays and at Govtech next.
Yohanna: This is where a lot of our government leaders, it's, it's a great act IAC event where a lot of government leaders and industry partners, this is where folks come together to figure out. What's going on with, you know, the fast emerging tech. I wanna know from, from your, uh, vantage point, what are some things that, um, maybe stood out to you from that event that were, that signaled something that was coming ahead in a, in the government tech space?
Ben: Yeah, I think, um, if I were to jump in here, you know, what, what stood out to me, you know, as more of the, the types of conversations that we had. Um, and you're right, it does feel like it was, uh, five years ago after coming outta the holidays here, but, you know, it was still impactful. Um. So I think the biggest shift that I noticed is, is the intention in the conversations.
Ben: You know, [00:02:00] we had, you know, government speakers that were there, we had different vendors. We had, you know, the goys, you know, that were in attendance. And you know, what I noticed is that, you know, there was a lot of conversations that used to take place that were framed around, you know, what's possible, you know, and nowadays what, what we started hearing is more about, hey, what's practical?
Ben: I think that's really important. You know, so, you know, leaders aren't just wowed by AI demos anymore, right? There's so much ai, right? We've got AI everywhere. So they were, you know, starting to ask more of the tough questions. They'd see something, they kind of light up, but you know, they'd come back to us and say, you know, well, how do we implement this securely?
Ben: You know, how does it integrate whether existing systems. How do we prove the ROI on something like this? How do we, how do we build a case for it? Move it, you know, upwards? So the conversations definitely matured from more of a, a tech-centric conversation. Definitely more into an outcome centric conversation.
Jeremy: Oh, that's great. Just to add onto that a little bit, there was a, to speak to the kind of [00:03:00] conversations we were having, we were having a lot of conversations around AI and the tenor. From the conversations we were having, even from a year ago before, it was how could we ever trust AI inside a government?
Jeremy: Inside the government system, we are stewards of public funds. We need to be able to audit the entire end to end path, and we have an AI system making decisions. How can we trust the outcome of that? That narrative has now shifted and now it's to more what Ben was saying where. How can we best apply ai?
Jeremy: How can it be targeted? How can we use it to accelerate our resources and move through the really complex requirements that government needs to get through? Every time a new law comes out, every time a new piece of legislation gets enacted, the cascading effect of what needs to change is absolutely massive.
Jeremy: And AI definitely has a place in there, and I think people are beginning to see the play. [00:04:00] See the ways that they can apply that.
Yohanna: So as AI changes, we're also changing our, our way of thinking of it and, and approaching it. I think, I think it moves really fast though, too. It's kind of scary. Like every, every couple of months there's something different.
Yohanna: There's something new. There's a new,
Ben: pretty sure it's every day at this point. Yeah,
Yohanna: every day. Yeah. Probably compounding. Yeah. Yeah. What's, what's fun is that both of you work in. In the intersection of like innovation and implementation. When agencies come to Pega Systems, what is it that you think that their, what their problem actually is?
Yohanna: Like, what is it that they're actually trying to solve?
Ben: Yeah, that's a great question. So what they're trying to actually solve, I mean, that's so broad. Myself. I support Veteran Affairs. Uh, just, just amazing mission that they have overall. Um, and you know, with over 400,000 employees, you know, at the Veteran Affairs, it's uh, you know.
Ben: Man, they're all trying to go down a certain path, right? So many different missions, so many different, you know, tasks, you know, but I, I do think there's a central area [00:05:00] to it. So, uh, for Pega Systems, I think agencies come to us. We, we are found in, you know, all across state and local government, all across, you know, the federal agencies, you know, Pega is embedded in there, and they're coming to us ultimately for, depending on the agency, either they're constituents, you know, they're veterans, their members, you know, however they'll phrase it.
Ben: They wanna learn how to serve them better, and the people that they serve have certain expectations that, uh, definitely are set by the private sector, right? So that's, that's kind of interesting, right? If you go to the private sector, we all know what it's like to get in, you know, car insurance or a home loan or, you know, cell service or something like that.
Ben: So, you know, the ve veterans, constituents, however you wanna, uh, frame it, you know, they really expect easy digital experiences. All right. Um, but underneath that, I think what the real problem here is, is that, you know. It's, you could, you could call it a workforce challenge, you know, so public [00:06:00] servants, you know, they, they get bogged down.
Ben: They're trying to serve their constituents, trying to serve veterans. They're trying to serve all these people, you know, but they're bogged down by just tons of manual processes, you know, uh, they're just swivel cheering back and forth. Uh, to, to all sorts of different systems, sometimes 20 systems. I've actually seen that 20 different systems to get one, one task accomplished.
