Extract from Vivan Marwaha’s article “U.S. Department of Interior Embraces Cloud-Native Legal Technology to Modernize and Future-Proof its Technology Stack”
The new year brings with it new opportunities for organizations and employees to take a fresh look at how they operate and conduct business. The federal government is the nation’s single largest employer, and comprised of hundreds of agencies and departments whose activities touch every aspect of our lives. In recent years, federal agencies have been embracing technology to streamline their processes and operations and respond to their mandates more effectively.
One agency in particular epitomizes this trend: The U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI).
Since its establishment in 1849, the DOI has evolved from managing the government’s interactions with Native American communities to governing the natural resources in the United States, while adopting a focus on conservation, energy production, and land management. Today, the Department oversees nearly 75% of all federal lands in the country (roughly 420 million acres), approximately 55 million acres of tribal lands, more than 700 million acres of subsurface minerals, and about 2.5 billion acres of the outer continental shelf.
Embracing Technology for Greater Efficiency and Better Insights
As part of its sprawling and crucial mandate, the department has embraced technology to digitize its mission work, streamline collaboration across its eleven bureaus, and better respond to the looming specter of climate change. In its focus on protecting the country’s natural resources and cultural heritage, the Department has adopted cutting edge cloud-native legal technology to modernize its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) workflows and for other initiatives to promote environmental justice across its many state, tribal, and local government partners.
