Hello, and welcome once again to the Cask 
Distillery Podcast, where we unlock the full   potential of ServiceNow with expert insights 
and practical strategies, only here on the   Cask Distillery Podcast. And today, I have with me 
Jonathan Alboum. And Jonathan is the federal CTO   for ServiceNow, where he works with federal 
agencies to deliver digital workflows that   create great experiences and unlock productivity.
Prior to his role at ServiceNow, Jonathan served   as the CIO for the US Department of Agriculture, 
leading development of the USDA’s IT modernization   strategy. Jonathan’s passion for the federal 
space shines through in all of his experience   and ongoing service. And we’re so thrilled to have 
you today, Jonathan. Thank you for joining us and   taking time out of your schedule.
Thanks, Sean. I really appreciate   the opportunity to be here.
Oh no problem. I’m really looking   forward to this. And I know you have a long career 
serving others in federal government leadership   roles. How has your experience shaped your vision 
for serving the federal government at ServiceNow?  Yeah, that’s a great way to start, because all 
the time that I spent in the federal government,   it was, for me, always about the mission 
and the ability to make sure that people   across the United States of America had 
access to the programs and the benefits   that the US Department of Agriculture offered.
And USDA is a great agency. It touches the lives   of all Americans, from farmers and ranchers that 
produce the food we eat, to the schoolchildren who   benefit from school lunch programs or other 
people who need special assistance or for   food assistance. And we help so many people 
across so many sectors of the economy at the   Department of Agriculture, not to mention the 
national forests, safety, and all these things.  So, it was always very easy for me to fall back 
on the mission as a sense of pride and as a reason   for doing our jobs. And your question is how do 
I bring that into our work at ServiceNow. And   part of my role as I work with our different 
account teams and different agencies that are   customers of ServiceNow is to make sure that we 
never lose sight of why those agencies are there,   their purpose, and what their mission is and 
how ServiceNow plays a very important role   in making sure that missions deliver effectively, 
efficiently, and that the people at the receiving   end of that mission—that citizen, another 
government agency, or even an employee who’s   providing those services out to the public—is 
able to interact with technology and interact   with the information, interact with data/other 
systems in a way that makes them really productive   and puts them in the best place to get their work 
done or get the benefit that they need so they can   go on being very successful in their lives.
And I know ServiceNow, and most people think   of ServiceNow—its roots are in 
IT. Most people, “ServiceNow? Oh,   I’m thinking IT.” Why should agencies, in your 
eyes, use ServiceNow for their mission-critical   applications and supporting other workflows?
It really comes down to the fact that ServiceNow   was created originally, and is still today, a 
platform. And ServiceNow is a platform company.   We began our trajectory in the fed space and 
elsewhere as an IT service management provider   because that was the first set of applications 
that was built on the ServiceNow platform.  The ServiceNow platform is a great piece of 
technology. Having seen a lot of these platforms,   it’s a very unique capability. It’s 
a single architecture. It’s one data   model. It is unique in the industry from 
that perspective. Everything that you do   in ServiceNow is there on the platform.
So, when we begin going to market as an IT   service management with this IT service management 
capability, people begin to associate us that way   because we were so successful. But that’s just 
one set of applications built on the platform.   And we’ve built many kinds of applications on 
the platform, from employee experiences and   different employee workflows, like HR service 
delivery or onboarding or customer workflows.  I think we’ll talk about some of those in a 
little bit and industry-specific approaches,   as in government or finance or health 
care and so on. And we have the ability   to create unique mission-based applications 
using our low-code capabilities. Again,   part of the platform. And when you think 
about how ServiceNow goes to market today,   it sounds like we do all these different things.
But I always like to bring it back to we’re doing   the same core kinds of things on the ServiceNow 
platform. We’re able to connect different sources   of data, different systems, different people, 
different organizations. And as we bring that   data on the platform, where we can utilize all 
the technologies built into the platform—from   workflow and generative AI capabilities, RPA 
or configuration management database, all these   different kinds of technologies that are resident 
in core to the platform—we can use on the data,   we can use on those systems to drive outcomes.
And we do that in a way with a very modern,   elegant user experience that makes it very easy 
for people to interact with data across lots of   systems to get the work done, to get a result, to 
serve a customer. And we’re doing that in IT or   we’re doing that in HR. We’re doing it elsewhere.
