Digital Transformation for Modern Government

While public sector leaders recognize the value that cloud technology offers, many wrestle with how best to take the leap. Government agencies—whether at the national, state, or local level—acknowledge that modernization with new technologies and future-proofing existing infrastructure is critical. And yet rapid cloud adoption remains a challenge for many organizations based on security and compliance, budgetary realities, and even a basic understanding of what roadmaps exist to move to the cloud.

But digital transformation isn’t slowing. Outdated IT infrastructure, which is susceptible to sophisticated cyberattacks, and increasing citizen demand for consumer-like experiences, are driving the need for change. Modern technology solutions are enabling governments to streamline the development, deployment, and delivery of new services helping agencies save valuable time and money. This ongoing digital paradigm is resulting in increased citizen expectations where quality, value, ease of use, and transparency are the norm.

IT leaders must streamline business efficiencies and minimize risk—from compliance and assurance to the security of systems and disaster recovery. Equally important is the government’s need to leverage technology as an enabler of change to provide modern citizen experiences using new technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), natural language interfaces, and image processing, while improving outcomes through the use of predictive analytics.

Oracle has provided mission-critical technology solutions to the public sector for more than 40 years—fostering innovation that allows institutions to perform their missions securely, cost-effectively, and at scale. Oracle Generation 2 Cloud Infrastructure is helping agencies meet the challenges of a citizen-centered and data-enabled government. From a compliance perspective, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure has achieved the necessary certifications for key security standards and compliance mandates in the US and many countries across the globe.

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure for government

Oracle customers across government and education, including commercial contractors, rely on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure to accelerate the migration of on-premise workloads, modernize business processes with new applications, and safely drive technology innovation in the cloud.

This ebook explores the trends and issues shaping government cloud adoption. It offers vital considerations as agencies consider cloud migration—addressing security, data management, and autonomous efficiency—all built on one platform.

The Role of Technology Across Government

From cloud-first to cloud-smart, government agencies continue to make progress on IT modernization. Building a strong case to obtain funds for cloud technology remains a challenge for many agencies. To compound the problem, new regulations focused on data privacy have further slowed adoption as agencies seek to maintain citizen trust.

Digital transformation in government remains an evolving journey for many agencies. What is essential to defense and intelligence agencies might not apply to some civilian government organizations or even those at the state and local level. And public sector leaders continue to learn from the private sector—whether it’s creating innovative mobile experiences for constituents, improving service wait times, or more effectively dealing with sophisticated cyberattacks.

Federal civilian and defense.

Federal agencies have been slow to move to the cloud based on security concerns and budget constraints. According to Bloomberg Government, the US federal government plans to move more than 270 information technology programs to the cloud in 2020, with 1,000 more migrations planned in the future. Federal civilian and defense agencies also face unique requirements impacting their roadmap, such as regulatory compliance, data sovereignty, security accreditations, and unique procurement policies. These factors are making hybrid cloud and multicloud options more mainstream across federal agencies. Systems integration and compatibility-related bottlenecks are also fueling the rise in hybrid cloud deployments.

Federal agencies use cloud to improve citizen services

Cybersecurity threats remain the top issue at the federal level. Compounded by outdated infrastructure, exponential growth in data, and a shortage of IT security experts, federal agencies are aggressively looking to address the challenge. Federal agencies can stay ahead of threats through integrated and secure cloud solutions built with identity management and robust access controls.

Intelligence.

The US Intelligence Community was an early adopter of cloud computing, quickly realizing its value. Today, they are expanding the technology model by moving to a multicloud environment. Intelligence agencies need the speed and agility that cloud provides, but they also have unique requirements, including the ability to operate on closed networks.

Intelligence agencies rely on the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) and Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) Impact-level authorizations and typically layer on additional requirements to protect mission-critical data at all levels of security, including Secret, Top Secret, and Special Access Program. Advanced capabilities, such as isolated network virtualization, improve network performance and increase security by greatly reducing the potential attack surface.

Moving mission-critical, physically isolated, and data-intensive systems to the cloud has been challenging. This is why major global cloud service providers are investing heavily to support the Intelligence Community’s demand and requirements for cloud computing. Once in the cloud, intelligence agencies will look to take advantage of emerging technologies, such as autonomous computing, AI and machine learning, blockchain, and more.

Oracle’s focus on national security

State and local government.

Thoughtful state and local government leaders recognize that citizens demand experiences consistent with their best consumer engagements. This includes personalized digital encounters available 24/7 on any platform. However, state and local agencies must balance their aim to offer new digital services without compromising citizen privacy and security. Often, more security is not necessarily better security.

Municipalities continue to face a wide range of cyberattacks, such as ransomware, with safeguards in place. In 2019, more than 70 state and local governments were successfully infected, according to data from CNET.¹

These organizations are often understaffed and struggling to maintain antiquated systems, which has led to undesirable results: Public sector organizations pay 10 times the average ransom to retrieve their data. Recently, the US Conference of Mayors passed a resolution to refuse ransomware payments in an effort to dissuade attackers. However, without the modernization of their IT services, they will continue to be highly vulnerable targets. Only 60 percent of 402 IT state and local security practitioners consider their cybersecurity program to be mature.²

Today, state agencies store massive amounts of sensitive constituent data—social security numbers, healthcare records, and driver license records—not to mention law enforcement and infrastructure data. Technology advancements facilitate the capture of increasing amounts of data, creating challenges of management, protection, and security. Most ransomware attacks are a result of hackers taking advantage of security exploits in vulnerable software, system, and networks. And every attack generates operational downtime, citizen frustration, and financial loss.

With increasing cybersecurity risks, growing demand for high availability, and the need for regulatory compliance, state and local governments are also actively considering cloud-based data backup and disaster recovery solutions. The goal is to offer end-to-end data protection across their entire computing infrastructure, including applications and operating systems.

Smarter security for a protected government

Higher education.

Institutions of higher learning are under pressure to deliver results. Colleges and universities face the challenge of diminished funding in an environment of escalating tuition prices and degree programs that, on the surface, may not correlate with traditional career paths.

The acceleration and consumerization of technology is reshaping expectations by college administrators, faculty, students, and prospects. Instant, uninterrupted, secure, and mobile access to a school’s system is now expected. Yet each audience brings with it numerous devices that tax campus networks that are already choked by simultaneous demands for speed, storage, and hefty downloads.

For large institutions, research is their lifeblood, driving breakthroughs on global issues, garnering acclaim, and attracting funding. However, today’s research initiatives are becoming more sophisticated and costly. They are being examined through the lens of faculty performance and student achievement, increasing the need for more accountability.

To store an unparalleled avalanche of structured and unstructured data, today’s information repositories must be highly secure, scalable, and cost-effective—making cloud-based technology for data storage and retrieval an attractive option.

Oracle helps higher education enrich the teaching and learning experience

¹ Ransomware Froze More Cities in 2019. Next Year is a Toss-Up
² State of Cybersecurity in Local, State, and Federal Government

The Need for Compliance and Governance

Regulatory compliance has traditionally been viewed as a checklist of rules and controls. However, it is now considered the first line of defense in cloud computing. Both in the United States and globally, compliance regulations have helped foster increased trust between the cloud provider community and government agencies.

Many organizations that handle data need to use FedRAMP-authorized cloud resources. Regulated platforms, applications, and regions of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure further enable governments to easily embrace these standards as they move to the cloud.

