Federal officials joined the Pega Government Empowered conference in Washington on Wednesday to share that the secret to building a successful Center of Excellence (CoE) that drives maximum value from low-code is to start with the business and people.
Kim Pugh, the director of the Digital Transformation Center (DTC) at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), said over the last few years VA’s “big push is to really build out COEs.”
“Everything that we do in the Digital Transformation Center starts with the business. So, for us, it wasn’t us going to the business. It’s the business driving us,” Pugh said. “We always tried to help them move in the most modern way possible, giving them as much opportunity as possible without doing redundancy. And in this case, that’s exactly what happened.”
“When we decided that we were going to work with Pega, we knew that we would implement the same type of governance structure we’ve done with our other platforms,” she added. “We also knew that in the VA, we already had on-prem, so for us, it was … let’s modernize, let’s get there. I’m happy to say we’ve officially kind of got there – we’re about to get Pega ATO high.”
Similarly, Alex Arshavskiy, the Pega Center of Excellence (CoE) lead at the Social Security Administration (SSA), said that his CoE also took a business-focused approach to modernization.
“The idea was to make sure that our IT side is completely in sync with our business side,” Arshavskiy said. “I had a very good opportunity to do this because I was moved from the operation side just before I started my detail, so I knew pretty much all of the decision makers and that was a very important thing to do, to synchronize, to make sure that … our business side is involved.”
At the Federal level, the newly-formed Federal Low Code Subcommunity of Practice aims to promote the adoption and effective use of low code development methodologies and tools to accelerate digital transformation across government.
Rachel Sile, a senior advisor within the Department of the Interior and co-chair of the Federal Low Code Subcommunity of Practice, said that the group – which held its inaugural meeting in December 2023 – “kept it simple” and started with team building.
“I’m going to start with people,” Sile said. “Once you’ve got the buy-in, once you’ve got the interest, tools, and how to get things moving, that’s all easy in our world. It’s a matter of getting people interested and getting them motivated to want to solve the problem together – building that common bond.”
“Once it’s there and having it present, people are more than willing to chip in and start solving the problem in different ways,” she added.
One thing the community does, Sile said, is have “agency vignettes” during meetings so that members can hear a success story from an agency that piloted a low code AI initiative.
“It then allows for people to take those really great ideas back and think about them, and then come back to … say, ‘How did you guys do this?’ And kind of get that little extra boost of energy or more importantly, perspective,” she said.
