Public Sector agencies are under increasing pressure to deliver faster, more connected workflow services while managing limited resources and growing operational demands. In this session, learn how AI-powered service management, automation and modern workflows help Government agencies streamline operations, improve employee experience and reduce manual effort.
Anthony Jimenez
Welcome back to Carahcast, the podcast from Carahsoft, the trusted government IT solutions provider. Subscribe to get the latest technology updates in the public sector. I'm Anthony Jimenez, your host from the Carahsoft production team.
On behalf of A&B and Atlassian, we would like to welcome you to today's podcast, focused around AI-powered automation. Tian Wong, Harjinder Singh, and Mike D'Amacio will discuss modernizing workflows to improve collaboration and enhance employee experiences.
Tien Wong
Welcome everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I'm your host, Tien Wong, and today we are going to dive into a topic that affects all of us, how government agencies are modernizing the way they deliver services using AI and automation. Government agencies today are under enormous pressure, rising citizen expectations, tighter budgets, aging technology, and a workforce that's being asked to do more with less.
As not just operational pressure, Congress and the White House have made modernization a priority, from the Modernizing Government Technology Act to the Government Services Delivery Improvement Act signed in January of last year. Agencies are now required, not just encouraged, to transform. So the question becomes, how do you modernize without disrupting operations, and where does AI actually fit in?
Joining me today are two experts from A&B Technologies, an Atlassian Gold Partner that has helped government agencies transform their IT service management and service delivery, Harjinder Singh and Mike D'Amacio. Love for them to introduce themselves. Harjinder, welcome.
Harjinder Singh
Thank you, Tian. Let me introduce myself. So I'm Harjinder from A&B Technologies.
I'm one of the co-founders and managing directors here at A&B. Real quick about A&B Technologies, like Tian mentioned, we are a Gold Solution Partner, but more importantly, we help customers, both on public as well as commercial sector, to improve and modernize their service delivery and cloud transformation initiatives. So happy to be here.
We'd love to continue this conversation.
Mike DiMascio
Terrific. Thanks, Harjinder. Mike.
Welcome. Thanks, Tian. I'm Mike DiMascio
I'm an Atlassian Solutions Specialist at A&B Technologies. In my role, I help organizations in both the public and private sectors modernize and transform IT, as well as enterprise service management, from a people, process, and platform perspective. Day-to-day, I work closely with agencies and organizations to improve how they manage and deliver services to both their internal employees and their external customers or citizens when it comes to the federal and state governments.
I'm excited to be here and really looking forward to exploring how AI and automation are helping to improve government service delivery. Well, this is fantastic.
Tien Wong
I'm super excited. Before we jump into solutions, I wanted to set up a little bit of context here. There's now a real legislative mandate behind government modernization.
You have the 21st Century Idea Act, the MGT Act, and most recently, the Government Services Delivery Improvement Act, signed in January of 2025, which actually designates a federal service delivery lead to coordinate modernization across agencies. That's before we even get to Doge and Doge's software modernization initiative. Agencies are not just feeling internal pressure, they're being directed from the top.
With that as a backdrop, I'd love to start with you, Mike. What do you see as some of the biggest operational challenges on the ground?
Mike DiMascio
Yeah. I think that legislative backdrop really brings urgency into focus. What we're seeing on the ground in the agencies, they're caught in a really tough spot.
Citizens today, they expect the same type of experiences that they're getting in their private lives when it comes to Amazon, their private bank. What that usually looks like is fast, transparent responsiveness in their services. The reality inside a lot of these agencies is that they're still working around disconnected systems, manual processes, and approval chains that are just slow, maybe outdated.
Here's the thing. It's not from a lack of effort. The agents on the front line, they're working harder today than they ever have.
When the service team, desk team, is spending half their day chasing down approvals, manual routing requests, they're not actually delivering services. That's the time and capacity that just gets eaten up by the process itself. What the legislation is doing by mandating it is making it a priority and bringing accountability to it.