Governments often implement standards to promote quality, consistency, interoperability, and above all, security. These same technical standards for the cloud are implemented by Oracle across infrastructure, platform, and applications. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure offers comprehensive certification for the most stringent global cloud standards, including:

• US FedRAMP – Federal Risk Authorization and Management Program
• US DISA-SRG – Defense Information Systems Agency Security Requirements Guide
• US HIPAA – Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act
• EU GDPR – General Data Protection Regulation
• UK NCSC – National Cyber Security Centre Cyber Essentials Plus
• Japan FISC – Financial Industry Information Systems Security Guidelines
• SOC – Systems and Organizational Control Compliance SOC 1, SOC 2, SOC 3
• PCI DSS – Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard
• ISO – International Standards Organization 27001:2013

Oracle has also defined a set of best practices and methodologies that are applied continuously throughout the compliance certification process. These include:

• Maintaining accuracy in definitions of system boundaries and assuring completeness of inventory
• Applying appropriate sampling methodologies to sponsors for accurate assessments
• Identifying potential vulnerabilities to avoid operational delays in service
• Monitoring suspicious user activities that will impact security
• Developing comprehensive multifactor authentication systems incorporating remote access methods, local network access, and physical access

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure has been authorized by both the US Department of Defense and FedRAMP to handle workloads up to DISA Impact Level 5 and is currently undergoing an Authorization to Operate for classified operations.

Oracle Cloud compliance

CARE, a global nonprofit operating in more than 100 countries, uses financial management software running on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure to meet complex grant and compliance requirements from global donors. CARE estimates that running its software on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure will help save US$250,000 annually—freeing up budget for essential items such as food, medicine, and other critical aid.

"With the support of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, we are accelerating our ability to meet our complex regulatory and compliance requirements to satisfy our global donor base." —Madhu Deshmukh, Senior Director, CARE

The Growing Threat of Cyberattacks

Despite the need for improved performance and agility, cloud security remains the critical mission goal for agencies across government. Over the past five years, the importance of security within IT administration has only risen. An increasing number of data breaches, ransomware attacks, and identity thefts have created a significant threat across government data centers.

To understand the magnitude of this threat, consider the below statistics.

• Hackers attempt data breaches every 39 seconds, on average 2,244 times a day³
• The average cost of a data breach will exceed US$150 million in 2020⁴
• Nearly two-thirds of all publicly known ransomware attacks in the United States in 2019 have targeted state or local governments⁵
• 74% of federal agencies are ranked “at risk” or “high risk” on cybersecurity⁶
• There will be as much as 3.5 million unfilled cybersecurity jobs in the United States by 2021⁷

As the custodians of personal data of its citizens, US federal civilian and defense agencies are some of the biggest targets of foreign agencies and other malicious actors. They serve as the enabler of critical missions and operations—handling sensitive communications at classified levels.

State and local agencies also hold vast amounts of citizen data. Citizens also interact more frequently with local government systems, making cybersecurity a major focus for their leaders. Studies suggest that states’ capabilities to detect, prevent, contain, and recover from a cyberattack remain nearly half of those in the federal government—including their budget commitments.

The complex cybersecurity landscape—roles, responsibilities, and interagency relationships—make the development of sound policies and practices a challenge. Evolving regulations and initiatives, such as the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) and the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative (CNCI)—adopted over the last decade are shaping objectives and tasks related to the protection of high-value assets and information. These initiatives have established the importance of recruitment and retention of specialized talent, and the acquisition and deployment of new technologies.

Oracle offers a comprehensive approach to cybersecurity with protection overlays on data, instances, virtual networks, and edge services with constant AI-based monitoring. The security offered by Oracle Cloud Infrastructure is designed to help meet the stringent standards required in the public sector.

Oracle and KPMG cloud threat report

Managing data.

Large data volumes generated and retained by the public sector pose an increased security challenge. AI and autonomous technologies are at the forefront of managing and securing this data from external and internal threats. Specifically, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure helps remove the need for manual intervention to secure data with automated maintenance, patching, and control, substantially minimizing risk and exposure.

Managing access.

Providing secure and transparent access to accurate information is a crucial responsibility of governments. Fine-grained access control, multifactor authentications, and single sign-on across agencies are essential to provide modern interactions with citizens and businesses alike.

Managing multicloud environments.

