A record number of federal, defense, state, local, and international government customers and partners attended three Public Sector sessions at Appian World. Six customer and partner speakers shared their stories from the digital transformation frontier; successes, challenges, best practices and lessons learned. The audience learned first-hand why agencies trust Appian's enterprise low-code platform to build their most important mission systems.
Dave Dantus (Regional Vice President, DoD Sales) and Derek Kissos (Industry Lead ñ Global Defense Programs) kicked off the Public Sector track early on Tuesday morning with a Department of Defense (DoD) session. They welcomed a large audience of customers and partners, while introducing a special guest speaker. Dave recognized the achievements of several DoD low-code programs during the past year including U.S. Air Force CON-IT, Robins Air Force Base, and U.S. Marine Corps MCRISS.
Derek announced that the Appian Platform will be deployable as a managed service in Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Microsoft Azure government clouds supported by Smartronix's Impact Level 4 (IL4) certified managed services platform. He introduced Richard "Rick" Kelley, Jr. who is a cloud security expert from Smartronix. Rick explained that customers now have the ability to leverage additional benefits such as Advisory Services to help customers increase speed in receiving their Authority to Operate (ATO) and Certificate of Networthiness (CON).
Read this media announcement to learn more about Appian as a managed service in an IL4 secure cloud and our partnership with Smartronix, Inc.
Jason Adolf (Industry Vice President, Global Public Sector ) moderated a second session with thought leaders from the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) and General Services Administration (GSA). The panelists described how the FTA and GSA use the Appian Platform to build complex mission systems that harness the power and speed of low-code to modernize and replace legacy systems.
Ankur Saini explained how a major mission system, GSA Real Estate Exchange (G-REX), is powered by the Appian Platform and automates the procurement of all lease contracts. G-REX has 2,000 internal and external users and interfaces with more than 20 other systems. Ankur shared several low-code best practices and program achievements. Two notable examples are the team's record of delivering new G-REX features every 2 weeks and a new module to support a regulation change within 2 months. The GSA benefits from Agile development with the speed and power of low-code.
Marianne Bowen shared key low-code lessons learned and benefits from the FTA. The Agency built the Transit Award Management System (TrAMS) with the Appian Platform. FTA uses TrAMS to award and manage an annual average of $13 billion in grants to more than 4,000 state and local agencies. Two major TrAMS accomplishments have been decreasing the average grant processing time by more than 25% and consecutive clean financial audits. The FTA uses low-code and Agile to quickly respond to legislative, regulatory, and policy changes.
Leaders from agencies at different stages in their low-code journey shared important lessons learned with the audience in the third Public Sector session. The speakers discussed the biggest challenges, early successes, and key benefits from implementing low-code applications in their organizations.
Roy Varghese described the low-code lessons learned by his team at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). NOAA is using low-code to automate manual processes and increase collaboration with other federal, state and local agencies. NOAA is modernizing mission systems in order to better serve citizens, businesses, other government stakeholders, and dramatically improve the customer experience. Roy's team designed, developed and deployed a mission system with the Appian Platform in 120 days.
Hilmar Hamann discussed the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) initial success developing low-code drug evaluation and research mission systems. The program reviews more than 200,000 submission cases each year. New low-code applications are strengthening medical officer and staff collaboration. The applications will help staff communicate and partner with industry stakeholders too. The FDA's low-code journey started with five unique processes and they expect to manage more than 50 processes on the Appian Platform in the future.
June Burr from the Vermont Agency of Transportation (VTrans) said that the primary goal of BPM systems was to help transform VTrans into a better performing organization. Low-code is helping to modernize and improve the Agency's Project Delivery engine core process. The applications also strengthen collaboration with construction contractors and other agencies to improve performance. A review by an independent outside consultant estimated a $50 cost savings for each $1 invested in BPM low-code applications at VTrans.
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