Agencies have to improve, but they're doing it on tight budgets, staffing constraints, and a lot of cases, technology that's been patched and stitched together over decades. That's really the core challenge that we're helping organizations work through today.
Tien Wong
Thanks, Mike. Arjunder, same question for you. From your vantage point, working directly inside these agencies, what are the biggest operational challenges you're seeing on the ground?
Harjinder Singh
Just adding to what Mike was saying, beyond just the budget pressure, a lot of these agencies are dealing with technology debt that's building for decades. When we walk into these Gov agencies, we still see organizations running on manual, paper-based workflows, processes. We are at this age of AI, and still, we see that.
It's amazing. But on top of it, there are also Gov agencies who are running their technology, which is 10, 15 years old. Problem with that is those are not meant for today's fast-paced environment.
We see that a lot, and to Mike's point, the citizens, they expect the service expectations like they see it in the private world, the private sector. So, those are some of the biggest challenges we see today, and this needs to be transformed.
Tien Wong
100%. 100%. So, both of you are pointing to this gap between what agencies need to do and what their tools actually allow, especially when you're talking about 15-year-old legacy systems or manual processes.
Arjunder, I'd love to go a little deeper with you. How are these manual workflows and legacy processes impacting service delivery day-to-day?
Harjinder Singh
Absolutely. Great question, Tian. So, this is where impact actually becomes real, right?
So, it's not just a technology issue. It's an issue that's impacting both the employees and the citizens. Let's start with employees first.
So, these legacy systems that I mentioned earlier, it's creating frustration among all the employees. They submit a ticket or they submit a request, which they have no idea where it is. They can't get the status.
It's been there for weeks, if not months, and it just demotivates them from their day-to-day work. So, instead of enabling their job, it's actually demotivating them. Also, a lot of these legacy platforms are working in their silos, so they're not connected, right?
So, that's the other problem. Because they are not connected, everyone is working in their own particular silo. Right?
Now, let's move on to the citizen side, right? So, they expect, like I mentioned, the private sector style satisfaction, right? So, that's where we see, you see that.
You go to the DMV or other offices and there's long lines, right? Long wait times. And here we are, we can even track our pizza when it will be delivered, right?
So, comparison for those services between the public sector and private sector, it's really coming in and citizens are the customers. They expect that same behavior, same service level expectations.
Tien Wong
Yeah, thank you for that. I 100% agree with that. And, you know, Harjun, it sounds like the awareness of the problem is obviously there.
The pain points are there. And with legislation like, you know, GSDI Act, creating these formal accountability structures and standardized metrics, agencies can't afford to stand still anymore. You know, but there's often a gap between knowing what you need to modernize and actually getting it done.
So, what would you say, Harjun, is holding these agencies back from making that leap?
Harjinder Singh
Yeah, great question. So most agency leaders, they know there is a need to modernize. It's not like it's unknown by them.
The challenge is always taking the first step. So a few things typically get in their way. First is the risk, right?
So they are providing critical citizen services, right? So their challenge is always, what am I going to break if I change that, whether it's a legacy platform or even paperwork, right? What am I going to break?
So that risk factor is there. Number two, the culture itself. They are used to doing things in a certain manner.
And changing that, it's typically a big deal.
Tien Wong
That's more of a human nature issue, would you say?
Harjinder Singh
Yeah, exactly. Change is always difficult, right? However, taking that to the next level, that's where change management or organizational change management and executive leadership is really, really important with these type of initiatives.
You need to get the buy-in from top-level leadership so that change can also be enabled across the organization. And of course, there is the budget uncertainty. That's the other issue, right?
However, typically, this digital transformation sometimes takes, it's a multi-year journey. So if you could break that down and show some low-hanging fruits, real value in a quick fashion, that's then easy to justify. So however, the encouraging news is because of these legislative mandates and growing service expectations, the conversations are changing, right?