Oracle Cloud security solutions are helping public sector organizations manage stakeholders and application interfaces with controlled governance and oversight. These services can span multiple cloud boundaries that exist within government and externally.

Gulf Monetary Council (GMCO), an intergovernmental political union in the Persian Gulf, was using a costly, on-premise ERP solution that had issues with both security and availability. In just three months, GMCO moved their ebusiness suite to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. As a result, the organization experienced a 90 percent reduction in deployment time and the highest security safeguards. GMCO did not experience any breach incidents—compared to 10 incidents annually before moving to Oracle.

"After migrating from on-premises to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, the performance has doubled. We are now considering optimizing cloud adoption with other use cases in the near future." —Saleh Al Rowis, Chief Information Officer, GMCO

³ Hackers Attack Every 39 Seconds
⁴ Board-Level Update On Cyber Risk
⁵ Report: Two-Thirds of Ransomware Attacks in 2019 Targeted State and Local Government
⁶ Federal Cybersecurity Risk Determination Report and Action Plan
⁷ Cybersecurity Labor Crunch to Hit 3.5 Million Unfilled Jobs by 2021

Technology Built for Tomorrow

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure offers a modern, secure, and cost-effective platform to deliver egovernment services with confidence. Oracle’s technology platform is unique in its comprehensive cloud computing portfolio, including application development, business analytics, data management, integration, security, and emerging technologies, such as AI and blockchain.

Oracle helps agencies move vast workloads securely to the cloud and realize cost and operational benefits in contrast to other providers. Migrating workloads to Oracle Cloud for government can reduce TCO by up to 50 percent. As a result, government agencies will be in a better position to progressively and seamlessly transfer business functions to software-as-a-service cloud portfolios.

Migrating enterprise workloads to the cloud

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure offers various levels of compliance applicable for the government region and its specific isolation requirements. Further, Oracle national security regions are mission-built to maximize data sovereignty to protect Secret- and Top-Secret classified workloads

Oracle also helps agencies consume platform services in an elastic fashion across a broad range of capabilities, including security, data integration, DevOps, storage, analytics, document management, identity and access, emerging technologies, and more. This end-to-end functionality provides the public sector with a modern and cost-effective approach for technology adoption.

Data integration and analytics.

With public sector applications increasingly moving to the cloud, managing, integrating, and analyzing data is a challenging task. Oracle solutions, such as Autonomous Database and Autonomous Data Warehouse, leverage AI to streamline the management, patching, and upgrading of large volumes of data. This process is done with minimal human interaction to ensure a higher degree of security to protect citizen data.

With Oracle data integration, governments have the power to connect cloud and on-premise applications, automate business processes, and build web and mobile applications—all in one place. Oracle also helps agencies provide controlled access for external users on select applications to offer an additional layer of security.

Oracle’s analytics solutions use AI to help government agencies explore data through interactive visualizations and analyze high volumes of data via custom reports in the cloud. Oracle’s expertise in analytics also helps the public sector in discovery, preparation, business intelligence, data science, and Internet of Things (IoT) analysis.

Intelligent automation in government

Application development.

With the popularization of DevOps for rapid application development and testing, governments are looking to deliver targeted and personalized services to meet modern citizen demands. By leveraging DevOps, agencies can more easily achieve IT agility, drive cost efficiency, and reduce shadow IT. Oracle provides a range of application development cloud services, including application containers, mobile development platforms, visual builder tools, and Java cloud extensions. Oracle Consulting services can help agencies develop a path to the cloud based on their specific technology and security requirements.

Emerging technologies.

New technologies are bringing digital disruption to the forefront of government service delivery. This is fueled by citizens seeking better public experiences through collaborative, open, and transparent government entities. Emerging technologies, such as AI, blockchain, autonomous services, digital assistants, IoT, and deep analytics, are incorporated into Oracle Cloud Platform.

Trusted transactions are an essential part of government service delivery—spanning civic registries, boarder control, food and drug administration, titles and conveyancing, academic credentials, supply chain traceability, payments, currency, and more. They also protect data and transactions while giving transparency to government processes.