We’re doing the same kind of concepts with the   same kind of model. We’re just applying those 
ideas in different ways in these different   spaces. So, because we could do it in IT and 
we’re doing it on the ServiceNow platform,   it sets us up to be able to do it in 
all these different areas of an agency.  And when ServiceNow was already 
there and running and successful,   I think that’s a great starting point to try 
any of the other requirements agencies have.  So how have you seen organizations 
leveraging creative workflows to   modernize things like legacy custom applications?
That is an ideal kind of use case. So many of   the applications that we have in agencies 
were built sometime ago. They were built in   a very bespoke way. It’s a custom system. And 
it made sense at the time. Before I was a CIO,   I built these systems, and being in an agency, 
we would be building something for them to meet   very unique business requirements.
And I think that was many times the   best approach to do this. But as technology 
evolves and we have access to cloud systems,   we don’t have to worry about the infrastructure 
as much anymore and other cloud providers are   providing those things. We have a new set of 
capabilities available to us, and we have trusted   platforms and agencies like ServiceNow.
So when I think about the low-code   capabilities and the opportunity to build 
mission-specific workflows, mission use cases,   on a trusted platform, ServiceNow always 
seems like a great fit because because so   many of these applications are really about 
workflow—it’s about service delivery—which   is what we are purpose built to do. And all we 
really have to do in those cases is understand   what this unique set of requirements are.
What are those workflows? What are the processes?   How do they differ from something we might 
already be doing in customer workflows or employee   workflows, perhaps. And design and build the rest 
using the same technologies built on the platform,   the same technologies that were used to build 
customer workflows. It’s a lot less complicated.  And it is a lot faster to do this on ServiceNow 
because these things are there and the platform   already exists and is being used. The most 
important things are really to understand the   data and understand the work and understand 
what those flows should be. And we have a   great way to implement those technologies or 
implement those requirements very quickly.  So how can organizations use ServiceNow 
App Engine to get around restrictive   things like ERP challenges and improve 
interactions for employees and all that?  There’s a couple things there. One, when we 
look at the number of systems in organizations   and the fact that so many people have to turn 
to lots of different systems in order to get   their job done, we think about ServiceNow as 
the connective tissue across these systems.  And we can use ServiceNow then as a way for people 
to come in and see data from lots of different   systems, different data sets, to work with that 
data to drive an outcome, like I was describing   before. And ERP modernization is one of those core 
ideas because ERP has lots of these data sets.  There are a lot of activities going on in these 
ERP systems. But sometimes the experience isn’t   great. And I’ve seen ServiceNow sit on top of 
those ERP systems to provide that more modern   experience. I’ve seen capabilities from ERP 
applications. Some of the functions move into   ServiceNow. Some stay. But the reality is you 
don’t have to swap out a system in order to   have ServiceNow on top of it, with ServiceNow 
providing that workflow in that experience and   the ability to have that single point. And where 
do we apply it to ERP, where we apply it to custom   mission requirements that you were describing, 
one of which comes to mind at the Department of   Agriculture, where I worked for a long time, the 
system—we call it IROC—the interagency resource   system for fighting wildland fires, which was 
a very complicated process when I was at USDA.  And again, this is using lots of different 
resources, whether they’re people,   whether it’s firefighting equipment or other 
things, moving them around the country, moving,   making sure we know where things are and making 
sure that they can be deployed to the right   location in order to make the firefighters—from 
USDA, Department of the Interior,   state agencies—as successful as they can be.
It’s a very similar kind of concept. We have   lots of data which needs to be in one place so 
good decisions can be made. And in the case of   IROC or the case of ERP modernization, 
we can make that one place ServiceNow.  Great. So how do you advise organizations 
to incorporate ServiceNow application   modernization capabilities as a part of 
their digital strategy, really informing   them of their broader strategic plan?
Yeah. So that is so common when you go   into an agency and you start asking about 
what their technology footprint looks like.   Generally people know what all the systems are. 