Ben: Right. Ouch. Ouch. I know. And, uh, so ultimately they're, they're coming to us saying, Hey, we want to be able to serve better. We want to get the outcomes that they deserve. Uh, but honestly, the tools, they're, they're quite frankly, they're just getting in the way. So, you know, we're ultimately solving an employee experience.
Ben: So they can in turn cash in and say, Hey, look, you know, now we can deliver a better, you know, veteran experience.
Yohanna: Do you wanna add to that, Jeremy?
Jeremy: Oh yeah. I just, um, to what Ben said, so we're dealing with, um, the technical root of a lot of these problems is that there's just this tangled web of legacy systems.
Jeremy: You'll walk into, uh, a specific installation and you'll see they'll have [00:07:00] decades of different programs. They'll have a lot of different vendors, they'll have a lot of different databases, and these systems don't really talk to each other. And what's frustrating about this is nowhere in the government is there a lack of data.
Jeremy: There's just a lack of the ability for these systems to talk to each other. So what we are trying to do is give them a single view. If they want to have like a specific case, like if we're talking about veterans Affairs, just someone trying to get medical care, how does that get assigned to a doctor? How does that get assigned for reimbursement?
Jeremy: Um, or if you need a specific view of a citizen, it's really difficult to understand where all of that data lives. And what we're trying to do is put all that into one unified system where you have a single pane of glass. So it doesn't matter how complex it is in the backend, we want the citizens experience to be just interacting with one system.
Yohanna: Legacy systems. I always think of like. Just old code, right? It's old code and trying to transfer, you know, uh, translate that into like newer, but is there something else [00:08:00] that I'm missing when it comes to like, legacy systems? Is it also just like hardware because I always go to software?
Jeremy: Uh, we definitely have a lot of, uh, there's definitely a lot of things like sitting on physical servers now, trying to get people into the flexibility of the cloud has been a major, major push that helps with reliability, that helps with security.
Jeremy: And one of the best things that you get with something like that when you move away from a physical system is that you're able to update as new software implementations become available. And so it goes from being a massive overhaul that might take weeks whenever you need to upgrade to just being something that people won't even realize.
Jeremy: There are instances where we have, where people are in the cloud, they get their system upgraded. They'll show up on a Monday and be like, so when's the upgrade gonna happen? And we can tell 'em, oh, it, it already happened. It just, it's so seamless. Now we've removed that pain point of physically updating.
Jeremy: Yeah.
Yohanna: Okay. Software. Oh, that's good. Before we get into, um, like systems and strategy, I wanna zoom out [00:09:00] for a moment. Mm-hmm. And, you know, just maybe zoom out for a bit because how people enter this space often shapes how they like operate inside it. Um, so let's ground this in your individual paths. What originally pulled each of you into this field?
Yohanna: Um, I kind of wanna understand what was like the inflection point that shaped how you work today? Yeah, I think it's,
Ben: that's another good question. Um, it kinda, it kinda goes back to that age old, you know, career, right? We're not just talking about our role now, but it's funny how careers, you know, they are like a jungle gym.
Ben: Sometimes you're, you're pulling yourself up a ladder. Other times you're just going across a bridge and uh, other times you find yourself on a slide and you don't know where you're gonna come out, right? So, uh, but it's all those different experiences, I think that shape. So. You know, when I started out, I actually began my career running large scale complex, uh, contact centers.
Ben: So everything that happened within the four walls of that contact center I was responsible for. Uh, so I operations by, by [00:10:00] nature, actually, non-technical by nature, right? But I understood what it took to serve those, you know, the frontline. Uh, people, right? The people calling in. And then how do I serve these folks?
Ben: You know, how do I get them the tools that they need to be able to better serve these, these people? Um, hey, what's our process and procedures look like? Hey, you know, it, there's so many things that take place, you know, inside that. Um, and eventually I took that step over more into, uh, individual contributor role.
Ben: Um. More as a consultant, so, uh, as a bridge between business and it. Right. That was my goal is like, all right, how do we, how do we get all this cool software speak? In a language that the business understands, you know, that that was kind of where I took that step and I've actually really loved it, you know, and then from, uh, an account executive, that's who, that's my role currently.
Ben: You know, it started out where people were running around often saying, Hey, I need this point solution, or, Hey, I need this widget, or Hey, I need this. And you know, of course as an account executive, you're like, Hey, great. I got one of those [00:11:00] things. I, I can get it right. You know? But, uh, but now I think, you know.
Ben: The role has evolved more to where it's much more of a strategic partner. As I mentioned, I serve Veteran Affairs. Um, and my ultimate goal is that, you know, I wanna feel like I'm working for Veteran Affairs, and I want them to kind of embrace me and say, Hey, Ben's part of the team. You know, he's, he's doing this thing.