Oracle Blockchain Platform delivers open, transparent, and secure transactions involving multiple stakeholders and trust ledgers. It also allows trusted parties to participate and observe verifiable transactions with full transparency.

With digital assistants, governments can significantly improve citizen service delivery with accuracy and consistency. This can augment peak service demands and reduce frustrating wait times, which are prevalent across government contact centers and digital platforms.

The University of Adelaide admissions office couldn’t answer questions about the eligibility of prospective students from outside of the country. In addition to providing a poor customer experience, the university lost out on the opportunity to admit segments of eligible students. University of Adelaide implemented Oracle Digital Assistant to help improve the selection process for portions of students. The chatbots earned a top rating by 80 percent of the students—improving engagement and automating a historically manual process.

"That’s all it took—no integration with other cloud services or back-end systems at the university. The chatbot was built to do one job very well. The students’ needs are simple on that day, they just want the number, and we were able to deliver that." —Catherine Cherry, Director of Prospect Management, University of Adelaide

Disaster Recovery: Plan for the Future

As cloud adoption gains momentum, government IT departments need to better plan to get back on their feet quickly following an emergency. A disaster can be anything that puts data and applications at risk—from network outages, equipment failures, and natural disasters to a cyberbreach causing permanent data loss.

Data availability, growing cyberthreats, and compounded data losses from previous cyberattacks are pressuring governments to re-evaluate their existing disaster recovery measures in the face of technological advancements. As more agencies strive to achieve their IT modernization goals, disaster recovery should become a central part of their overall cloud migration strategy.

A comprehensive disaster recovery plan takes into account infrastructure, threats and vulnerabilities, and mission-critical assets. It also addresses how data and applications will be restored to continue service as quickly as possible. Built with maximum-availability architecture principles, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure can help agencies meet their disaster recovery goals.

Data backup and recovery.

Having a comprehensive data backup and recovery strategy is critical for all agencies. While devising an effective disaster recovery plan, governments should also weigh the pros and cons of the type of backup options that meet their specific requirements.

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure offers a highly secure, scalable cloud solution for storing backups from Oracle and third-party databases and applications. It helps agencies avoid the disruption and risks of data loss while meeting long-term data retention requirements for regulatory compliance. With zero hardware investment and flexible subscription models, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure can also help reduce an agency’s overall disaster recovery spending.

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure enables flexible backups from on premise to the cloud. Administrative headaches can be eliminated with automated backup and recovery. More importantly, agency data is fully protected with encryption and immediately available for recovery.

Saint Paul Public Schools, the second largest K–12 school district in Minnesota, faced performance issues with their servers that led to significant downtime and poor allocation of staff resources. To modernize the data center, the school district replaced their servers with Oracle Database Appliance and moved their nonproduction systems and disaster recovery to Oracle Cloud.

"We are able to refresh our databases four times faster and reduce infrastructure, hardware acquisition, and facility costs by 75 percent each. Knowing that Oracle is there and supports us really gives me peace of mind." —Jeff Cummings, Business Systems Support Manager, Saint Paul Public Schools

Oracle Customers Lead the Way

Oracle’s footprint in the public sector spans several decades with thousands of customers across state and local, federal, and global governments—including K–12 and higher-education institutions.

The state of Texas moves to cloud.

The state of Texas turned to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure to modernize its enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. Leaders at the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts identified four key objectives for the move to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure: projected 50 percent cost savings, improved system performance, support for high application availability, and the ability to add agencies without a major installation effort or architecture change.

With the early results looking favorable, the project team plans to expand its capabilities to include Oracle’s PeopleSoft Mobile Expenses module, which will eliminate paper forms and accelerate processing of employee reimbursement. The team is also exploring cloud-based chatbots to automate answers for common employee inquiries and reduce support calls within the agencies. By 2023, Texas will leverage Oracle Cloud Infrastructure to support accounting, personnel, and payroll applications for more than 100 state agencies, 156,000 full-time equivalent employees, and nearly US$99 billion in spending.

