ATARC Federal DevOps Summit

August 18, 2016 | Ronald Reagan Building | Washington, DC

The ATARC Federal DevOps Summit was held on August 18, 2016 at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington, D.C.

Mark Schwartz, Chief Information Officer of the DHS U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, served as Government Chair of the event.

Stories by Federal IT Media

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has gotten the reputation of being ahead of other agencies when it comes to IT development using agile processes.

USCIS is adding to its lead by testing out the next phase of agile development. Mark Schwartz, the USCIS chief information officer, said he’s implementing something called impact mapping. USCIS recently tested out this concept on its case verification system under the E-Verify program.

“In this impact mapping exercise, they start with a goal of , say increasing the 70 cases a day a verifier can do to a higher number so they can scale. They draw a sort of a mind map of different ways they can accomplish that goal,” Schwartz said at the Aug. 18 ATARC Federal DevOps Summit in Washington. (Full Story)
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Imagine a world in which an agency can identify a process problem, such as an inefficient electronic application form, come up with some ideas on how to fix it in hours and have a constantly self-testing solution up and running in days.

That process would be far speedier than the federal government’s traditional months- and years-long development cycle. Achieving that goal means not being overly concerned about traditional processes or even what the inspector general thinks, said Mark Schwartz, CIO at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

In remarks at the Federal DevOps Summit hosted by the Advanced Technology Academic Research Center on Aug. 18, Schwartz and other top agency IT executives said DevOps is melding into federal practice, though some agencies are further ahead than others. (Full Story)
federaltimes

The federal government spends about three-fourths of its $80 billion information technology budget maintaining aging systems, a recent congressional report says. But a new automated software testing and implementation system is speeding up efforts to modernize software at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Mark Schwartz, chief information officer at USCIS, said Aug. 18 the agency was able to update its online employment verification system in a mere six weeks. Schwartz painted a picture of how a largely stagnant modernization effort four years in the making took off in a month and a half, producing a functioning product that improved the e-verification system whereby employers check the immigration status of new hires.

In a keynote address to the Advanced Technology Academic Research Center conference, he outlined the USCIS’s use of the Dev-Ops approach to modernize its e-verify system. (Full Story)

The host organization is the Advanced Technology Academic Research Center. ATARC is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that provides a collaborative forum for government, academia and industry to resolve emerging technology challenges. ATARC also introduces innovative technology from academic research labs to the Federal government and private industry.