Ben: So really what I do now. Is rather than saying, Hey, we got this, or we got this, or we got this, you know, which, which shape, color, size, what, what do you need? I spend most of my time listening and just trying to understand, you know, the agency's long-term mission and what their vision is. Right. Uh, I think the more homework you do, the less talking you do, the more listening you do, uh, the better it is.
Ben: And you know, what I've learned is that agencies don't buy software anymore. Right. They've got so much software they don't even know what to do with it most of the time. But what really they're shifting over to now is more like, okay, how do I invest in outcomes? Right? How do I take all this stuff and get it to do ultimately what [00:12:00] we want?
Ben: So my job is to work shoulder to shoulder with 'em. Understand that mission and just kind of co-create a roadmap with them that's gonna show 'em how the investment in time will get them to that, you know, further their mission. Keep moving those, uh, you know, the mission forward. So whether that's serving, you know, veterans more effectively.
Ben: Uh, you know, processing, you know, claims, reducing backlogs, whatever the case is, it's what's the outcome and how can we work together to, to solve it.
Yohanna: Yeah.
Jeremy: Yeah.
Yohanna: That's good. How about you, Jeremy?
Jeremy: So, my path started a little bit more technical. I, my major was electrical engineering, and so that was more just focused on like building circuits and doing very low level languages.
Jeremy: But as I began to branch out, I started moving into higher level languages, moving into something like Java and configuring applications like that. When I encountered Pega, it was sort of like a light switch flipped on in my head where it's taking a lot of things that happened in the industry [00:13:00] and it's moving from.
Jeremy: It's moving from creating something bespoke each time to more configuring things with Legos. So when I moved on, I focused initially on just being a developer, and so I was moving through just different applications. A lot of, in the healthcare space, I. But then I got on a Medicare and Medicaid project, and that began to show me just this whole ecosystem of how we could really use software to help the government.
Jeremy: And so I've been moving through the different spaces there, through the Department of Justice, uh, and now with the Department of War. What's interesting about how that's shifted over the past 10 years is we've moved from, you just go in and build a single application and it has a singular purpose, uh, for say, Medicare and Medicaid.
Jeremy: What happens now is applications need to be more aware of the context that they operate in. And so if you're building an application for Veterans Affairs, it needs to accomplish its specific task, but it also needs to look to the future. It [00:14:00] needs to say, how will this upgrade, how will this account for legislative changes that need to happen in the future?
Yohanna: Government tech lives in, in constant tension, like innovation versus risk, you know, speed versus compliance. How do you each navigate that balance in your respective roles?
Ben: Dude, you're pulling out the, the heavy questions now, innovation versus risk. You know, it's great. Um, you know, it's, it's a difficult line to walk, right?
Ben: Because, um, you know, innovation's awesome, you know, and you constantly need to be able to innovate, right? If you stay stagnant, you're, everybody's gonna pass you by. Or you're gonna have unhappy veterans or constituents. Right? Um, but too much innovation can definitely, oof. Now we've just increased that load of risk, right?
Ben: So how do we balance that? Um, so it goes back to what I was just saying about, about the role, at least for me, and, and, you know, clarification on roles, you know. [00:15:00] I wouldn't be successful if it wasn't for Jeremy and so forth and so on, right? We, we kind of, we kind of complete each other. It's, uh, one of those relationships,
Yohanna: the win beneath his wings.
Ben: Uh, you know, but really, I, I try to navigate it, you know, still by, by building trust. And, uh, and starting small, which, you know, a lot of account executives might not take that mantra, right? They'd be like, just go in for the glory, get it all, you know. Um, but I think that's where the risk, you know, comes into it.
Ben: And if we know anything about government leaders, they're understandably risk adverse. Like more so than, than most folks that you're gonna meet. I mean, they're, they're stewards. I think, uh, Jeremy said it earlier, right? Stewards of public trust and, uh, ultimately of the taxpayer money. Right. So they don't want to go all in on something that's, you know, new and flashy, but yet not really proven, right?
Ben: So they get a lot on their plates. And so I'm never gonna go in there, I'm gonna say, Hey, look it, I've got this awesome [00:16:00] match and I'm gonna hold it underneath your ocean and I'm gonna boil this thing. Right? That's, that's where you run into the most risk. So instead, you know, I think what we do to balance innovation risk is that, um, you know, we, we wanna identify a specific.
Ben: High impact problem and propose a smaller pilot or proof of concept, right? Let's, let's get this, let's work together. Let's understand what you want and let's put it into practicality. So, you know what this does? It, it shows them a win. It proves that value out. It, it opens up dialogue for them, you know, for further up the food chain.
Ben: And then we can build from there. So it's about demonstrating that innovation. It doesn't have to be this big, huge, you know, shotgun blast, you know, leap of faith. But instead it can be a, a series of small, uh, confident iterative steps.
