Jasmyne Epps
Director of GovHub, The Georgia Technology Authority
Atlanta, Georgia, United States
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Life-long tech enthusiast Jasmyne Epps has always had a passion for technology and the ways in which it can solve the world’s problems. Finding purpose in the public sector, she served as a QA Analyst then Product Manager at the Georgia Technology Authority for nearly a decade. Now serving as Director for GovHub, the Drupal-powered web publishing solution for over 90 Georgia State agencies, she plans to continue to lead by championing accessibility and inclusivity in development and design.
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Where Tech Meets Public Good: Lessons from Leading GovHub
What happens when product management principles meet public service? This session explores that intersection through my experience leading GovHub, Georgia’s centralized platform for state agency websites. I’ll share the challenges, successes, and insights from navigating government constraints while pushing for innovation.
Through the case study of GovHub, we’ll explore how modern product thinking, collaboration, and user-centered design can transform how government works for citizens and why the tech community should get involved.
Attendees will walk away inspired to bring their skills to civic tech, because the problems that matter most need the best minds in technology.
Developing the Product Management Practice in Government
This session will explore the development of the "product mindset" and product management practice within government digital services teams, specifically focusing on utilizing Drupal as a vehicle to drive innovation and continuously offer value to constituents. GovHub is a Drupal-powered web publishing solution for over 90 Georgia State agencies. My team, Digital Services and Solutions Georgia, offers GovHub as a product for state agencies to publish content without the load of maintaining code, security, usability, and accessibility compliance.
In this session, we will touch on:
• GovHub as a product - how this Drupal-powered solution developed the product mindset of our team
• Agile product development - how our lean team works to deliver the maximum value each sprint
• Constituent-driven roadmaps - how our team prioritizes features development
• Drupal for the win - how the open source tool addresses Government-specific content, data, and security concerns to help our team focus on delivering a quality product to our agency customers
Black in Drupal Lunch (guests must pre-register)
The Black in Drupal Roundtable at DrupalCon will serve as a forum to exchange ideas and information relevant to the experiences of being black in Drupal. Through this affinity space, we hope to create an environment for open dialogue that can support opportunities for community building and shared experiences. We will discuss topics that help foster a culture of collaboration by providing opportunities to share resources for advancing professional, social, and cultural growth.
During this meeting, we will fellowship over lunch and conduct the needs assessment so that we can hear directly from those who identify as Black. This includes anyone who identifies as a member of the African diaspora, from any country, multi/bi-racial and/or multinational.
If you have any immediate questions please reach out to Joi Garrett (she/her) Community Contribution Coordinator, joi@drupal.association.org.
The Bug Stops Here — The State of Georgia Shifts Left
## How the State of Georgia streamlined their QA and UAT process to ship code faster and catch bugs earlier.
In this session, Jasmyne Epps (Unit Director, Digital Services Georgia) and James Sansbury (former Architect at Lullabot, now owner of Tugboat) reveal how the State of Georgia transformed their software delivery lifecycle (SDLC) for GovHub, their Drupal-based CMS, that powers 80+ state agency websites.
The traditional staging-server bottleneck was creating problems for the State of Georgia: end-of-sprint QA crunches, delayed releases, team burnout, and expensive rework. The task of migrating 80+ websites to an upgraded platform with the existing workflow was infeasible.
We'll share how implementing a "shift left" approach with Tugboat transformed Georgia's development workflow. By moving testing, QA, and stakeholder signoff at the time of the pull request, the team distributed QA throughout the sprint and caught issues earlier in the development cycle. This shift improved the process for developers, QA testers, product managers, and stakeholders alike.
The session will balance leadership insights with technical implementation details, covering:
- How to identify and eliminate bottlenecks in your SDLC
- Practical strategies for implementing "shift left" testing in government environments
- Leveraging Docker, CircleCI, and Tugboat for robust testing infrastructure
- Managing complex migration workflows with parallel testing environments
- Visual regression testing and automated QA integration
- Data handling strategies that maintain security while providing realistic test data
### Learning Objectives:
1. Understand how to identify critical bottlenecks in your software delivery lifecycle that may be causing delays, quality issues, and team burnout
2. Learn practical strategies for implementing "shift left" testing methodologies in government and enterprise environments
3. Discover technical approaches for creating reliable preview environments that accelerate testing and stakeholder feedback
4. Gain insights into managing complex migrations across multiple sites with distributed testing
### Audience:
This session is catered for CTOs, IT Directors, Technical Architects, and agency decision-makers involved in government digital service delivery. While it focuses on Drupal, the principles and approaches apply broadly to any web development workflow.
### Format:
60-minute presentation with slides, visualizations, workflow diagrams, and Q&A.
### Speakers:
- Jasmyne Epps, Unit Director, Digital Services Georgia - Previously QA/Product Manager who experienced the transformation firsthand
- James Sansbury, Owner of Tugboat - Former architect who designed and implemented Georgia's technical solution
The A in DEIA
Adding the "A" to DEI+A - the impact of the Executive Order on the work of government agencies
Government Industry Summit
Are you a federal, state, or local government employee? Or, a private sector employee supporting government? This summit is for you! Gov Summit attendees range from project managers and content editors to full-stack devs; and we want to make sure there’s something for everyone! We have speakers talking on the best approaches to digitizing forms, effective multilingual implementation, and best practices for Drupal developers in the government sector.
All are welcome to attend regardless of whether you participate hands on or following along with others. Meet Drupalers from all different skill levels, from beginner through expert, in a variety of roles -- site builders, developers, themers, project managers, support specialists, etc. If you are running up against a challenge or obstacle getting something approved or completing a task, there’s a good chance others are too, and can offer advice or act as a sounding board to discuss potential solutions! Let’s meet up and share our collective expertise!
For the full detailed schedule, visit: https://events.drupal.org/pittsburgh2023/gov-summit
Sponsored by: Agileana, Palantir.net, Platform.sh, and Promet Source
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