So it's actually helping the CIOs, the CTOs of these government agencies to build a stronger business case, and these are getting approved, right? So to me, the first step is really important, understanding the risk, and then making sure the leadership buy-in is there. Thanks, Harjinder.
Tien Wong
The cultural piece is really fascinating to me. Mike, when an agency does decide to move forward, what does that modernization journey typically look like? Where would they start?
Harjinder talks about you got to start. So how would an agency start?
Mike DiMascio
That's a great question. And honestly, the starting point isn't where most people would expect. A lot of agencies want to jump straight to the automation and AI.
But if your underlying processes are broken and your teams don't have the visibility into what actually is happening, you're just automating the chaos that lies underneath. So we always start with service management as the foundation, get clear on what requests are coming in, how they're being handled, where the bottlenecks are. So really understanding that current state.
That visibility is everything. And then tied to that is the underlying tool sprawl. And Harjinder had mentioned about these tools that aren't connected, which adds another element of complexity and risk.
So most agencies have accumulated a patchwork of systems over the years that don't talk to each other. And part of our job is helping them to consolidate onto a modern platform that gives them a single view across the organization or across the enterprise. Once that foundation is in place, then when automation and AI is actually delivered on top, that's where you really create the value.
It's really a crawl, walk, run approach. And the agencies, the ones that try to skip those or skip the steps, those are the usually ones that then struggle.
Tien Wong
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you mentioned a modern platform as the foundation. What does that look like in the government context, specifically?
Because it's never a one-size-fits-all, right?
Mike DiMascio
Absolutely. It definitely is not a one-size-fits-all. And that's an important distinction.
In the government context, you can't just pick any platform. There are real compliance and security requirements that have to be met, FedRAMP being one of them. So the platform conversation starts there.
What we typically land on with agencies is the Atlassian platform and its geoservice management solution, which is available in both the commercial and government cloud environments. It checks the compliance boxes, it's enterprise-grade and scalable. But what really sets us apart is the flexibility of it.
A lot of agencies think service management is purely an IT function. And yes, it's usually where we typically will start, but not always. A lot of agencies think of service management as purely an IT function.
And yes, that's usually where we start. But JSM can support HR, facilities, legal, finance, really any team that's managing requests and workflows. So you're not just buying a point solution for one department.
You're investing in a platform that can scale across the enterprise over time. That's a really important value proposition to government, especially when budgets are tight. You get more value out of a single platform than you would piecing together a bunch of siloed or different tools.
Tien Wong
Thanks, Mike. And Harinder, you've had a lot of success implementing these types of systems with these agencies. And maybe you can tell us a little bit about sort of the before and after and the transition piece.
Harjinder Singh
Yeah, I love this question because, again, this is where you see the real transformation. Right. So many agencies, like I mentioned, they still operate on those legacy platforms.
So their before picture is something that was implemented 10, 15 years ago. Messy, lagging, difficult to change, high cost. Small little changes require a big statement of works by consulting agencies, right, or consulting companies, I should say, and heavily reliant on manual processes.
This is the before state. Once you do the transformation to platform like Jira Service Management or now they call it service collection, you see a modern connected service experience. Right.
To Mike's point, platforms like this are not just meant for IT support, but they are enterprise service solutions. So they could be used by HR facilities, procurement, wherever you have a process and a workflow, you could pretty much leverage a platform like Jira Service Management. So we have seen agencies that make this transformation and achieve meaningful results.
Some of the most common ones are reducing the manual effort, reducing manual efforts, improving response times, streamlining processes like HR employee onboarding and offboarding. These are complex processes, but you can streamline that leveraging platform like Jira Service Management. So more importantly, modernization isn't just about technology.
Right. It's about delivering faster service, greater transparency and a better experience for both employees as well as citizens. Super important.
Really important.
