Make agility without bounds your mission for 2021

Government customers from across the globe recently joined Atlassian and our partners in a free digital training event – the fifth annual Government Symposium. Sessions explored solutions, tools, and best practices to help agencies tackle today’s toughest remote work and transformation challenges. 

We’d like to extend a huge thank you to our sponsors, who helped make the event a great success for the approximately 1,000 remote attendees.  

If you missed it, here are the highlights – and don’t worry, you can still access the valuable information and critical insights of the Government Symposium on demand.  

Keynote addresses

Transformation in a dynamic environment

Anu Bharadwaj, head of Cloud Platform at Atlassian

Anu discussed how Atlassian is shifting its R&D investments – and how these investments help government agencies address their modernization needs and be more resilient and responsive in their missions. 

The next phase of Atlassian ITSM

Ravi Tharisayi, former Head of Product Marketing, ITSM Solutions at Atlassian

Ravi showcased how Atlassian is helping agencies evolve toward the future of ITSM – one that breaks free from old ways of working. He reviewed a major product announcement that helps agencies reimagine ITSM from the ground up to unlock high-velocity IT. 

Breakout sessions

Beyond the enlightening keynote addresses, our breakout sessions touched on some of the most pressing issues in government today – from apps and platforms that fuel mission delivery to collaboration, security, and resiliency, there was something for everyone. 

• The secret to making agency-wide DevSecOps a reality: Rich Schliep, Chief Technology Officer, Colorado Department of State; Eric Piatt, a Consultant for ReleaseTEAM; and Shayla Sander, Channel Manager for the U.S. State and Local Government team at Atlassian shared how the Colorado Secretary of State team built an agile culture across their agency, and dramatically transformed how agency work gets done. 
• How scientists at the Carnegie Institution for Science are using Trello to characterize planets around other stars: Johanna Teske, a Staff Scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science Earth and Planet Laboratory, is part of the consortium that oversees the Magellan II telescope. She explained how her team uses Trello to track and manage a queue of astronomical targets (like new planets). It’s a revolutionary way to use the tool, and shows how Trello can unite teams around the world.
• Lightning-fast decision-making across complex government agencies: Decision-making in government is a team sport, but sometimes it’s difficult for each team to gain the program visibility needed to make a call. Jesse Pearlman, a Business Agility Coach with Cprime, showed us how Jira Align provides visibility across a government organization to deliver transparency, build consensus, and fuel rapid decision-making on multiyear roadmaps.   
• Military DevSecOps transformation with secure portfolio management: Susie Hill and Justin Leader, VP of Agile Services and CEO of HyperVelocity Consulting, respectively, discussed how they helped the U.S. Air Force transform to improve their project and portfolio management using Jira, Jira Service Management, Confluence, and Marketplace Apps. A key component was their ability to safely automate and consolidate status reporting across air-gapped secure networks.  
• Atlassian cloud enterprise security for government agencies: Narmada Jayasankar, Principal Product Manager for Atlassian Guard, and Ken Urban, Solutions Engineer for the Atlassian Public Sector, told us about the future of Atlassian’s Cloud Enterprise security. They also dropped insights and revelations about the Enterprise Cloud roadmap.
• Pivoting during crisis: sharing experiences and early lessons for the future of work: Urvashi Dhawan-Biswal, Senior Director of the Canadian Government’s Digital Design Branch
  Innovation, Science and Economic Development, explained how her department successfully navigated the pivot to remote work, and the critical aspects of design thinking that made it possible.
• Remote work: lessons learned and agile hacks for success: Andrew Politi, Agile Consultant & Product Specialist, Enterprise Knowledge for the GSA; Nicki Bellington, Head of Talent Programs, Remote and Onboarding for Atlassian; and Urvashi Dhawan-Biswal, Senior Director of the Digital Design Branch, Innovation for the Science and Economic Development (ISED), Government of Canada came together for a panel moderated by Juliana Slye, CEO, Government Business Results, on best practices and early lessons learned in the future of remote work. This session was packed with tips and tricks for everyone, from learning how to set agency-wide SLAs for communication vehicles to leveraging automation to reduce the digital fatigue agency employees are feeling.

• Deploying Atlassian as a shared service across Platform One and beyond: Jeff Weatherford, a Lead DevOps Engineer for Ascend Integrated, and James Hunt, Lead Atlassian Expert for Ascend, described how they helped deliver support for the U.S. Air Force Platform One program and discussed the shared service implementation of the Atlassian suite within Platform One. They also gave insight on what it means to deliver shared services to the U.S. Air Force using multiple Atlassian applications. 
• Securing the software supply chain: Tyler Johnson, a Senior Solutions Architect for CloudBees, discussed how Software Delivery Automation (SDA) makes it easy to detect and mitigate security risks when delivering software capabilities. 
• Protect your investment: optimizing Atlassian cloud governance and compliance: Lisa Barton, an Atlassian Solutions Architect for Cprime, brought to life the five keys to governance success; the roles and responsibilities of a governance committee; and how the Atlassian cloud features support governance and compliance. 

Finally, participants enjoyed some hands-on training sessions from several Certified Atlassian Training Partners:   

• Confluence essentials 
• Automation and Jira: a perfect match 
• Making Jira Roadmaps work for you: tips, tricks, and use cases  

Ready to tackle your toughest transformation challenges? Valuable guidance and insight are available at your fingertips. Click below to view all keynotes, trainings, and sessions from the Government Symposium.