Technology for the Public Sector

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HP Federal and HP Technology help the U.S. Government protect vital systems

Years ago, a student at MIT Sloan was encouraged to get his PhD in economics by one of his professors. The student was fascinated and eager to learn and would study the professor's questions and seek him out to discuss the answers. They were almost always wrong, but the effort he put into them was impressive. The Professor took him under his wing and taught him how economists think, and how to look at the world through an economist’s lens.

That professor was Nobel Laureate Robert Solow, who changed the world with his theory of endogenous growth, which demonstrated that knowledge and innovation correlate to the existence of strong economies.

Tommy Gardner

That student was Tommy Gardner, Chief Technology Officer for HP Federal. “He thought I had a mind for economics,” he said of Solow. “I don't think I did. I think I had a mind to respect a brilliant person, to listen to him.” Gardner would go on to earn his PhD in energy economics at George Washington University.

Gardner is now responsible for technology leadership, strategic technology planning, product and technology strategies, salesforce technical support, and customer and partner relationships for HP Federal. He works with HP technology customers across the spectrum of federal agencies, state and local governments, higher education and K-12, and federal systems integrators.

We recently spoke with him about his career at HP. With an educational and career history that would take up most of the space in this story, we were particularly curious about why the ASME fellow and current member of the Board of Governors of ASME chose to join the company.

“I'm honored to have been asked to work for them. The thing that really drove me to HP was their ethical nature,” he said. “HP is a very ethical company and has been for 86 years, founded on doing the right thing at the right time. Being a matrixed organization, it's self-policing. The employees look after each other and make sure we all stay on the up and up on any issue that comes along. I'm very proud of that.”

He stressed that HP doesn’t sacrifice security in their designs. “We make sure that security is built into the product and not just an afterthought,” he noted. That includes personal systems, laptops, desktops, workstations, and printers, and they follow the same process in 3D printing, when they manufacture metal and steel parts. Gardner likens working with a plethora of different agencies with different needs to running any IT organization on a large scale. David Shive, CTO of the General Services Administration, runs the federal government’s CIO Council, which meets every month.

“David has the range to organize and communicate with all the other CIOs and the federal government, so that they have a common base and common knowledge, and they understand the problems each one's trying to solve,” he explained. “It's important for me to stay in touch with that community so I can give them input about how we can help and how our products fit their needs. It’s no different than the state CIO who's trying to organize all the towns and villages and entities within the state like a mini federal government.”

New York, Florida, and California are massive in terms of government organizations, and they closely parallel federal efforts. Securing the data and protecting it from bad actors, malware, and ransomware is a prevalent concern for the CIOs in those states. HP Fed works with them to keep up with the latest technology trends and recent and emerging threats.

Gardner pointed to HP Sure Click Enterprise as a robust malware remedy. “We've had anywhere from 30 to 80 billion attempts – depending on which technical experts you ask at HP – of bad actors trying to download malware on this product and nobody's gotten through it. Not to say that they won't someday, but we're trying to find some malware that can break our product.”

What is also unbreakable is HP’s dedication to sustainability, which Gardner is tremendously proud of. “It's a matter of choice, but I try to make sure if we're making a statement about our environmental needs or environmental claims that we’re being accurate. It’s a role I can play with my technical background. All the people in HP that are pro environmental are doing the right thing by the environment, and our CEO, Enrique Lores, is very vocal about it.

“We put out our sustainability report every year, and it's very self-critical. We have goals, and if we don't meet them we evaluate why we didn't. And we publicize this for anybody to read,” he said. “Diversity equity inclusion is included in sustainability because HP looks at the people side of sustainability – not just the product side.”

That mix of the right people with the right product is what makes HP the organization governments turn to keep critical data secure. We might all learn something from Tommy Gardner – the student who became the master – and his team.