Forging a new path to equitable justice – platform engineering for state government

This talk will discuss transforming public sector teams for cloud-native success and strategies for operational excellence in platform engineering.

Numerous public sector organizations grapple with the daunting reality of legacy applications, entangled in a labyrinth of dependencies and constraints, posing significant management and maintenance challenges. A proven remedy for this complexity is the strategic practice of “decomposing the monolith,” wherein segments of the application portfolio undergo meticulous refactoring, leveraging modern software development techniques to eliminate dependencies. However, transitioning from managing on-premises data centers and utilizing virtualization technologies to orchestrating a proficient team capable of constructing cloud-native application platforms represents a substantial leap. We aim to share our journey in guiding public sector teams through the intricacies of platform engineering, offering insights gleaned from experience and invaluable lessons learned to aid others in circumventing common pitfalls.

Key takeaways include:

Building a small, lean team of platform engineers to operate and iterate the platform as a product
Insights into transitioning teams from managing on-premises data centers to proficiently building cloud-native application platforms
Architecture and tools used to build platform and service contracts that manage every day as if it was Day 1