Case study 4 – GovAgency

Let’s imagine a hypothetical government agency, GovAgency, that is responsible for providing numerous public services, including tax processing, benefit distribution, and identity verification. Its systems are a complex mixture of legacy and modern applications, processing vast amounts of sensitive personal data daily.

Initially, GovAgency followed traditional, bureaucratic software development processes with lengthy approval chains, resulting in slow and infrequent software updates. However, in recent years, it shifted to an Agile-DevOps model to improve responsiveness and service delivery.

Security requirements for government agencies

Security and compliance are paramount for government agencies such as GovAgency. It must adhere to strict regulations such as the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) in the US, and it manages highly sensitive data that could have national security implications if breached.

Furthermore...