Tien Wong
Let's shift gears for a second here and let's talk about the piece that everybody's asking about, AI and automation. One thing to modernize the platform, but artificial intelligence is being a layer on top of everything right now. It's worth noting, this isn't just a technology trend, right?
It's state legislatures from Connecticut to Minnesota are passing AI specific bills now and the federal government's getting involved. They're actively pushing agencies to adopt AI responsibly. We're sort of in uncharted territory in a lot of ways.
How do you think agencies should be thinking about AI and their service delivery strategy realistically? Mike, what are your thoughts on that?
Mike DiMascio
I think the most important reframe here is that AI is an accelerant, right, not a replacement. And what that means practically is that AI amplifies what's already there. So if your workflows are clean, your data is structured, AI can do incredible things.
But if the foundation isn't solid, you're just amplifying the mess that relies underneath. So the sequence matters. Where we see AI deliver real value is service delivery in two areas.
One, augmenting your agents with intelligent routing, auto classification and suggested resolutions. On the other side of it, we're also seeing AI improving the self-service so employees and citizens can actually get the answers without even picking up the phone or submitting an email for help. And in the government context specifically, this is a big deal.
Agents are being asked to meet these legislative mandates with constrained budgets and limited headcount. AI becomes a force multiplier. You may not be able to hire your way out of modernization, but with the right foundation and AI layered on top, you can close the gap in a very meaningful way.
Tien Wong
Yeah, no, that's excellent framing, Mike. Thank you for that. And AI works best when the foundation is already solid.
Harjinder, what are some specific places inside government service delivery where you're seeing AI make the biggest impact right now?
Harjinder Singh
Yeah, absolutely. If we kind of divide the question into two parts, first, let's talk about the AI and then we'll talk about the automation. The biggest impact where AI is bringing is helping employees and citizens get the answers quick, using the knowledge base, using the knowledge that the agency already have.
You see that today on the private side, private sector, the commercial sector, how you can use open AI or cloud, right? And it gives you answers based on that knowledge. Similarly, for agencies, they already have a plethora of knowledge stored in different documents, whether standard operating procedures, run books, those should all be digitized and then used that should be leveraged by AI to get faster answers, reliable answers.
What that does is it enhances self-service. To Mike's point, citizens can now get their answers by themselves without picking up a phone. And then that's where tools like Robo are becoming an extension of service delivery team, which is helping support teams find answers faster, draft responses to their customers faster and handle routine requests so that they can focus on more complex work.
At the same time, when we talk about automation, think about your complex processes, which are which require multiple technologies to talk to each other. Take an example of our employee onboarding, employee offboarding, procurement processes. Now, those can be integrated and automated.
And what that will do is it's going to streamline those processes and again, give a great experience to the citizens as well as internal employees. So what makes this so powerful is AI improves the decision making and access to the knowledge, while automation is eliminating the manual effort to a lot of extent. So together, they help agencies deliver services faster, reduce the workload and obviously create a better experience, like I mentioned before, for both employees and citizens.
Tien Wong
Thank you for that, Harjinder. And Mike, Harjinder mentioned Robo. That's a new product in the Atlassian ecosystem that's getting a lot of attention right now for obvious reasons.
And for those of you who haven't heard of it, we'd love for Mike to break down what Robo actually is. Why does it matter for government agencies?
Mike DiMascio
Yeah, well, Robo really is the thing that's exciting about Atlassian ecosystem. The simplest way to probably describe it is that Robo is Atlassian's AI layer. It essentially is an AI teammate that works alongside your team.
It can search across your entire enterprise, knowledge base, answer questions, even take action on tasks and support both your agents and your end users in real time. In the context of geoservice management specifically, Robo can service the right knowledge articles in the right moment, suggest resolution times and draft responses, basically handling the repetitive work that's used to require a human to stop and look something up. That's meaningful productivity lift for service desk teams.