Sometimes they know what all the data is and what   it all means. And the advice I always start with 
is, “Do we understand what are we working with?”  And as you kind of flesh out what 
that system inventory looks like,   you tend to see that some things have been 
modernized over time. Some things are really old   technologies. And we have a lot of these systems 
that were built to solve an immediate problem,   and suddenly that thing becomes the way they’re 
going to do business sort of in perpetuity.  And we’re very locked into these older 
technologies. And some of these systems   are hard to maintain. Or maybe they’re harder 
to secure. When I find those things, to me,   those are great candidates to be moved onto 
the ServiceNow platform as applications that   we can create either through customer workflows, 
through some configuration in some additions,   or using creator workflows to build a 
system using our low-code capabilities.  And now with the generative AI 
capabilities that are in ServiceNow,   we have a code-assist capability to 
make developers a lot faster. We have   an application development capability that we 
can use to describe an application. And then a   version of that application can be constructed, 
and then humans can come in and make it better.  We can create these applications with such 
ease in so many cases that, as we find them,   they become great candidates to move on to the 
platform, especially when the core requirements   are around workflow, around approvals, around 
managing and process. That’s what ServiceNow   is built for. And that’s what I see so 
often move onto the ServiceNow platform.  In terms of these low-code applications, they’re 
not necessarily the most complicated application.   They can be easy to deploy. And once we 
move them onto the ServiceNow platform,   now they’re in a FedRAMP high environment 
or impact level for an ad space. And we’re   managing the same kinds of processes, 
but we’re doing it much more efficiently.  We’re doing it a lot faster. We’re building them 
faster, maintaining them faster. And we’re doing   it in a single place. So we start to begin 
to establish a very common and consistent   approach to interacting with the systems. Look and 
feel’s the same. The user experience is the same.   So people can just be more efficient overall.
And you had mentioned GenAI in generative code,   but how do you see GenAI capabilities in 
ServiceNow presenting new opportunities   for organizations to create better experiences for 
both internal customers and constituents? I mean,   you mentioned generative code. What are the other 
things that are out there that you’re seeing?  When we think about GenAI, which is 
obviously this topic that everyone   is talking about today, ServiceNow has sort 
of two approaches to GenAI. One, we have   large language models that are industry specific, 
based on ServiceNow data that can make ServiceNow   in your interactions with ServiceNow and your 
development of ServiceNow so much more efficient.  For example, take something like 
case summarization. A lot of people   in government use ServiceNow to manage cases, 
whether it’s an employee case or it might be a   case with a customer interacting with 
an agency. And some of these cases go   on quite some time or an IT ticket. Right?
There’s lots of history. And for someone to   come in fresh and start looking at this case—or 
even someone who’s been on it a while—they want   to make sure they have all the information. It 
can take a while to get up to speed on it. So   case summarization very quickly presents out 
to the user, “Here’s the information that’s   very relevant to what’s been happening here.”
You have enough now to go and go and help this   individual without having to spend a lengthy 
amount of time reading over history. That’s   one thing that’s really great. Creating knowledge 
articles using generative AI. Closing out a case.   Resolution notes. These things take time. 
But they are sort of the mundane tasks,   if you will, that people have to do to 
make sure they’re doing their jobs well.  But they don’t necessarily enjoy these things. 
They take people away sometimes from doing other   aspects of their job. So when we can use 
generative AI to quickly summarize a case   or provide resolution notes or create a knowledge 
article based on an outage or something that we   learned. We’re making the organization better.
We’re giving people information they’ll need in   the future. But we’re doing it without taking 
away time from someone who really wants to be   serving the customer. That’s one side of it. 
We’re also using generative AI to develop   code in ServiceNow, as I mentioned earlier. 
That code in this piece is really powerful.  We can develop applications a lot faster. We can 
make the development teams a lot more efficient   because of this. And really, the generative AI 
within ServiceNow—these large language models,   these domain-specific models—they’re 
smaller than the LLMs that are out   there for the a commercial GenAI capabilities. 
These things have a lot greater transparency.  There’s provenance of the data. There’s real 
understanding of the models. So we can answer   so many of the questions that agencies need 
to answer relative to the AI executive order   from from the president. But we don’t have to be 
scared of generative AI in this context because   it’s just making us better at using ServiceNow. 
On the other side of it, we know that agencies   and organizations in general are investigating 
generative AI models to help them run their   business, run their operation, serve the mission.
And these models certainly have a lot of value.   There’s always risks, but the positive 
benefits are really there. And as agencies,   we find these models and understand what 
they’re getting. We’ve set it up so that   information—that intelligence—can be brought into 
ServiceNow using our generative AI controller.  And then, that intelligence on the platform can 
be made actionable. One thing is to have the   intelligence. The other is to be able to use it 
and get value out of it. And we can make that case   here. And we’re talking about that with lots of 
agencies. And the opportunity to marry generative   AI capabilities and third-party models and 
ServiceNow I think is going to be really powerful.  So this is a conversation we’re having 
across government. And we’re having these   conversations everywhere—as so many people 
are, of course. But the reality, Sean,   is that when you take workflow and you take the 
data and you supercharge it with generative AI,   you are going to have really tremendous results. 
