The State of Maryland is leading the transformation to cloud-based shared platform enterprise systems. At “Zapping Technical Debt! Maryland’s Agile Cloud Transformation,” Tom Fusting, Chief of the Technology Office for the Maryland Department of Human Resources showed MACo Summer Conference attendees just how.

Fusting has 27 years of information technology experience in the private sector, transforming public sector customers, including the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Maryland Department of Transportation, and NASA. In 2011, Fusting created CSC’s first cloud offering “Dev/Test-as-Service” from concept through deployment and security approvals to operate at DHS in less than a year, receiving Gartner’s recognition as an innovation leader.

Fusting promoted the Lean Agile methodology as transformative for information technology (IT) organizations to bring efficiency, effectiveness and value to their customers. He discussed how the concept of IT investment in the form of a series of projects, with contracts, scopes of work, and termination dates, failed to provide the greatest value to customers. Better IT investment looks more like public sector investment in education or public safety typically looks, with funding provided in an ongoing manner based upon level of effort. He discussed how this approach, and the transition to the cloud, often results in a 38-65% reduction in IT costs on average.

“Zapping Technical Debt! Maryland’s Agile Cloud Transformation” took place on August 19, 2016 at MACo’s Summer Conference in Ocean City, Maryland. It was moderated by Senator Susan Lee, who represents Montgomery County’s 16th District and serves on the Maryland Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee.