Government Automation: A Path to Digital Transformation

For government agencies, continuous modernization is quickly becoming the norm. In recent years, modernizing in cloud environments is now mission-critical.

In this blog, we'll give an overview of how government automation helps agencies modernize, and how modernization through automation helps them provide better services with less manual effort.

What is Government Automation?

Government automation is the use of automation in a government agency's IT and infrastructure to reduce manual work and help them make better use of their resources. Essentially, government automation helps governments do more with less by automating work that might otherwise be done manually.

The list of challenges facing government IT admins seems to grow daily. It’s more complicated than ever to ensure new (and legacy) systems remain stable and meet the necessary government compliance and security standards.

Because of the typical government patchwork systems with years of convoluted interdependencies built in, new system rollouts often come with very real concerns around what will break downstream. Manual management (and the associated human tax) become very real obstacles to fast-track modernization efforts. One-time fixes and custom solutions aren’t sustainable strategies in this kind of environment. An intelligent modern automation fabric is required.

The Benefits of Government Automation for Modernization

When successfully implemented, automation offers many benefits in how government agencies operate and deliver on their missions. It improves efficiency and reduces costs, providing better services to stakeholders. Change is difficult, of course, and modernization is no different.

Automation Helps Manage Complex Government Systems

Most agency IT environments are highly complex. Systems span cloud, virtual machines, bare metal, and containers, and can be running many different platforms. This diversity presents significant challenges to management, patching, and upgrading.

Government Automation Provides Necessary Flexibility

The systems that comprise technology in government infrastructure are becoming faster and more complex and need to be serviced properly. They require a high level of flexibility and agility. Infrastructure that doesn’t support continuous change creates bottlenecks and reduced performance.

Automation Helps Mitigate Risk in Government Infrastructure

Rising bad actor threats are driving security standards to increase almost daily, requiring constant monitoring and patching. Patching by itself comes with risk. New code changes run the possibility of damaging mission-critical systems and negatively impacting agency performance.

How an Automation Fabric Helps Your Agency

Configuring, deploying, and maintaining these systems is tedious and resource intensive. Government automation helps IT departments handle those concerns. From efficiency and management to compliance, security, and enforcement, infrastructure automation underpins the most essential functions of a government's approach to modernization. It gives IT the structure and tools they need to shoulder the burden of securing and managing a government agency's IT and infrastructure.

The impacts of an effective automation fabric are wide-ranging. The system will remove boundaries and identify issues before they happen. The fabric enables IT administrators to move applications and self-serve easily. An effective automation fabric will:

• Eliminate manual administrative tasks, removing mission bottlenecks
• Enable applications to move to cloud environments easily
• Eliminate silos and accelerate deployments
• Encourage knowledge-sharing and shared automation expertise
• Automate rollouts and desired state management, reducing costs
• Enforce security standards and compliance and proactively identify and fix potential issues
• Prioritize and remediate vulnerabilities
• Create checks for failed automation actions

What Your Government Automation Fabric Needs

A modern automation fabric must operate across all systems and environments and be scalable. It will operate in real-time and increase security standards. It will, most of all, be a burst to agency IT departments, who will experience a significant reduction of manual burdens. More specifically, next-gen automation fabric:

• Includes event-driven automation that can respond and act in real-time
• Works equally well in cloud and hybrid environments
• Automates workflows with orchestration across all systems
• Automates security monitoring and vulnerability management
• Enables self-service automation

A Government Automation Platform for the Modern World

Automation platforms have come a long way from their early days. The modern automation fabric plays a vital role in accelerating digital programs. This includes a comprehensive suite of functionality for event-driven automation, vulnerability mitigation, native cloud orchestration, role-based access control, and much more. Federal agencies adopting this next generation of automation platforms can experience a much faster rollout of their modernization programs, while containing program costs and minimizing downtime risks.

Puppet Enterprise provides full stack automation and scales across thousands of servers seamlessly. It combines event- and task-based automation for maximum flexibility and tests code before integration to ensure successful deployments. Dozens of federal agencies use it, and a community of thousands supports it with insights and custom-built modules. Puppet Enterprise works with the vast majority of core technology and is the ideal platform to support government automation fabrics.

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Learn More

• Recap how automation can help government agencies with compliance and security.
• Read our blog on government risk management.
• Read about ensuring compliance with government standards like DISA STIGs and more.
• Read about the importance of a Puppet + Carahsoft partnership for government agencies.