"The proof-of-concept testing gave us more confidence that the change to Oracle Cloud would be successful." —Sandra Woodruff, Deputy Director of Fiscal Management, Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts

Texas chooses Oracle Cloud to deliver statewide ERP system

Los Angeles County Office of the Assessor cuts costs and goes digital.

Los Angeles County, the country’s largest county with more than 10 million people, decided to move from on-premise software to cloud-based applications to manage citizen tax records. In doing so, the Los Angeles County Assessor's Office initiated its Assessment Modernization Project, which involved moving more than 100 software and system portfolio assets to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. The modernization project covered the county’s portal, which provides search access to records, maps, and photos—used by 12 departments involved in property taxation, from the treasurer and tax collector to the public health department.

The Assessor’s Office selected Oracle Cloud Infrastructure to support software development, testing, and large-scale deployment. So far, the results have been impressive. The pay-for-use model for its cloud infrastructure led to cost savings over their owned data center approach. It has also offered the county new capabilities, such as leveraging Oracle Cloud Digital Assistants to help the public get fast answers to property tax questions.

"In addition to being the most responsive to our requests, the fact that we'd have one company to work with was a significant draw." —Steven Hernandez, Assistant Assessor, Los Angeles County

Los Angeles County brings tech innovation to property tax complexity

Colegio de Bachilleres cuts costs through modernization.

Colegio de Bachilleres is a secondary school administrated by the Mexican Federal Government with offices across the country. The school needed a modern platform that could support the high volume of access to their systems concurrently, including administration and management, certification exams, library, and educational virtual resources.

Facing rising costs and security vulnerabilities with student data, Colegio de Bachilleres turned to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. With Oracle, the school improved performance by 40 percent, enhanced coherent security, and eliminated the need for additional operational costs, such as electricity. The new solution also helped the school save US$210,000 in expenses while providing secure and real-time access to tens of thousands of school records.

"Refreshing our entire technology infrastructure would have been more complex, time-consuming, and expensive than migrating to Oracle Cloud—and since we are financed by federal resources, the budget impact was a crucial factor in our decision. With Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, we now have one of the best worldwide solutions at an affordable cost." —Noé Reynoso Rojas, Director of Statistics and Information and Communication Technologies, Colegio de Bachilleres

Colegio de Bachilleras improves security and performance

Additional Resources and Information

To learn more about Oracle Cloud Infrastructure within the public sector, we’ve provided a complete selection of relevant assets with helpful product and industry information.

Oracle Gen2 Cloud—Do More with Data

Discover how can Oracle Cloud Infrastructure helps agencies streamline migration of mission-critical workloads to the cloud, automating manual IT tasks, and meet government compliance mandates.

Visit the website

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Security Architecture White Paper

This white paper describes how Oracle Cloud Infrastructure meets the security requirements of enterprises and customers who run critical and sensitive workloads.

Read the white paper

Oracle Public Sector Ebook

Explore how urbanization and population growth are increasing pressure on the public sector, and how the emergence of smart cities and smart governments will help to enhance resource efficiency.

Read the ebook

Oracle and KPMG Cloud Threat Report

This cloud threat report examines emerging cybersecurity challenges and risks that businesses are facing as they embrace cloud services at an accelerating pace.

Read the report

Oracle Gov360 Analytics Webinar

Hear Oracle analytics success stories directly from our leading public sector customers. This webinar features senior government officials from Maine, Las Vegas, and San Joaquin County.

Watch our webinar

Oracle Consulting Services Capabilities Document

Learn how Oracle Soar provides you with cloud experts that leverage a proven, proprietary, automated migration solution to efficiently and rapidly move workloads to Oracle Cloud with near-zero downtime.

Read the capabilities document

Oracle Identity and Access Management White Paper

Learn best practices for using the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Identity and Access Management service when you are planning, designing, and deploying solutions on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

Read the white paper

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