Yohanna: Yeah, I like that.
Jeremy: The way that we operate. And so I rely on Ben to give me the 10,000 foot view of the [00:17:00] entire agency and then what the most important pain points are to focus on.
Jeremy: And from there, when we're building a, when we're building a solution, one of the things we do is we try to de-risk this moving fast, the innovation, and we call this concept freedom within a framework. Pega is architected as a low code platform, so we don't really think of ourselves as coders. We think of ourselves as configuring.
Jeremy: This gives you this built in governance that allows you to maintain security. It gives you these guardrails where you're not gonna run into performance problems. You're not gonna have public facing websites crash. It also gives your IT teams, IT teams and business teams, this compliance framework that they're able to follow.
Jeremy: What this gives is if you ever need to speak to an application's robustness or security framework, there's specific artifacts that we can point to that said the application is secure. Because we followed these rules, the application [00:18:00] is compliant with say something like 5 0 8, where disabled users are able to use it because we followed these guidelines.
Jeremy: This really allows us to innovate really quickly. You can't color outside the lines, but you have a lot of flexibility to implement whatever legislation you would need to implement within our system. And we think that we sort of sit at that intersection of the best of both worlds, where you're able to move fast, but you're not gonna get yourself into trouble by moving too far, uh, along the path.
Yohanna: That's a heavy hitting software that's a heavy hitting like platform that actually like audits itself and tells you, like I, I did a little mini audit. This is why I'm good here.
Ben: Thank you.
Yohanna: It's pretty cool.
Ben: Yeah, it's definitely waves that flag like, oh, you know, we are flexible. You're stretching that flexible, uh, you can do this, but are you sure?
Ben: Right.
Yohanna: So it's, it's one thing to talk about trends. It's one thing to talk about how, you know, AI is fast. It's another to see, you know, things work in the wild. Can each of you maybe share [00:19:00] an example of a project or a solution that you've worked on that made you think like, oh, this actually moved the needle?
Ben: Yeah. And, and actually I'm gonna, I'm gonna geek out a little bit on this one 'cause I, I get really excited about this. So, um. You know, I'm just gonna go out there and say, you know, Pega has been moving, needles left and right here lately. And, uh, you know, I can say that it's, it may say I'm biased by, based on the seat that I'm in, but no, Pega is definitely moving some needles.
Ben: Um, and I'll give you a good example here. Something that just happened right before the holidays. Um, so Pega has a tool, it's called, uh, Pega Blueprint. And uh, you know, it is a generative AI tool that's just. Just incredible. Uh, and it's actually something that we did at ACT IAC when we were there in person.
Ben: That's what our demo booth was about. And you know, we had a steady, steady stream, uh, of folks coming up, you know, wanting to get a demo, wanted to learn more. We had some vendors that even were like, oh man, this is, uh, this is really cool. [00:20:00] Right? So, you know, we were, we're happy about that, but. Uh, but basically if, if all the cool kids at home wanna follow, they can go to www.pega.com/blueprint.
Ben: It's actually a free tool. People can, uh, can try out themselves. Um, all you gotta do is create a free, uh, account@pega.com. And you're in. But basically this generative a AI tool. It's, it's a fantastic way, again, I kept, I keep talking about bridging IT and business, right? There needs to be a common language between the two.
Ben: And this tool does a great job. So me as a business user, I can say, uh, you know, I'm doing this work. All day long, either in the front office, the back office, doesn't matter, and I have this epiphany, I, I need this new application. Or, you know what? This workflow just doesn't make sense. It touches too many hands.
Ben: There's gonna be a better way. I'm not it. So I don't know how to do this though. And every time I talk to my IT department, they are like, I don't understand the words that are coming outta your mouth, right? Yeah, yeah. So what you could [00:21:00] actually use Blueprint for, you can go in there and you can just free type.
Ben: This is, I'm looking for an application that is going to reduce and automate, you know, um, you know, approvals on this, you know, particular task, whatever. Or if you're like, Hey, we've already got something, but it's just not working. You can upload, uh, process flows. You can upload user manuals, BPNs, uh, you can take, uh, video recordings of your existing tool and you can upload it to Blueprint, and, uh, blueprint will take that.
Ben: The generative AI will synthesize, summarize, and say, I understand what you're trying to do. Is this correct? You can kind of proof it for that. From there, you can move forward inside the process and uh, it's automatically gonna build out the workflow. End to end, start to finish all the stages. All the steps.
Ben: It's gonna, uh, take its best guess on what integrations are gonna be required, what the data models are gonna look like, uh, the personas that are involved in order to make that that happen. [00:22:00] Suggest areas that it could be automated or manual, whichever the case. And we're talking, we'll do this in less than five minutes.