And we’re already seeing that on the platform.  And it’s just going to become more of a part 
of a regular conversation and regular usage   of ServiceNow in the federal space, I predict.
So I want to switch gears just a little bit and   talk a little bit about all the buzz that’s 
been around customer and industry workflows,   specifically PSDS. And I was hoping you 
could talk to us a little bit about PSDS   and how this product will help government 
agencies really achieve their goals.  That’s a really important topic. The customer 
workflows that we have in ServiceNow,   they evolved over time. And they evolved 
with an industry mindset. And as we started   to apply these in a government setting, 
we were realizing, from agency to agency,   there were very consistent changes 
that a government customer would   need to make to the data model and related 
workflows to serve in a government sense.  And what we did as a company was we took 
these common changes. We applied them into   the ServiceNow data model. We applied them 
into the sort of core capabilities of customer   workflows. And we established a set of public 
sector digital services that many agencies are   using now. And because we’ve done these things 
ourselves, we share them out through this public   sector digital service application with agencies.
We’re moving the starting point for an agency   that’s going to use customer workflows. 
When they use public sector digital service,   a lot more capabilities are already resident 
in that application, and they can go further   faster in those data model changes that 
many were making already there. One of   the uses that we’re seeing a lot of is the 
government customers sometimes—and actually,   many times, it’s another government agency.
So the customer isn’t always a person. Now,   one agency might serve another agency. And adding 
those organization relationships was, I think,   a very important change that was introduced 
recently. But we’ve had a lot of great success   in that space with this. One example I talk about 
a lot is at the US Fish and Wildlife Service.  They use public sector digital service as the 
basis for an electronic permitting program,   which was referenced in the president’s executive 
order on customer experience. This was a manual   process for a long time. You fill out a paper 
form and you send in a check. This process now   runs on public sector digital service. And I 
can apply and pay for a permit electronically.  I know it sounds simple, but until it was created, 
that wasn’t the way this process worked. And Fish   and Wildlife Service is bringing on more and more 
permits on this platform all the time, and they’re   going faster because public sector digital service 
has a permitting capability built into it. And   that allows them to just move through faster.
So we have lots of examples like that—lots of   great use cases where agencies are going 
faster using ServiceNow because they’ve   decided to use this set of tailored 
services for government agencies.  So we’ve been talking a lot about app 
modernization and doing things in ServiceNow.   But what is your advice for organizations that 
want to get started in this? And actually,   what’s your method of getting started 
on their journey to app modernization   within ServiceNow? What would you suggest?
I think, and I alluded to this earlier, one   of the first and I think most important challenges 
is to make sure that there’s a good understanding   of what’s that application inventory. How do these 
applications work together? Who uses them? What’s   the data inside them? That becomes the basis 
for an application modernization strategy.  And then some of these applications are surely 
going to be a good fit on ServiceNow because   it’s about delivering a service. It’s about a 
process flow. It’s about an approval. Things   that we are built to do on the platform. 
And identifying the right technology for the   modernization of an application is so important.
I spent a long time as a chief information   officer, as you said in the beginning, and too 
often, an organization will come to me and say,   “Hey, we want to modernize this application, and 
we want to use this technology.” I said, “Well,   why?” “Well, we went to the conference, 
and it sounds like a good fit,” or,   “We know the team, and they’re nice people.”
So those things are always very important.   But that doesn’t mean this is the right 
technology for this sort of application.   And I found too often that we get ourselves 
down a bad pathway because you want to be—when   you’re a federal IT or you’re a service provider 
yourself, and you want to help the organization   that’s coming to you get be successful as 
you start moving down that path with them.  And suddenly, you realize it can be a lot 
harder than we need to. You have to take a   step back and ask yourself the question: What 
exactly are we trying to accomplish here? And   of all this technology we have in our environment 
and the platforms we’ve standardize on, platforms   like ServiceNow, say, “Is it about delivering 
a service?” If it’s about delivering a service,   let’s start with the idea that ServiceNow 
is the place to modernize that application.   Other kinds of requirements in an organization 
might fit elsewhere. Inside a government agency,   I want everything that should be in ServiceNow to 
be in ServiceNow. Things that fit better somewhere   else? We should do them somewhere else, right?
