Chuck Prow, managing partner responsible for IBM‘s (NYSE: IBM) global public sector, has been elevated to the role of industry general manager for global government and will oversee the company’s sales to agencies worldwide, Prow broke to GovCon Wire this week.
The consulting and technology veteran is now responsible for hardware, software and services offerings to public sector agencies said his top priority in the GM post will be ensuring they have access to IBM’s “mission-oriented solutions that we’ve implemented across the globe.”
Prow said he will particularly focus on opportunities to apply IBM’s technologies and services in areas including public safety; security; critical infrastructure protection; social services, cities, and other homeland issues.
“IBM has made a significant investment over the recent years in the areas of big data, cloud, mobile and social. These areas will continue to represent significant growth opportunities in the coming years” Prow said.
Prow added that in addition to creating insights from unstructured data, “globally, governments and jurisdictions are spending an enormous amount of time on big data processing and predictive analytics to help improve mission effectiveness, drive down cost and improve accessibility across governments.”
In his new role, Prow said he will also be “tremendously focused” on helping government agencies navigate their acquisition processes, which he noted can sometimes present challenges to adopting new commercial technologies.
“Some of the largest barriers that stand between us and (applying commercial capabilities to the public sector) are not related to technology but involve acquisition processes of our government clients, ” including around regulations and laws that details how agencies can adopt and implement technologies, Prow noted.
“In working with our clients globally, the acquisition processes need flexibility and speed to allow our government to acquire these new capabilities, whether they are technology or process capabilities in a timely manner.”
Earlier this year, Executive Mosaic’s staff elected Prow to the Wash100, a group of government contracting executives recognized for vision and leadership at the intersection of the public and private sectors.
At that time, Prow held the managing partner role for IBM’s global business services public sector and was responsible for functions including transformational and strategic consulting.
Then and now, his focus is not just developing those tools, but ensuring government clients are able to effectively work them into their operations.
“We take commercial capabilities that have been implemented across commercial clients over the last 24 or 36 months and get those rapidly adjusted and applicable to public sector mission, ” Prow said.
“We want to make sure that our clients globally have access to those capabilities and can readily apply them to their clients.”
