In preparation for the upcoming Government IT Trends and Spending Priorities Virtual Roundtable, I spoke with Dmitry Kagansky, CTO, Public Sector of Quest Software today.

Kagansky echoed what I’ve heard from other government IT experts: that one of the principle challenges facing government agencies today is looming budget cuts. When I asked him how government agencies were grappling with the knowledge that cuts were coming but had not yet been implemented, Kagansky said that even though cuts have not been formally announced, government agencies are planning for that — cutting travel and tightening their budgets.

In short, many government agencies are anticipating cuts, as opposed to reacting to the cuts when they are introduced.

Challenges Facing Government are Twofold: Technology Boom and Looming Cuts

On the whole, Kagansky summed up the challenge facing government agencies as being two-fold.

“I think there is a very large growth on the technology side,” Kagansky said. “There are more things happening at once: cloud, mobility and the ongoing security concerns.”

“But at the same time,” he noted, “while you have this growth on the technology side, you have budget cuts, delays and spending restrictions. I think that makes for an interesting combination of how can you use technology to not only make sure you are secure and do lots of things, but to act in the most fiscally responsible way possible.”

Key for Government: Maximize Existing Resources and Collaborate

One of the ways Kagansky has been working with government customers to meet those goals is to expand their use of Quest solutions to meet other challenges.

We’ve been talking with our customers,” Kagansky said, not to do more with less, but to “do more with what you already have.”

Part of the way to do that is to study and learn from commercial successes and best practices. In many cases, Kagansky says there are solutions developed in the private sector that help “bridge the gap” for government agencies.

We also talked about collaboration in government. One of the strengths he has seen from government agencies across the spectrum is their desire to be more collaborative to best address the challenges posed by future budget cuts.

“People are looking to do more collaborative work,” Kagansky said, “and looking to one another for help instead of being siloed-off as they may have been in the past.”

Kagansky will be participating in the live Virtual Roundtable discussion on Nov. 16. Join the discussion and register now, free.