Your Guide to a DevOps Career in Government

DevOps has been on the rise in recent years. 2018 saw an 18 percent increase in DevOps adoption among business organizations. That's up from 10 percent in 2017 and 8 percent back in 2015.

DevOps is spreading across all technological industries.

With so much interest in DevOps, many developers may be wondering where the work's at. Government jobs are known for their stability and benefits. Many DevOps developers are wondering how to begin their DevOps career in government.

Governments are some of the largest, most unwieldy organizations on Earth. They're known for being inefficient, which hurts their constituents' trust. Governments need to get efficient, just like every other organization on Earth.

Starting Your DevOps Career In Government

Let's start by looking at why DevOps is needed in government institutions. Then we'll show you how to build your government DevOps career in earnest.

Why DevOps In Government Matters

DevOps is well-known for its efficiency. Government and DevOps are made for one another. There are some things that are particular to implementing Developer Operations in a government system, however.

DevOps is more of a development approach than a dedicated discipline. It gets all the various sectors working together, to reduce inefficiency as well as helping developers to see and understand the bigger picture. With so many branches and moving parts, the government needs cooperation and efficiency more than any other organizational structure.

The Most Important Aspects Of DevOps For Government Careers

Every enterprise has a problem with silos. This creates inefficient workflows where developers don't know what they're working on so they have greater difficulty implementing the final result. The operations side ends up sending their work back to them to fix.

This isn't just bad for productivity. It's also bad for morale. No one likes to do unnecessary work.

If you're a DevOps developer looking for a career in the government, here are some skills you should cultivate.

Automation

People get hung up on the automation aspect of DevOps. The government is no exception. A large percentage of government DevOps projects focus on automation, as a result.

While we should also be expanding our scope beyond automation, DevOps developers also need to develop skills their clients need. Some common tasks that are automated in the government sector include:

• Code testing
• Deployment
• Unit testing
• Security testing
• Load testing

Continuous Deployment

DevOps is a practical application of the Agile philosophy. This helps prevent interruption of services, which can have major ramifications for government projects.

Continuous deployment is incredibly important in government DevOps, as a result. Make sure you understand the difference between continuous deployment and continuous delivery, as well.

You're more likely to need continuous deployment in government DevOps. This reduces the risk of interrupted service.

Increase Transparency For Improved Security

Cyber security is probably the number one most important aspect of implementing DevOps for government. You need to know who's accessing what as well as keeping track of any development changes they may make.

Learn to use tools like Splunk for real-time analysis of system logs via a secure portal. This also yields useful metrics collection and analysis, so they're good for efficiency as well.

Ready For Your DevOps Career?

Technology is evolving at the speed of thought. Entire new careers and industries are being born daily. Tech jobs are booming and have been for decades!

That's not likely to change anytime soon.

If you're ready to take your tech career to the next level, whether you're working in DevOps or cloud migration, we'd love to help give you the skills you need to truly thrive in tomorrow's industry. Contact us today and embrace the future!