Ben: Pretty incredible. Um, you know, most, most of the agencies we work with, if they have an idea for a flow or something that they need improvement on, modernization, whatever, um, they typically go in conference rooms. They meet for months, six months at a minimum, right? Lots of sticky notes, lots of things. And then, then they decide, all right, maybe we'll move forward on this.
Ben: So this is a really powerful way for, you know, either IT or business, but to be able to come up with that idea and then hand over a blueprint. And I think this, oh, I, I, I see what you're trying to accomplish here. I get it. I understand. How about we modify it like this, this will make it a little bit more realistic and these are the other things we need to consider.
Ben: So now you're collaborating on a shared vision and you talk about moving the needle. So, uh, an example, um, you know, right before, uh, I think it was Thanksgiving, um. [00:23:00] We went, we visited one of the agencies at Veteran Affairs and uh, they had about 28 people that came into the session. And we sat down with 'em, gave 'em an overview of the tool.
Ben: Um, we kind of gave 'em a crash course, let 'em test a couple things, and we said, now we want you to dream. We want you to think about this because this group is very, very aware of where they are today and where they want to be in the future. And so they wanted to craft a new vision. Hey, how are we gonna be the flagship?
Ben: For Veteran Affairs, how, how are we gonna do this? How are we gonna get other people to look at us and say, we want to do what they're doing? So they took it really serious and everybody jumped in. It was a fantastic session. And they went way deeper than Jeremy and I thought that they were gonna go, and by the time we walked out of this, they had 30 unique blueprints that they had created.
Ben: Wow. I know. And we were figuring like, oh, maybe we get, you know, a handful. 30 and they're all legit. And, um, you know, so what they're doing now, they're going [00:24:00] through the process of, you know, reviewing these things, prioritizing 'em, hey, what, what makes sense to start shaping and vision, you know, moving this roadmap, you know, forward.
Ben: What are the nice to haves? We'll put those at the bottom, you know, what are some of the midterms? Um, so it's a really awesome way to get everybody on the same page engaged, understanding the tool and shaping, you know, the vision of their mission. So
Yohanna: that's blowing my mind. That's absolutely blowing my mind because it's like, it's one thing to have Chachi pt, right?
Yohanna: And that's like something that civilians understand. We all kind of use it, but then to have it distilled down to exactly what it is that I'm doing and I need, that's like.
Ben: What do you think, Jeremy, what was your, your outcome on that engagement?
Jeremy: Yeah, I like that you brought up the, that workshop that we did.
Jeremy: It was really impressive to see how it resonated, and what blueprint fundamentally does is it removes the barriers to entry for designing the application that you want. There's all these horror stories from projects starting where people have [00:25:00] spent years trying to design a system. Only to realize that the artifact that they created isn't usable.
Jeremy: You'll have say like a mountain of sticky notes on walls, or you'll have thousands of pages of an Excel document that speaks to all the users that are gonna use the system and every screen that's gonna be in the system. But if you're not designing in the system that you're gonna eventually use, there's a loss of translation and a lot of that effort sometimes, unfortunately, gets wasted.
Jeremy: What you get with Blueprint is the ability for someone to go in and design a specific screen, to take a specific user and say, oh, this person has access to this flow, but it can't do reviews. You're able to design the other systems that you're gonna talk to, so you're able to quickly look at the ecosystem you're gonna sit in.
Jeremy: So you're saying if I'm in Veterans Affairs, I'm probably gonna need to be able to talk to all the different hospitals. I'll probably need to be able to talk to the military to ask for service records. It begins to build you this [00:26:00] framework where you don't have to reinvent the wheel each time. Every time I build a system, I'm probably gonna need to send emails.
Jeremy: I'm probably gonna need to talk to other systems. By giving this stuff to you for free at the beginning and guiding you towards how you would design that system, we're able to take everything that we learned the hard way before AI and give it to people as a design document. I know, just backing up a little bit, so we had talked about like how we met at the government conference.
Jeremy: So we had gone there with a bunch of these already pre-created because we knew we were gonna meet with a bunch of different agencies. One of the ones I was most proud of that really resonated was Blueprint gives you the ability to go through any government document and turn it into a consumable artifact and it'll give you like all of these end to end lifecycle flows.
Jeremy: And so there's a ton of thousand page documents all, all across the internet, and they just speak to either legislation or specific requirements that each agency needs to perform. [00:27:00] You can take any one of those thousand page documents. Put it into Blueprint and within two to three minutes you'll have an entire application plan rendered.
Jeremy: So one of the ones that we really thought resonated was with the Department of Buildings, where we were looking at if I want to build a public building, what are the, what are the processes that need to go in there to make that happen? And it spit out some really cool things that really resonated with the client.
