Driving Digital Transformation: Lessons from Government and Industry

In today's episode of the Fed to Fed Podcast, we welcome Farhan Khan, former Chief Digital Officer at the FDA, now serving in the private sector with swingtech, and Ashique Tanveer, Director of Health Systems at REI Systems. 

The conversation starts with lessons learned from years in public service and shifts to current trends in digital transformation, especially the human side of transformation. Explore how people, culture, and communication all play a vital role in the adoption of emerging technologies, like AI. 

This thoughtful exchange offers valuable insights for leaders driving digital modernization—reminding us that technology succeeds only when guided by purpose, people, and partnership.

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Transcript

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Welcome to the GovTech Connects Fed to Fed podcast. We bring together leaders from government and industry to share lessons in digital transformation and innovation. I'm your host, Susan Chair, and I'm excited to introduce today's conversation. We'll hear from Farhan Khan, who has served as chief digital officer at the FDA and as a senior technology executive with the US Army, where he helped guide the transition of more than 1 million personnel to remote work. Now in the private sector, Farhan brings a unique perspective on how government and industry can work together to solve some of our most pressing challenges. And leading today's interview is Ashique Tanveer, director of health systems at REI Systems, who will guide the conversation as they explore digital transformation, AI and lessons from Farhan’s career across both government and industry. Farhan, Ashique, welcome. Thanks for. Yeah. I'm just so thrilled today to, talk to Farhan. Thank you, Farhan, for joining us. And, so we'll just dive in. Let's start our conversation with your journey. You have had the unique experience of serving in both the government and industry at an executive leadership level. What advice would you offer to those who recently transitioned from government to industry? Just like you did, or anyone who's considering a move from industry to the government, what mindset or expectation should they bring with them? First, once again, thank you so much for having me on this podcast. And Ashique, you're right. I spent almost 15 years in the government spanning my rule that agencies like, you know, U.S. Army, FDA, Department of Transportation, Department of Justice, and then actually give me a front row seat to the mission critical operations of the federal government. And, you know, I recently transitioned to the private sector, which kind of helped me and opened my eyes to two things agility and innovation at scale. So for anyone that is actually planning to jump from the public sector into the private sector, my advice would be, oh, sorry, from the from the, from the public sector, the private sector. My advice would be to embrace speed without sacrificing rigor. So, you know, in the government, as you know, decisions can take months, due to layers of approval. And it's not a bad thing. It is needed because the role of the government is to support the mission and provide value to taxpayers. They're using taxpayers money. So it's very important to measure twice and cut once. And so that is very much needed. However, in the private sector, those decisions happen in a matter of days and sometimes in a matter of hours. And so, you know, it's very important to pivot if needed and pivot very quickly. If I have to explain in one sentence, I would say it's like switching from a marathon to a sprint. That's what it is, right? So that's what you need to bring to the table. But most importantly, for folks that are moving from the public sector into the private sector, this one thing that they have, which is understanding of compliance and regulations, those are very important. So it's very critical for for us to share with, with the private sector the importance of those regulations, the compliance and help them navigate through that, those regulations passed. That is one thing that I would suggest. Now shape the second part of your question was, what if the people that are moving back to the public service from the private sector? That's an easy one. Again, I spent the last 15 years of my life in the government sector. So government is all about mission. It's the mission first recalibration that you have to do. You have to understand that in the private sector is margins in the in the public sector is all about the mission. It's all about the impact that you are making. Bureaucracy is not a bad thing. As a matter of fact, a safeguard, not a barrier. So embrace that. Respect that. The reason why it exists. We have to cut. I mean, maybe three times before we cut it, right? We cannot we do not have the government sector have the flexibility to to to do a lot of experimentation. There is room for experimentation, but responsible experimentation is what is very important. So that is what you need to have again at the same time in the government sector. We when it comes to the mindset to try to adopt humility and patience, those two things are very important when you are going back into the government, where you are starting fresh in the government. So those things are very important to respect the bureaucracy. Respect the safeguards, understand the policies, the governance and the compliance related to different efforts, and then work within those boundaries. So that's what I would suggest. Oh, I really like how you framed your response to speed and innovation on one side and safeguards and mission focus on the other. You know, that balance is such a strong reminder that each side brings certain strengths that can help the other. With that, let's dive into the core topic of our conversation today. So, Farhan, you have led multiple major digital transformation efforts at, both FDA and even Army. From your perspective, what's the single most important element for a successful transformation and why? Oh, that's a very interesting question. And I would say an easy one as well, because if I have to pick one component, one area, hands down, people, IT technology can very quickly become should be if it's not adopted by people, if it's not embraced by people, this is not basically used by by the stakeholders and by the users. So technology itself cannot do any