Now, this is important to be transparent about. Robo is currently available on Atlassian's commercial cloud, but it's not yet available on an Atlassian government cloud. So for agencies that are operating in that FedRAMP environment, it's something to have on your radar as the roadmap evolves.
But it's not something that you can deploy today. We always want to make sure our agencies have a full picture and when they're planning their monetization strategy.
Tien Wong
Thanks for that, Mike. So what I'm hearing from you is that Robo is basically giving every service agent an informed AI assistant that just kind of sits right next to them and gets things done. Prajendra, a question for you.
How does this actually change the day to day practice for government services team?
Harjinder Singh
Yeah, absolutely, Tien. Yeah, Tien, that's exactly what makes Robo so powerful. Right.
So today, service desk agents spend a lot of time searching through the knowledge bases, right? Old tickets, documentation that's been there for ages to find the right answer. Robo dramatically reduces that time.
It can go through old knowledge base, confluence, wherever it is stored, whether it's on SharePoint or confluence. And not only it can find that knowledge article, but it can suggest resolution for those requests or incidents to the support team and even drafting responses directly within the workflow. In many cases, Robo service agent can act like another member of your team and can take action, not just suggestion, but it can actually take action.
And it also helps preserve institutional knowledge by making expertise from past incidents or issues and documentation instantly accessible. The result is, again, simple, faster resolution, more productive agent and better experience.
Tien Wong
I absolutely love the framing of surfacing, storing and being able to access this institutional knowledge that's been there for many years and decades in some cases, right? Mike, how does JSM combined with Robo sort of help unlock that?
Mike DiMascio
Yeah, this is one of the most compelling parts of government agencies specifically because that institutional knowledge risk is very real. People retire, teams turn over, decades of knowledge walks out the door, potentially could walk out the door. But with Robo, what Robo does is connect all that through knowledge connectors to indexing across other Atlassian solutions like confluence and JIRA, as well as third party systems.
So instead of an agent hunting through the five different tools to find an answer, it's surfaced in context right then when they need it. And the compounding effect over time is what really sets it apart. As the AI learns from your environment, it gets smarter for agencies sitting on a decade of institutional knowledge.
It helps to turn potential liability into a strategic asset. Yeah, good point.
Tien Wong
I like to shift the focus to making it real, you know. If I'm a CIO or an IT director at a government agency listening to us right now, right, I've got a lot of pressure on me. I've got legislative mandates coming down from above, a whole procurement process to navigate skeptical leadership teams, skeptical employees who are potentially resistant to change.
We know that's human nature. So Harjinder, I'd like to start with you, from agencies that are in that position, which is probably most of them, where would you start?
Harjinder Singh
Yeah, great question. So I suggest starting small and very highly focused. Don't try to transform, obviously, everything at once.
Some of the best examples are picking a high volume, high paying service area, where it could be IT, it could be HR, where you see a lot of complaints, right? So instead of transforming everything, pick an area, start there. Demonstrate time to value quickly and let the data make the sense internally.
I'll give you an example of where we are working with one of the local agencies, where what the CIO mentioned was, let's look at the data and find out where is the team spending most amount of the time? Where are people actually complaining about, right? Yeah.
So we looked at the data and figured out top five items where support teams were spending time. And then those five becomes your AI and automation candidates. Imagine where your team is spending most amount of time and now you can automate it or use AI to kind of do the self-presentation.
Tien Wong
So going after low-hanging fruit. Exactly.
Harjinder Singh
So that would be our suggestion to starting very small and highly focused area that can bring you better ROI.
Tien Wong
I love the concept of starting basic, very simple, get some points on the board, build momentum. Mike, what about your thoughts on what not to do?
Mike DiMascio
I'd build on what Harjinder said, because the start small piece is exactly right. And what we see derail that approach is under-investing in change management, which Harjinder has already alluded to. You can pick the perfect use case and still struggle if you haven't been able to bring your people along.
So getting early buy-in, communicating the why, right? Why are we doing this? Training your teams, that's what determines whether it's actually going to be successful in the long run.