Jeremy: So if we were to look at, say, a site selection process, it's, uh, it gave us things that would just, I would never have considered. So it's like doing an environmental assessment, doing geotechnical analysis, making sure that there's enough utilities in the area, doing a community assessment, making sure that you do outreach so that people know that there's gonna be a building in the area and so that they can give input.
Jeremy: Then approving a selection site and sending out the proper documentation to the agencies and different construction companies. What it really does quickly is it churns through a lot of noise and gives you what's really important about [00:28:00] the project that you're about to attempt. I almost like to think of it as, it's almost acting like a consulting agency where you're giving it all of the documentation that you have at your company or at your agency and saying, where are pain points?
Jeremy: Where can we improve? And within a couple of minutes it gives you a couple of pain points that generally I wouldn't have considered.
Yohanna: I love efficiency. It's my favorite. I, I also think like that kind of impact often gets lost in how people talk about this industry from the outside. Like, folks really don't understand all of the work that has to go in.
Yohanna: You know, for government contracting, um, it's often just like really misunderstood. My question is, what, what's a misconception about working in Govtech that you wish, you know, maybe early career professionals better understood, or people on the outside looking in? Understood.
Ben: Yeah. Um, from a seller's perspective, from an account executive, you know, I think the biggest misconception is that, you know, hey, if you're going into into the gov, you know, government's only interested on the lowest price.[00:29:00]
Ben: Right. You know, and I think a lot of people rush to say, oh, no, no, I, I, I can do this, you know, for, for this. You know, because they're just trying to get it in there. And then, and then maybe if there's somebody that, uh, is new to, you know, acquiring software, maybe they're, they're thinking through that lens, right?
Ben: But honestly, reality today, uh, you know, is that they're really moving to a best value model. And the value isn't, isn't, isn't the cost, right? It's not the cheapest solution because that often ends up being the most expensive in the long run, right? Because along with that cheap solution usually comes a lot of technical debt, you know, and, and failed projects.
Ben: Or, oh, you know what? In order to get it, to do what we said it could do, you also need X, Y, and Z in order to make it happen. So these things balloon, right? So, uh, you know. That's the misconception is that they're not looking for just the lowest dollar bid, right? They're really ultimately looking for a partner that understands the mission and they can, uh, deliver a sustainable, [00:30:00] scalable solution.
Ben: So I think it's more about long-term value and not short-term cost
Jeremy: from a technical perspective. Um. What Ben said is that they really were shifting to a much more agile mindset within the government. So it used to be, the idea in government is you join and you create a project that is what we call Waterfall, where you just build a whole application.
Jeremy: Then you release it and you hope it's what people want for obvious reasons. Generally, you would run into problems with that approach, and so one of the best solutions is to move to sort of an agile development process. It used to be that government wouldn't touch agile processes. It was to. Fast. The iterations were too close to each other.
Jeremy: It broke a lot of governance models, but that's not the case anymore. And so with a lot of these low code platforms that we've been using, you're able to design quickly and you can really show value in weeks, not in years. What's cool about this is you get really quick buy-in from a lot of government product owners when they can see that they say a [00:31:00] requirement, and then they see that rendered on a screen quickly, or they see that email or that process designed rapidly, they begin to buy into the mindset of Agile really gives me an advantage to become closer to the application that I actually want to build.
Jeremy: It's really cool seeing, we do it just like, uh, in the commercial sector now. We run sprints, we get user feedback, we iterate. The key for this is, do you just need a platform that's going to give you that governance we spoke about earlier? So you're able to move fast and you're able to be flexible, but you're still governed.
Jeremy: To know that you're following compliance rules.
Yohanna: All right, so I, I wanna move forward a little bit. Um, not in terms of like hype cycles and, but just real time. If, if we fast forward five years, what does success look like for you, you know, personally and for the systems or the in institutions that you guys, uh, support.
Yohanna: What, how, how does, you know Pega systems define success?
Ben: So I think Pega Systems, uh. Define su success. Again, it, it goes back to [00:32:00] the relationships, right? So for five years out, you know, for, for myself, right? Uh, again, I told you, you know, my, my goal is to feel like I am part of that family. And, and they're also, you know, we're just one big happy family, right?
Ben: You know, we, we achieve that by, you know, uh, proving what we say, you know? And so I, I think is, uh, for me, the next five years is understanding that, hey, you know what? We, we don't have, we can do more of the less. That's not a problem. Um, you know, we don't have to throw out everything that we've already invested in.
Ben: We just gotta figure out a better way to orchestrate on top of that, to drive those outcomes that we want. We want, uh, you know, for, for me personally, you know, hey, we've got a problem. I've got an idea. I really don't know where to go. Lemme call Ben and let's see if he's got. An
Jeremy: for the next five years.
