Several years ago, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services began taking a more agile approach to technology. The agency hoped it would see more success by building systems in small, functional bites than by trying to build budget-busting projects that affect millions of people all at once.

After early successes implementing agile practices across the IT and business lines, the agency responsible for overseeing lawful immigration to the U.S. hit a wall, said David Simeon, chief of USCIS’ innovation and technology division.

“The challenge we ran into was the systems integrator market—the vendors you reach out to develop software for the government—had not kept up with agile,” Simeon told Nextgov.

As an early government adopter of agile practices, Simeon said by 2014 the agency’s next step was the deployment of cloud-native applications but that required “a brand new way of thinking” and new talent to boot. Rather than undertake a traditional approach to procuring new technology, which could take 18 months or longer, Simeon said USCIS turned to another federal agency: the National Technical Information Service (NTIS).

Keep reading this article at: http://www.nextgov.com/big-data/2017/07/agency-can-help-fast-track-your-tech-acquisitions/139877/