CarahCast: Podcasts on Technology in the Public Sector · Carahsoft

Modernizing Federal Government IT with Atlassian and Isos Technology

·29 min·1 clip

A Department of Defense contractor moved support for 100,000-plus users onto Jira Service Management.

1. CarahCast's episode on modernizing federal government IT focuses on Atlassian and Isos Technology's approach to federal ITSM. 2. Anthony Jimenez hosts, while Leah Wood of Isos Technology and Nick Nader of Isos Technology explain why federal agencies matter to their work. 3. The episode asks how federal agencies can replace fragmented legacy ITSM with Jira Service Management while improving compliance, visibility, and mission outcomes. 4. Leah says Isos was founded in 2005 as a custom software company and adopted Jira and Confluence on “day two” to run its consulting practice. 5. The guests say Isos built a dedicated federal vertical and now applies lessons from commercial work to Department of Defense and other federal environments. 6. Nick describes discovery sessions with stakeholders and end users as the first step for identifying agency pain points before any tool design begins. 7. He says legacy ITSM environments often combine disparate tools such as ServiceNow, spreadsheets, emails, and PowerPoints. 8. He says those disconnected systems make prioritization, metrics, auditing, and reporting difficult for both agents and leadership. 9. Leah and Nick explain that Jira Service Management adds help desk, change management, asset management, and operations on top of Jira. 10. They say the platform can support facilities workflows, HR onboarding and offboarding, procurement, and self-service through Confluence documentation. 11. Nick says most Jira Service Management administration is low-code or no-code, and that Python or C++ expertise is usually unnecessary. 12. He adds that custom scripting mainly fills gaps that the core Jira products do not cover, while webhooks can connect external platforms. 13. Leah describes Atlassian GovCloud as FedRAMP moderate approved and moving toward FedRAMP high authorization. 14. She also mentions an isolated cloud tenant that is separate from Atlassian's commercial clients. 15. Leah says federal organizations are moving from ServiceNow partly because of licensing cost and the heavy implementation lift. 16. She gives an example of an independent federal agency that consolidated hundreds of application access forms into a more conditional Jira Service Management portal. 17. Nick describes the U.S. Air Force's 90th cyberspace ops squadron as having tickets lost in a complex approval chain and procurement disconnects. 18. He says the team mapped the workflow, automated approvals and notifications, and built custom SLAs for time to approve and time to review. 19. The guests keep the tone practical and process-driven, with long examples, repeated clarifications, and a strong focus on field implementation. 20. Listeners interested in federal IT modernization, workflow automation, and Atlassian tooling will get the most from it, while listeners wanting a light or story-only episode may skip it.

As heard by us

A practical look at making federal approval chains and service workflows visible enough to modernize.

Federal IT modernization is framed less as a platform pitch than as a workflow challenge. Leah Wood and Nick Nader of Isos Technology walk through the pressure agencies face from fragmented ITSM environments, limited visibility, compliance demands, and cloud-transition work,…

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Why you'd press play

You want federal IT approvals to stop disappearing inside complex approval chains and procurement handoffs.

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