Jeremy: For me personally, I just, I'm looking at all the changes that have happened over the past two years. I, there can't have been a more rapid, rapid change of [00:33:00] pace in this industry in the past, and so I just want to stay ahead of it for the next five years and make sure that whatever new technology is coming out, I am working on mastering that.
Jeremy: And then also just making sure that I keep an eye forward. What are the next things that are come, come out in the next year or the next two years? 'cause what we've seen here is being at the leading edge of those things allows you to help your clients prepare and adopt those new technologies. What I want to see from the agencies is, right now they're doing a lot of investing in this base platform.
Jeremy: They're doing, they're building out Modsy modular systems that are gonna allow them to. To build on top of this in the future and make adjustments as legislation changes In five years, what I would like to have is conversations with them where they need to make a change to the system and they're not worried about, oh, how am I gonna make this change?
Jeremy: What they're thinking about is, oh, it's really exciting. We've built this whole ecosystem that's really adaptable and it's really easy to make different changes in [00:34:00] order to keep up with changing legislation.
Yohanna: Yeah, that's, it sounds like you want to anticipate a little bit more. I, I feel like the future, it's gonna be, you know, it's, it won't just be shaped by technology, but it'll be shaped by people and mindsets and, and.
Yohanna: What it sounds like is like you want to kind of stay ahead and anticipate, like what are some skills that you, that you think will separate the next generation of government tech leaders from everyone else? So for,
Ben: for government leaders, I, I think honestly what's gonna separate the next generation of, of, uh, government tech leaders from everyone else are, are the ones who know where they need to go.
Ben: Understand that they don't have to necessarily. Start from scratch, right? Let's, let's reinvent the wheel. Let's build this thing. Let's repave the cow path. Any of those, uh, colloquialisms, right? I think what they're gonna do is say, okay, here's what we have today. How do we best mold this and shape it and orchestrate it to get to the outcomes that we want?
Ben: I think, I think it's the [00:35:00] folks that are gonna be willing to go in what they have, rather than just, Hey, there's a shiny new object. Let me just go try this. This will solve everything.
Yohanna: How about you, Jeremy?
Jeremy: One of the things that I, that I've seen people be successful currently and I think will continue and probably be more important in the future, is just looking across, uh, if I'm in a specific agency, looking to other agencies to see what's working, what's not working, and also within the private sector, what's working, what's not working.
Jeremy: There was a really interesting, um, article that came out that spoke about how the US Department of Defense officials had gone to visit South Korea and they were looking at their shipbuilding enterprises. One of the anecdotes that came out of this was. I think one of the, one of the admirals asked someone from South Korea, well, how do you know, uh, when a ship is gonna be completed?
Jeremy: And they gave them a spec sheet that basically showed we know within a day when the ship will be completed. And it just astounded our leadership because we don't have that specific implementation, uh, [00:36:00] within the US Navy. And this has been a realized, uh, opportunity to bring these solutions in to borrow solutions from the private sector, to borrow solutions from other countries, looking at different ways that we can adapt and this idea of there's always another way to approach something.
Jeremy: There's always other ideas that we can absorb is really powerful. Okay, great.
Yohanna: Yeah. So before we wrap up, um, I wanna come back to something. Maybe more personal again. What genuinely excites you right now, not just about your work, but about the future of government tech as a whole?
Ben: Well, I think from, um, from my perspective, you know, what's, what's exciting is that, you know, I can see a shift out there.
Ben: Um, people are, are more open than what they've been in the past, right? Um, they're looking at things. There was a huge, this wall that went up when people started talking about ai, like, oh no, we can't do this. This is, you know, Skynet, it's gonna take over everything. And, you know, there's the end of [00:37:00] civilization.
Ben: Um, you know, but people are, are wide open now to, um. To embracing it and exploring it. And with that, you know, they're, they're looking for more guidance. Mm-hmm. Right? They know that it's, it's, it's not just coming. It's already, it's already landed. Right. But how do we do this? Uh, give me, give me more examples.
Ben: Let's look, they're, they're really interested in it, right? And it's not just ai, but it's just like, okay, how do we do that? But ultimately at the end, and I know I keep, uh, I keep beating this drum here, but you know, how can we better serve our people? And we're getting those questions all the time. So it's exciting.
Ben: I think, I think we've got some folks in there that aren't afraid to kind of shake the trees a little bit, to kind of go out on the edge and say, no, this is the path forward. This is what we're gonna be doing, this is how we're gonna embrace it. And um, you know, I think it's, I think it's an exciting time.