Because that agency will get further faster.   They’ll be more successful when they deploy 
their requirements in the right place. When   we don’t do that, we start to add technical debt 
into our environment. So we might buy the most   modern SaaS platform out there. But if 
it’s not a good fit for what we’re doing,   we’re going to spend a lot of time, we’re going 
to spend a lot of money, and we may be able to   get something that functions in the end, but the 
process of getting there will make it feel like   it was too hard, make it feel like it was the 
wrong choice. And then you got to maintain it.  And that becomes complicated, too. When you 
pick the product, you pick the platform that   is purpose built for the kinds of requirements 
that you’re trying to implement, where there is   a close alignment, you just go a lot faster and 
you have better results, and there’s less risk   for the project going south. And that’s sort 
of the core: that you know the answer here.  What are the applications? What do they do? 
How are they aligned to the technologies   available in an organization? And anything that 
service deliverable. Those things in my mind and   in my experience as a CIO fit in a service 
delivery platform—fit in ServiceNow.  So within all that was a great answer. 
Thank you. What gets in the way,   and how do you think a partner can best help 
clients take advantage of the new capabilities?  The first thing as we start to think about these 
processes—say it is a service delivery thing,   we’re going to put it in ServiceNow—the first 
question I always ask is, “What’s the data? How   does the data flow through the organization?” 
The data is a representation of the work that’s   happening. And what are those workflows? And 
do we understand them? And again, very often,   these things are super well documented in an 
organization. So, the first step is we have to   understand the workflows. We have to understand 
how the data flows. And if we can do that now,   we’re setting ourselves up for success because 
we know what we’re trying to tackle. In the next   piece is—and where partners help quite 
a lot is—what does the future look like?  It doesn’t have to be exactly from a 
workflow/process perspective what you have   today. A lot of these processes grew up over time 
when we didn’t have these kinds of technologies,   when we didn’t have mobile devices, where people 
were more focused on working in offices. We have   a much more hybrid workforce now, and 
people are doing work on mobile devices.  And your customers are interacting that way too. 
So that very well may change that process flow   that would be ideal for the work that you’re 
doing for serving the mission. So we gotta be   able to rethink and redesign these processes as 
appropriate. And partners help there all the time.  So one step of that discovery piece is what’s 
that process. The second part is that’s what it   is today. But what could it be? And what should 
it be? And how can we use ServiceNow to make that   process even better? Even easier to interact with? 
And those are sort of the foundational things.  And at that point, now we’re ready to build 
something. You do these things iteratively,   of course, but you can’t just say, 
“Hey, we’re going to start a project,   and we’re going to buy ServiceNow, 
or any technology, for that matter,   and expect that to be at the panacea.
There’s a lot of important work to do   with the ServiceNow partner in order to get 
real value out of the important investment   you’re making in ServiceNow. And then I think 
the last piece, Sean, that I always advise on   is you really need to understand how you’re 
going to measure the impact of the work.  How do you measure success? What is success? 
And then, how do you use that to show value to   your stakeholders and to—might be to the program 
officials that you’re working with on a project,   it might be to members of Congress, 
it might be to different stakeholders,   other constituencies, whomever.
But you have to be able to measure   that—what you’ve accomplished—that there’s value 
there. You then prove something, which always goes   back to you needing to have a baseline. If I’m 
serving a customer this way today, what are those   key metrics, and what are they so I can prove 
that this was a really good investment because   those metrics have improved and I’m serving 
customers better. And I think when you do that   and you get out there and you can tell a real, 
transformation story about how this investment   ServiceNow created a real difference in the way 
we serve the people that rely on our agency.  And that’s a very powerful conversation that 
you can have with all those different groups   that you can have with your internal customers. 
You can have with your agency customers. And   that becomes a very virtuous cycle, I think, 
because successful transformations yield more   opportunities for transformation. You follow 
these ideas. You have more and more success.  And slowly but surely, we build a very modernized 
and digital government that people begin to trust   because when they interact with it, we have 
great experiences. And that trust piece is,   I think, so crucial to how we manage our agencies 
and we manage our technologies to keep the data   secure. We use trustworthy AI in this process.
And that trust factor is really important as   we continue to have these kinds 
of modernization conversations.  Well, that’s all of our time for today. And 
thank you so much, Jonathan, for taking time   out of your schedule. Like, I know you’re 
busy. I mean, we’re all busy, but you’re   really busy. And thank you for your time today.
It was worth a try. And I really appreciate this   chance to have the conversation 
and look forward to me being able   to continue with you in the future.
Great. And for those watching, please,   again, like and share this out. and if you have 
ideas for us and things that you want to see,   let us know in the comments below. 
And for now, take care. Bye bye.