Federal agencies are eager to use the latest and best technologies.
“Within their budgetary constraints, they are looking to sustain the mission while innovating with disruptive technology,” said Roger Nichols. That means, for example, embracing artificial intelligence applications, which in turn requires improved access to data. “One of the biggest issues they have is in making data more discoverable and accessible.”
As chief growth officer at Freedom Technology Solutions Group, Nichols is helping federal agencies, particularly within the intelligence community, to tackle these interrelated challenges.
The team at Freedom brings to the table expertise in DevOps, cloud modernization and end-to-end data management ⏤ “the tagging, the labeling, how you treat that data, how you make it discoverable,” he said.
Through data-agnostic modernization efforts, “we’ve built dissemination services that work through some of those large data issues,” Nichols said.
For example, AI-supported matching helps users find the data they need more quickly and efficiently. All this is done while supporting data security, whether it’s role-based access control, fine-grained object-based or attribute based.
“We bring all of those together for a total data security methodology,” he said.
To better manage the data supply chain, Freedom gives its IC clients real-time dashboard views of data quality consumption, choke points and demand signals, while continuously enriching the metadata, Nichols said.
“That ensures we’re evolving the data, keeping pace with the mission need as data becomes more discoverable,” he said.
While many in the GovCon space are seeking to solve these same problems, Nichols said Freedom’s early investment in the space is a competitive differentiator.
“We have a production environment that’s been operating within the last five years within the IC,” he said. “It is fully accredited and being utilized on missions today.”
This offers IC agencies the chance to hit the ground running.
“We’ve already gone through a lot of these security channels,” Nichols said, and Freedom’s authority to operate can be leveraged across community. “We can demonstrate its abilities to other customers and they can leverage and exploit what’s already been built, tailored and customized to their environments,” he added.
Building off Freedom’s multiyear investment in these capabilities, “you can be looking at three-month implementation, as opposed to a four- or five-year timeline for development,” Nichols added.
To drive Freedom’s growth, Nichols said he’s looking first to maximize opportunities within the existing client base.
“We’re really suspicious of the idea that you need a new opportunity to innovate. You should be innovating within your current vehicles,” he said. To that end, “we’ve held on to a lot of our contracts for multiple contract reiterations, and that has served us well.”
To maximize the opportunity that this presents, a GovCon needs to be an active listener. It’s about “paying attention to what the customers are saying: Talking to the mission customers, making sure that you’re aware of what their requirements are and then hopefully being able to leverage our proven solutions in other places,” Nichols said. “We are focusing on what the customer’s acquisition teams are telling us, and which [needs]we can align to where we can actually bring them a significant improvement in their operations.”
Right now, a lot of those conversations focus on the potential benefit of AI and machine learning.
“This is very much a priority, and it goes back to the budgetary constraints,” he said. By implementing AI-driven solutions in low-risk areas such as administrative operations, “they can reduce cost and expense on the backside, and focus their dollars more on the mission side, the tip-of-the-spear type operations.”
For Freedom, there’s a big opportunity here to help agencies. “We can take those systems that are in-house and on-prem, and make them more of a commodity service, freeing up resources to do other things,” Nichols said.
In pursuit of those goals, Nichols’ biggest challenge is closing the skills gaps. It’s not just about ensuring Freedom has enough skilled technologists on hand, although that is challenging enough in today’s environment. It’s also about ensuring those IT experts have the skills they need use the latest solutions effectively.
Freedom is being proactive in this area. “We have a very generous training program here. People have money available every year and if there’s a specific skillset that’s applicable, we can also provide access to those training initiatives,” Nichols said. The company also supports an IT sandbox environment where IT experts can get hands-on with the latest tools and approaches.
Nichols started his career in the Air Force, both active duty and Reserve, and has gone on to serve 25 years in the GovCon space. “My career has always been service-oriented,” he said.
The work at Freedom “really aligns to that commitment to mission, to the people and the technology,” he said. “The people that we work with ⏤ our own folks as well as the customers that we serve ⏤ are amazing, innovative professionals. They’re always thinking outside the box. Combined with the technology innovations, that makes this such an exciting place to be.”