Ben: 'cause veterans, constituents, members, anybody, however you want to, to, to name 'em, they're kind of demanding more I think now than ever. And I think now you've got some real leaders out there saying, [00:38:00] yes, let's, let's. Let's do this. Yeah.
Jeremy: I think it's exciting for like these agencies that are, that are using this technology to see when a system goes live, the amount of change that it brings in.
Jeremy: So Ben had talked a lot about swivels just not having to go into Excel and copy paste into an email and then send out an email and then record that you've sent that email. Not having to do those tasks. It removes this brain drain where it, it basically exhausts you to do tasks like that, but moving more towards creativity.
Jeremy: You have all of these federal workers who have this large body of knowledge, and they can use that now to solve the more complex tasks as opposed to spend time. Or mind cycles on lower level tasks. Sure.
Yohanna: I think people appreciate AI a little bit more now. I, I, I understand what you were talking about, Ben.
Yohanna: 'cause like, when it first came out, like folks were just like, no, no, no. And then now, like it just, they just needed to try it a little bit. Just like, oh, let me just, let's chat. GPT. Oh, this is, oh, [00:39:00] this helps. Okay, cool. You know. Um, all right, cool. So that's time. Um, I'm gonna ask, you know, if there's a, if, if you wanna stay connected with folks, not just to you, but maybe, you know, this broader conversation, let's point them somewhere concrete.
Yohanna: Um, so for listeners who wanna follow your work or engage in the broader gov govtech conversation, where should they go and how can they, uh, get involved? Yeah.
Ben: So, uh, you know, for anybody that's interested in this, especially, you know, around the topics of blueprint and just, just sound boarding ideas and you know, the art of the possible, you know, uh.
Ben: pega.com is a fantastic resource. Uh, go there. Uh, I tell you, you can, you can sign up for a free Pega account when you're there as well, which gets you into our academy. So you can actually learn more and more about the technologies. Test 'em out, try 'em out. We'll get demos, things like that. Um. Obviously Jeremy and I both live, uh, inside LinkedIn as well, so that, that's a great resource.
Ben: [00:40:00] Uh, you know, we love to chat if you can't tell. So, um, you know, always happy there. Uh, you'll find us popping up at Act I Act. Rumor has it, there may be a blueprint workshop that we're gonna bring to ACT iact to, to where different students, um, agencies and whatnot can come in, actually get hands on inside the, uh, the tool and, uh, you know, help them.
Ben: Figure out what they're, what they've been trying to figure out. So,
Yohanna: oh, that'll be fun. Yeah, that's great. We do a lot of, um, we, we have an academy, we have workshops. That's so, so that's, I love that. I love that idea. I love when folks come in and they do like little mini, you know, demos of like the, their bigger work and stuff.
Yohanna: My favorite, I can geek out all the time.
Ben: Hackathons, whatever. Oh yeah,
Yohanna: hackathons. Yeah. That's great. Yeah.
Jeremy: I just would like to echo again what Ben was talking about with Blueprint. It's like, please, please go to Blueprint, uh, within five minutes from the time you get to the website. You can just drop in any PDF that has any kind of requirements, [00:41:00] uh, for your company.
Jeremy: Uh. And it'll give you an end-to-end application just built straight away. And you can actually click through screens to see what it would look like, like on a mobile phone, on your computer, what a call center would look like. It really is astounding what it does. Yeah. My,
Ben: my
Jeremy: kids,
Ben: uh, at Christmas, um, they said, dad, what do you do?
Ben: So I was giving 'em a run through and I said, Hey, why don't you try this? And they, you know. Uh, teens nowadays are way more advanced than I think I, you know, it's just crazy. But anyway, they built a, a santa tracking tool inside Boo. Oh, what? Yeah, so, so you could, you could do all sorts of things in there for fun.
Ben: So it's, it's worth kicking around.
Yohanna: Oh, that's so fun. Like, and it worked, and like, it showed them like, oh, this is where he w he was. He or he'd be, or like,
Ben: oh, hey, what wish Whatcha looking for? What sort of toy? Okay, we're gonna assign this to, you know, elf number. Yeah. You know, 58 and we're going to, you know, hey, by the way, it's in production at the North Pole, you know, whatever.
Ben: So it's, it's pretty neat. Well,
Yohanna: [00:42:00] that's so cool. 'cause I'm over here thinking like, oh, you know, blueprint is for government stuff. And then, and then you're like, no, no, no. It's, it's for anything like your, your creativity is really what Powers blueprint, you know? That's really cool. I like it. I love it.
Speaker 4: All right, cool.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much for your time.
Yohanna: Our pleasure. Thank you,
Jeremy: Hannah.
Speaker 4: Thank you for joining us on this episode of The Buzz. Stay tuned for more conversations and insights in future episodes. Until next time, stay curious and connected.