Government agencies need to advance their missions in the face of competing pressures.
“There are increasing demands to modernize the technology infrastructure,” even as budgets are decreasing, said Rebecca Miller, GovCIO health and civilian sector president. “Different agencies have different charters and missions, but they’re all trying to do more with less.”
As GovCIO’s HCS president, Miller is helping agencies embrace automation, move processes online and into the cloud and take advantage of the promise of digital modernization ⏤ even amid current budget constraints.
GovCIO is hardly alone in this regard: Much of the GovCon world is thinking about digital transformation.
“What sets us apart is people,” Miller said. “We have a culture that attracts the best talent. They really enjoy the culture of having a flat organization, having their voices heard and being able to work on really interesting programs. Industry-standard attrition is 20% and in our health and civilian group, our attrition is 8%. That comes from having a great culture.”
GovCIO’s size also gives it an edge.
“There’s been a lot of M&A in the government space over the last 10 or 15 years, and there aren’t a lot of mid-size companies out there,” she said. “As a billion-dollar company, we’re big enough to have all the scale, but small enough to deliver personalized service. Our size makes us really unique.”
Miller looks to leverage those core strengths as she seeks out new business opportunities ⏤ and there are plenty to be found in the federal civilian space.
“The government is shifting to low-code/no-code, so we see a lot of opportunity in the ServiceNow, Appian and Salesforce space,” she said. “We also see a lot of growth in the infrastructure transformation and networking space.”
To make the most of those opportunities, while simultaneously reenforcing that strong corporate culture, Miller looks to engage GovCIO’s people in the business development process.
“We make a concerted effort to have relationships with all of our program teams and to get them involved in what the larger company is doing,” she said.
In much of the GovCon world, “program managers don’t want to get involved in growth, because they don’t want to do proposals,” she said. “So, we try to make it fun. They get to interact with all the different organizations within GovCIO, and it makes it feel that they’re just not a number ⏤ that they’re part of the company.”
The formula seems to be working: The company has seen explosive growth over the last three years, “and that has created enormous career opportunities for our folks,” she said. “When they get involved in growth and then we win a program that they’ve worked on and it creates career advancement for them, that gets them really excited.”
Even as she focuses on this internal effort, Miller is watching the external changes in the GovCon space, especially the trend toward consolidation of IT contracts. Bigger contracts and longer performance periods mean GovCon firms need to be increasingly strategic.
“You can’t pursue everything,” Miller said. “If you spread yourself too thin, you will never win anything.”
What does work?
“It’s about really identifying programs where you feel like you can make a difference and where you have the qualifications,” she said. “And then it’s putting the best people on your highest probability-of-win opportunities rather than trying to spread your best people across 10 opportunities.”
Overall, “you have to be laser-focused and not get fooled about what you can and can’t pursue,” she said. “We have to focus on opportunities where the customer is truly open-minded towards change and where we have something unique to offer.”
Even with all this in place, agencies’ tight budgets ⏤ or congressional inability to approve a budget ⏤ can still present a challenge.
“We don’t control the timing of when things are awarded,” Miller said.
In this environment, “it’s really, really important to have a top tier of opportunities that you’re going to pursue ⏤ but it’s equally as important to have a medium priority, so when things shift to the right, you have additional opportunities you can pursue,” she said.
GovCons also need to be sure they tend to their current program base and going beyond simply delivering excellent performance by also creating an environment that embraces innovative solutions.
“That ensures you have the ability to grow that work, when the government isn’t awarding things on time,” she said.
With 25 years’ experience in the GovCon space, Miller said she has a personal stake in getting all this right.
“We are all consumers of the federal government’s services, and I have admiration and respect for these government officials and the services they provide,” she said. “There are so many services and agencies that do amazing work. That inspires me on a daily basis. That’s why I stay in it: It’s the ability to make a difference, and to see the difference that you make.”