wonders unless it is adopted very well. So from my finger to the old, I would say I have I can't even count my guys. I've seen a lot of initiative spin not because do it back tools, but because the resistance that we face from the user community, we call the skill gap that existed there. And so it's critically important to take into account how you are going to implement the technology. So I'll just give you an example. Back in 2014, when we started our cloud journey at FDA, what we did was we didn't just basically, you know, rolled out cloud technology was did, but we focused a lot on marketing. We had roadshows. We tried to explain to our community how cloud is going to help them, how we can. And basically we talked it, a framework called Etcr where we try to build like, like minded coalitions. We try to develop change agents. We went from business to business to explain how the workforce will be better served within the cloud environments. And so because of that, the results today speak for what we did. We at FDA, there are 29 d cloud providers that operate in that ecosystem. 45% of the workloads have been moved to the cloud. So, you know, when you basically take this organic approach where you take into account your users and what they feel and how they are going to react to new technologies, you always win and data backs it up. Call it. We can see 2023, survey found that organization prioritizing human elements in transformations are 2.5 times more likely to succeed. So that is one thing that's critically important. And, so in order for me to explain this in a better way, just remember picked people first, then culture and then tech. So you have to take it to count these three things in this quarter. Now, one said, for Hana, I also believe that transformation works when people are invested and engaged in the change. And in fact, true transformation, just like you said, is really about the culture and clarity as much as it is about the tools and technology. Now you have seen both side of the coin. The government and the private as well. What advice would you give to companies that are looking to stand out as digital transformation partners, to support agencies? Oh, I'm going to give the same advice that I gave to the industry two years ago when I was a federal employee, last year, when I was a federal employee, this difference between employer and the private sector, which is think of government as someone that is trying to partner with you, become partners with them to not focus on technology. It just try to set this not going to solve any problems. Show them. Show government how their processes can be improved, how the bottlenecks can be improved or eliminated. That is the approach that should be the approach of the industry. Work with the government, understand their pain points, and then focus how on the pain point on their policies, on the policies and bringing technology to solve those problems. That is should be the end goal of the industry. Become partners with the with the government just to not give them a solution. Be part of the problem solving process as well. That is the key. That is where magic happens. So my recommendation for the for the industry would be, you know, become partners. I do understand the pain point, become part of the process of identifying the problem. And then co-creating a solution with the government. Oh, thank you for hand. During your leadership, you must have seen some really tangible outcome, coming out of digital transformation. Can you talk about any. When it comes to tangible benefits, you know, in. It looks like we are trying to figure out if transformation is something good to have. And so what are the benefits of it? I would like to rephrase this because end of the day, dual transformation is not a choice anymore. This journey you have to embark on this journey just so that you can stay relevant in the industry. It's not about adopting digital transformation because we want to get to the next level. If we want to maintain the level we have right now, we need the transformation to happen. For example, data people we are going to move towards AI and data is what makes I look good. So if we have data silos, we do not do the transformation to take care of our data. Then we will be left behind. We will not be relevant at the same time. Data. Information is important to make sure that we act and behave like cloud like environments. So you ask for like tangible benefits. I would say, you know, going back to FBA, we try to establish and, software defined networking. The idea was to make sure that we are able to provide services at the speed of science, at the speed of need, because we don't have the luxury to wait for days to, you know, configure our network to support a small segment of the business. So we decided to go software defined networking. Cloud computing is, digital transformation where we try to, embrace rigidity and scalability. Right? Those are the kind of things that you have to do to make sure that you are ready. So data submission is no longer a choice. It's a must. And we must embark on it just so that we can, I would say stay competitive but stay relevant. So that's my view on digital transformation and its benefits. No thank you. When agencies can demonstrate real, real outcome outcomes, it builds trust and momentum for transformation in itself. And we have seen that happen within RTI in several location that how being able to connect some measurable results to the mission goals helps leaders, sustain transformation force every new adoption. You talked quite a bit about adoption, you know, technologies getting adopted and the new systems getting adopted. So with adoption comes some sort of challenge. What challenges have you faced during your implementation of digital transformation and how did you overcome them? I mean, the biggest hurdle, to be honest with you, what is digital transformation is, resistance to change. I mean, that's one factor or one thing that often this I must say, you know, people cling on to watch the video. You know, according to, you know, cio.com 2024 survey, 60% of organizations actually struggle with staff pushback and slowing rollout by up to 40%. I mean, and this one little thing, according to the Geo, basically is costing government agencies around$10 billion yearly. So it's a real issue. So end of the day, if I have to pick one thing, it's all about you know, resistance of change. And so again, you have to