PUBLIC TRUST AND ACCOUNTABILITY
Building and maintaining public trust is critical for federal agencies. Issues such as data breaches, misconduct, or failures in service delivery can erode public confidence. Agencies must prioritize transparency, accountability, and effective communication to regain and sustain public trust.
TECHNOLOGY TRANSFORMATION
Rapid advancements in technology require agencies to effectively leverage digital tools. However, outdated legacy systems, cybersecurity threats, the rapid pace of technological change and disruption, and limited organic IT capabilities make it difficult to implement state-of-the-art technologies to their full potential.
BUDGETARY CONSTRAINTS
Limited resources often pose a hurdle for federal agencies. Tight and uncertain budgets can impede an agency’s ability to invest in critical programs, hire skilled personnel, and modernize outdated infrastructure, hindering their operational efficiency and effectiveness.
TALENT ACQUISITION AND RETENTION
Attracting and retaining skilled workers is a persistent burden for federal agencies. Competition from the private sector and burdensome hiring processes can make it difficult to recruit qualified professionals, particularly in specialized fields such as cybersecurity, data analytics, and emerging technologies. It is imperative to adopt new strategies to effectively bridge the skills gap.
Why Avasant?
Avasant is a global research, advisory, and management consulting firm. Grounded in referenceable facts and data, we offer IT research and data subscriptions, comprehensive IT benchmarking services, strategic sourcing assistance, contract and supplier governance support, business and digital transformation consulting, and organizational change management, as well as portfolio/program/project evaluation and management services. Avasant can help federal government agencies leverage its research materials, benchmarking collateral and utilities, and subject matter expertise to address several key strategic, financial, and operational challenges:
BENCHMARKING ANALYSIS
Avasant can conduct comprehensive benchmarking studies to compare an agency’s performance against industry peers, best practices, and leading commercial organizations. Our AvaMark benchmarking services include IT spend analysis, business process benchmarking, TCO benchmarks, rate cards for a variety of job positions, software license and subscription pricing, service provider pricing benchmarks, and more. This analysis can identify opportunities for improvement and optimize costs.
STRATEGIC SOURCING
Avasant can assist agencies in establishing acquisition plans, conducting market research, and evaluating service provider capabilities for both IT managed services and business process outsourcing. Our sourcing consultants provide guidance throughout the acquisition lifecycle, from developing a sourcing strategy, building a business case, and writing RFPs to facilitating the procurement, strengthening due diligence, and managing the transition.
CHANGE MANAGEMENT SUPPORT
Implementing benchmarking or transformation initiative recommendations often requires change within the organization. Avasant can provide change management support, helping agencies effectively navigate organizational and cultural challenges to ensure successful adoption of new practices and processes.
CONTRACT AND SUPPLIER GOVERNANCE
Our strategic sourcing services do not end with a signed contract. Our suite of managed services provides a structured and cost-effective way to maximize supplier contract value as well as consulting services to strategically manage the vendor portfolio. Our professionals provide best practices and automation to align supplier relationships with business objectives, promote operational transparency, and better manage vendor contracts, all while lowering the cost of supplier and contract governance.
BUSINESS AND DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION
Our management consultants can assist agencies in formulating business and IT improvement strategies based on benchmarking results. This may involve recommending specific changes to processes, technologies, or resource allocation to achieve desired outcomes. We can also provide recommendations for IT governance, project management, cybersecurity, modernization, and digital transformation initiatives based on our assessment and benchmarking insights.
The federal government must dedicate itself to delivering services that are more mission focused, citizen centric, technology enabled, data driven, and fact based. To do this successfully, agencies must prioritize ethical conduct and public engagement, embrace digital transformation, adopt new staffing models, and improve efficiency and effectiveness amidst constrained funding. By addressing these challenges head-on, and with Avasant as their trusted advisor, federal agencies can better serve the needs of the nation and its citizens as they empower beyond.
CASE STUDY
The Federal government began deploying the Technology Business Management (TBM) taxonomy in FY 2018. Since then, executive branch agencies have been using this framework to collect, categorize, and report their IT financial data to comply with Office of Management and Budget (OMB) requirements. In 2020, one agency decided to conduct a benchmarking study to gain additional value from their ongoing TBM program implementation efforts. Utilizing data already captured as part of TBM-related activities to the greatest extent possible, our benchmarking consultants calculated values for selected IT metrics and compared agency results to our Computer Economics IT spending and staffing benchmarks and IT best practices. Results showed that TBM benefits are amplified when coupling the information with a benchmarking approach to enable transparency, comparative analysis, strategic insights, improved IT operations, and tangible cost savings. Based on the benchmarking results, the agency followed up with specific actions to address variances with the benchmarks. For example, end user computing metrics showed agency spending to equip staff with job-essential devices was well above that for their peer group. The CIO took a closer look at current practices and developed alternatives for achieving a more cost-effective solution, leading to role-based tiered kitting and pursuit of vendor rationalization and price reduction efforts.
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Martin Croxton
PRINCIPAL & FEDERAL PRACTICE LEAD