The other big pitfall is treating modernization as purely a technology problem. Agencies invest in a great platform, flip the switch and wonder why adoption is low. Technology is only one piece.
If the processes around it haven't been addressed, the platform alone won't save you. And lastly, define what success looks like before you start. Harjinder mentioned letting the data make the case, and that only works if you've established your baseline up front.
Without it, you can't measure progress and you can't sustain momentum for the next phase.
Tien Wong
Yeah, I'd love to double-click a little bit on what the success looks like. So once an agency makes this big investment, they get other people involved, they spend money. What should they realistically expect to see and on what type of timeframe?
Mike DiMascio
I'll be specific because I think that setting the realistic expectations is part of what makes these efforts succeed. In the first 60 to 90 days, agencies should expect early wins. And that could look like reduced ticket volumes through self-service, deflection, faster SLA attainment, less time spent on manual routing and approvals.
Over the following 6 to 12 months horizon, you start seeing the broader impact. So cost avoidance from automating manual processes, reduced onboarding time, and improved satisfaction scores for both the employees as well as your citizens that are requiring these services. And if you defined your baseline up front, these numbers tell a compelling story that gives leadership the confidence to keep pushing forward and expand the investment.
Tien Wong
Those are very compelling numbers and I applaud you for finding stuff that's relatively easy to measure and tangible so you can actually demonstrate, as Arjun just said earlier, the ROI to your team and to management and to obviously the citizens out there. Last question for both of you, and this has been a great conversation. I appreciate all of your insights, but there's one takeaway you'd like our listeners out there to leave with today.
What would that be? Mike, let's start with you.
Mike DiMascio
For me, it comes down to mindset. The agencies that struggle with modernization usually are the ones treating it as a compliance exercise, checking the boxes to make or meet a mandate. The agencies that pull ahead are the ones that see it as an opportunity because at the end of the day, this isn't really about the technology.
It's about enabling your employees to do their best work and deliver better services and faster services to the citizens who depend on you. The legislative mandate have made this a requirement, but the mission behind it's bigger than that. So my takeaway would be, don't just modernize because you have to, modernize because it delivers a better outcome and experience for your own employees and, more importantly, the citizens that you serve.
Absolutely.
Harjinder Singh
Arjun? I'll speak about the cost of waiting. So every year on a legacy platform is another year of technical debt, frustrated employees, a widening gap between what citizens expect versus what you're delivering.
So the agencies moving now are building a compounding advantage. So AI capabilities are only accelerating. The longer you wait, the steeper the climb we're going to be.
So recommendations, start ASAP.
Tien Wong
Yeah, a hundred percent with that. And I would love to thank you guys for joining us. Today has been a very rich conversation.
And just to summarize what I'm taking away from this conversation, government agencies clearly dealing with real compounding challenges, legacy systems, manual workflows, resource complaints, and the mandate to modernize is coming from the very top, right, through legislative initiatives like GSDI Act and DOJ, DOJ's Software Modernization Initiative. And the path forward isn't just about buying new technology. This is a bigger than technology problem, right?
It's about building the right foundation with a platform like Atlassian and JSM, laying on top of that artificial intelligence, including tools like Robo, that'll unlock knowledge and efficiency that agencies need to actually serve people better. And the agencies that start now, you know, one service, one process at a time, one use case at a time, they'll be best positioned to meet the demands of the future. So, Mike, Harjinder, thank you both for sharing your insights today.
And thank you to everybody for joining us. Until next time.
Anthony Jimenez
Thanks for listening and thank you to our guests, Tien, Harjinder, and Mike. Don't forget to like, comment, and subscribe to Caracast, and be sure to listen to our other discussions. If you'd like more information on how A&B and Atlassian can assist your organization, please visit www.carasoft.com or email us at atlassian at carasoft.com.
Thanks again for listening and have a great day.