start with with empathy. You have to have workshops to decode the fears and, you know, start small and allow people to be part of the testing process, to be part of the implementation, process to make sure that you scale wins and, and all that. This is that is how you can do it. The transformation. It's all about changing minds by bringing them together, by making sure that they're part of the process and not an afterthought. That is what is is critically important. If you want to be successful with any kind of digital transformation. And do you also see technical data, siloed data, some of the challenges when you do your digital transformation implementation? Oh yes. Oh yeah. Thank you for that. Technical debt is is another big problem. And in the corporate sector especially where, you know, things have been around for many, many years, technology debt is is a real issue. So when you are trying to do automation, make sure that the new technologies, the new tools, the new methods are interoperable with the old technologies. You were trying to bring the digital transformation into the existing ecosystem. So both need to work together and that is critically important. So technical technology, debt and making sure that the legacy systems are able to play with the new systems, that is critically important and up to date. It's all about that customer experience with user experience. If they are not able to get that seamless, enhanced user experience, they're going to reject the technology and your digital transformation will not be successful. So that is very important now. Thank you. And I like how you emphasized, a couple of times already that managing change. And that's just so important. And in fact, if you are able to manage the change in the right way, you can turn resistance into a, in fact, a momentum. So we'll switch gears a bit. ChatGPT just reminded me that we cannot wrap up this podcast without bringing up the magic word AI. So, let's dive into it and talk about it a little bit. Yeah. Is transforming the way we work with the potential to augment rather than replace human capabilities. Now, my question to you is, how do you think that organizations can prepare their workforce for this AI driven future? That's a very good question, and I'm glad that you mentioned that. You know, AI is all about augmentation. So I don't even like to call it artificial intelligence. I like to call it augment patient intelligence or augment intelligence because it is there to serve humans. It human in the loop is critically important. It is able to do 70% of the work, but 30% is still is something that needs to be done by a human. So AI is is something which is there to help humans. It's not here to replace humans. So that is the key point. Now, you know, all of us already know the technology. Is there tools and all that. So I'm not going to focus on the technical part of AI. We all know that AI and all that good stuff. But in the context of government, the most important thing that we we have to focus on, I guess, is the governance, the policy, the guardrails. We need to make sure that we have a very good understanding of how all of this is going to work together. We need to set the boundaries within which the AI is going to work. I have the ability to to come up with new things, right. And so we need to make sure that we give good guardrails, good boundaries to the AI infrastructure so that it can think and provide the results in the way we want it to act. So that is the most important thing. We need to understand how we are going to audit the tools. How are we going to control bias? How are we going to, introduce applications and AI tools? How is going to interact with data? We need to have a very good understanding of that. Only then we can be successful. The second thing I would say is adoption strategies. That is also extremely important. How and start small. You know we at Suntec we are laser focused on on not only just biology. AI is just a tool for us, but we are actually focusing on, like for example, right now we are working on a tool that is going to be very helpful in the classrooms, and we are doing it for some components within DoD. So it is very simple to give this tool to the users, to the teachers, so that they can educate their students better through the use of AI. So I won't go into the details of that. At the same time, we are using AI adoption starting from the adoption strategy standpoint we are trying to work with with our clients to enhance, the learning management system by introducing AI into it so that people like using that. We are think the folks can easily get the information at the time at the speed of need. At the point of that is what we are focusing on and that's how we are doing AI. But we started small, we started with with due task, and then we scale it because we want to make sure that everybody that's going to be using it is part of the journey. So that's what we are focusing on. And we then again sweep tech. We focus a lot on experimentation. And trust me, that's where the magic happens. So we are focusing a lot on experimentation. We are trying to fail but very fast and then improve on different AI technologies. We do a B testing. We look at the governance, we look at the policies, and we try to figure out how is going to work with the government ecosystem and how is going to support the mission of the organization that we are serving. So that is one thing, and that we do. And the last thing I'm going to say is that we realized, even within our own organization, as well as when we are working with the clients, electricity is also very important. People understand AI, but we need to make sure that they understand everything about the AI. How is going to interact with them, how we are going to secure their data, how we are going to make sure that there's no data leakage. How are we going to control bias? We need to have that AI literacy program around every single thing that we are doing, because people need to understand how the application or the AI tool is going to be it, and how we will secure the data and how we are going to deliver the value so that deliver value to them. So that is very important. Thank you. And I love how you reminded us. The people in the loop, right? I mean, it reminds us that. Yeah, well, it will free up people to focus so we can focus on higher value work, right, while ensuring trust and accountability. So that's important. So thank you so much. In