Leadership Voices With WWT's Rick Piña

Leadership Voices with WWT's Rick Piña

Harness the Transformative Power of IoT

For some, the term "Internet of Things" (or "IoT") may seem relatively new; but at World Wide Technology, we have been excelling in all things IoT for nearly 15 years.

When we talk about IoT and all the benefits the technology can provide to government agencies, what we are really talking about are sensors.

Sensors can do so much, and once they are deployed, they may be able to tell agencies things they did not expect nor anticipated. Sensors collect data, and when that data gets processed, it produces insights, those insights drive decisions, and those decisions can save time, money, even lives. These sensors need to be seen as part of an overall architecture, an overall strategy to produce the type of desired outcome that the agency is looking for.

To WWT's Chief Technology Advisor to the Public Sector Rick Piña, IoT is a means to an end, a way to get to better outcomes.

The reality is that there are multiple routes to the same end goal; but finding the one that is going to work best, within a given budget and existing infrastructure, and under a particular set of requirements is really difficult. Customers often require help sorting through these options. Providing them the ability to see and test different solutions makes a difference. 

IoT is complicated. It can involve hundreds or thousands of sensors, numerous software packages and the opportunities for failure are as great as the potential for success. CIOs and CTOs need partners who can tilt those odds in their favor and turn potential into payback. Perhaps more than anything, they need someone to help them get started, to turn the possible into the doable, which is precisely what WWT is doing for our customers.

IoT can transform a government enterprise. But it is not going to change anything if an agency cannot get the concept off the ground to be fully integrated. Integration means getting all the systems working together, sharing data and, where possible, automating the analytics and even some decisions. The magic of IoT is not in tech itself, but what happens with the data that tech collects. 

In the latest installment from GovExec's Leadership Voices series, Rick further discusses how to harness the transformative power of IoT and leverage today's emerging technologies to deliver mission outcomes.

For more from GovExec's Leadership Voices series, here Jamie Milne provides an astrophysicist's guide to getting started with AI; and here Bryan Thomas shares his insight on taking a transformative approach to government innovation.