b'ViewpointsHow Open Innovation Can Transform the Government Technology Playing Field By Daniel ChenokOpen tournaments in sportssuch as the U.S. Open inGovernment is now at the cusp of a similar leap forward tennis or golfbring together the best players in the world,through the advancement of open digital platforms that drive and the public sees high performance achieved as the fieldnew technologies, which allow agencies to achieve better narrows. But a key feature of open competitions is theand more efficient results in serving the public. Open IT possibility of new entrants who bring innovative play totransformation rests on three pillars, expanded on below:qualifying tournaments that precede the main tournament.An interoperable infrastructure allows agencies to These new entrants can develop approaches that allowaccess and integrate across multiple, secure cloud-based them to raise the level of play for all players based onsystems. creative strategies, and strong execution.Cloud-based platforms, in turn, speed the secure While not a perfect analogy, a similar spirit is enablingdevelopment of new technology applications, including open innovation in the development of new technologiesrobotics process automation (RPA) and artificial by players in the government IT market. The past decadeintelligence (AI).has seen a rapid shift to open government and open data asAdvanced technologies like these set up the next wave of key principles for agencies, starting with the advent of theinnovation and massive expansion of accessible data that Open Government policies of the Obama Administrationwill arise with the advance of 5G wireless networks and in 2009. These policies have been supported througheven quantum computing.the recent passage of legislation, including the OPEN Government Data Act of 2018 and the highly visibleInteroperable Infrastructureexpansion of the Federal Data Strategy in the PresidentsThe governments use of cloud computing has evolved Management Agenda. The implementation of these effortsconsiderably since this term became associated with the has brought new entrants to the development of newability of agencies to access their IT through providers that applications that add value to government data. were not housed within their internal networks. It was 10 years ago this month that the IBM Center published one of 78 www.businessofgovernment.org The Business of Government'