your current role as the chief AI officer. Any other particular principle that you want to mention that you're putting into practice? I know you touched on a little bit about your current role in the fintech. Anything else that you want to mention from there? Oh, from principle standpoint? Look, the first thing we did was and when I joined, it was like we tried to and it was already did we try to establish the gardens and we tried to figure out how are we going to basically create an AI ecosystem that mimic what other agencies are doing? Now we are doing all the testing, experimentation within that ecosystem. We are not focusing on AI. We are focusing on the use cases and the value that is going to add. So we are trying to bring in use cases and then trying to figure out how it can really work within the ecosystem. We have defined very clear guardrails to control bias, to make sure the data entry point and exit points. We are really looking at AI to solve problems, and there's a lot of experimentation that we are doing internally before we release it to the customers. So that is how we are doing it. We have very strict controls. We have audit mechanisms over here. We do a B testing where we try to make sure that there's a clear benefit for the client to move from what they are doing. Now to the AI, we do cost benefit analysis. We have a complete system and we have developed like started with the policy, the governance and the oversight mechanisms. We first focused on that and then we worked on technology side of the house for the AI. So we have multiple tools, multiple platforms that we are using including Azure, AWS bedrock, all of that to test out new things and new technologies within that ecosystem. Now thank you. You have a very impressive and accomplished, background firsthand. And I'm sure our listeners will also like to know a little bit about you on the personal side. So a question that what do you enjoy doing when you are not busy transforming the digital world? Oh, what I that changes every six months. So right now, you know what I really enjoyed these days? And just, I recently developed a person this my my son is in a, you know, goes to this, place for a club. He is only 13 years old. And, last year he was not a very good player, but now he's he has improved big time. So I enjoy going to his games. But one thing I would like to highlight is like, you know, all of us are getting to a point where the younger generation is coming in. So it's time for us to start thinking about transferring our skills, knowledge to the younger generation. That because in 10 to 15 years time, they will be the ones leading these initiatives and efforts. So we need to make sure that we understand and pass on whatever we have learned to them. And so that's what I do. That's what I enjoy with my son, you know, teaching him a few tricks and, every day, you know, and, it's good to see that he's improving with time. So that's my that's my hobby these days. Now. Thank you. I love what you share that, I really appreciate you sharing that. So as we wrap up, I would like to ask you another big picture question. If you had a magic wand to solve just one issue problem for the government agencies, instantly, what would it be and why? It's got big data silos. That's the biggest problem, especially now with AI that feeds on data. We need to make sure that we are able to get rid of all the data silos and have a data program where we have data custodians one, or data we need to make sure we are where there is a need to make sure the data is sitting in one place, and make sure that we are able to generate clean data and get rid of data silos. So that would be that one thing. If I have to pick only one thing, then, you know, bring down our data silos. That would that was the one thing I would like to do. So that's a very powerful note to. And, and on the data is that foundation of innovation and and connecting and breaking those data silos is the key to unlocking value for agencies. And the people deserve. Even at Aria Systems, we have been, tackling the challenges of data silos, as you can imagine, FDA and all other agencies. And and you are absolutely right. The rise of AI and the AI based tool just makes solving this issue, a lot more critical, and a lot more, doable as well. So for hand, thank you for, sharing you your insight. We have talked about transition between sectors, the importance of people in transformation, how metrics and results drive momentum of transformation and of course, the promise of AI. And what turns out most is your reminder that focus on mission first remain at the center of everything that we do. Any final advice that you would like to share with the leaders in the government who are driving the transformation? Currently? Just one piece of advice. There's a lot going on. There's a lot of change. But keep in mind that, you know, government folks and contractors in the private industry, we are there to support the mission. So end of the day, we are accountable to the taxpayers, and we need to do the best to support the mission of the agency. And that's pretty much it. Never forget why you there. Fantastic now thank you so much for hand. I truly appreciate it. I thoroughly enjoyed this conversation, and, thank you for, being here with us today. So thank you you so much. And you betcha. Farhan and Ashiq, that was such an incredible conversation. Thank you both for joining us and leading such a thoughtful and important conversation for both industry leaders and government leaders. Driving transformation. And to our listeners, thank you for tuning in to this episode of the Fit to Fit podcast. If you enjoyed today's discussion, please subscribe and review the series so others can find it as well. We'll be back soon with more stories and lessons from leaders across government and industry. And until then, stay safe and stay innovative. This concludes today's episode of the Fed to Fed podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please don't forget to subscribe, rate and leave a review. Your feedback helps us continue bringing you thought provoking sessions with the brightest minds in government, technology. Stay tuned for our next episode, where we will continue to explore opportunities to harness the power of technology and explore what's next in developing a more innovative and efficient government. Until then, this is the Fed to Fed podcast by GovTech Connects. Thank you for joining us.