New Gartner Report Sheds Light on Digital Transformation Strategies in a Postpandemic World

Government Agencies Need to Rethink How They Provide Fast and Reliable—Yet Secure—Access to Remote Users.

Covid-19 and the resulting fallout has laid bare the inefficiencies of government and a failure to address these issues with existing digital transformation initiatives, according to a new report published by Gartner. These inefficiencies, the report said, is undermining the productivity of the federal workforce at a time when agencies dealing with the pandemic, the government response, and economic recovery need to react quickly to fast-changing conditions with organizational agility.

Like nearly every other organization in the U.S., federal agencies have had to deal with a sudden decentralization of their workforce. And like in the private sector, giving employees fast access to applications and data was prioritized over security. Now, months later—even as the federal government continues to deal with the pandemic—agencies need to rethink their digital transformation strategies with a bigger focus on improving service delivery while protecting systems and confidential information.

Delivering Security Through the Cloud

In the report, Gartner recommends that federal agencies put a hold on all digital transformation initiatives until security gaps are closed, and until agencies are able to come up with a new strategy for giving distributed workers fast and reliable—yet secure—remote access to the tools and confidential information they need to carry on government business.

IT organizations within each agency should use innovative technologies to automate operations and streamline processes in an effort to become more nimble. Agility and flexibility are needed to improve service delivery, make the government more responsive to citizen needs, and enable a faster, more intelligent response to the pandemic.

Web Isolation in a Federal Environment

Menlo Security solutions are already being used to protect federal workers from web- and email-based attacks. DISA  Cloud-Based Internet Isolation (CBII) was awarded to the By Light Professional IT Services LLC and Menlo Security Team that takes the browsing process off desktops and moves it to the cloud—creating an “air gap” between the Internet and agency networks. To learn more about how Menlo Security supports federal agencies, visit menlosecurity.com/solutions/government.

Gartner got it right. Covid-19 has exposed the inefficiencies of government service delivery in the new normal—sapping user productivity while exposing confidential information on the edge of the network. Federal agencies, as well as state and local governments, should explore using Menlo’s web isolation platform to protect sensitive IT systems and classified information without inhibiting fast, reliable remote access in the postpandemic world.

Visit www.menlosecurity.com/solutions/government and learn how to enable digital transformation and make government more efficient in the new normal.