Technical Advisory Services

ISG is a proven leader in providing technical advisory services to public sector organizations across cybersecurity, feasibility studies, procurement, and data modernization. Our advisors operate at the executive level, helping agency leaders navigate complex technology decisions with clarity, confidence, and compliance. We have enabled faster development of funding decision packages, reduced repeat audit findings through governance improvements, accelerated modernization initiatives by embedding security and strategy early, and delivering measurable outcomes aligned to agency mission and legislative expectations.

Organizations regularly select ISG to serve in a technical advisory capacity on their most complex technology decisions due to the strategic caliber of our advisors, our deep understanding of public sector governance and procurement, and the actionable, outcome-driven insights we provide that enable informed decision-making and sustainable results.

Overview

ISG's Technical Advisory Services (TAS) practice provides trusted, strategic advisory services to public sector organizations navigating complex technology challenges. We deliver expert guidance across four core capability areas: enterprise cybersecurity strategy and risk leadership, feasibility studies, technology procurement, and data modernization.

Our teams combine technical, functional, and procurement expertise to help agencies understand tradeoffs early, avoiding downstream surprises in cost, staffing, or vendor lock-in. We help clients clearly define problems, objectively evaluate viable solution options, and produce defensible cost, risk, and staffing models that support funding and legislative review.

TAS operates at the intersection of strategy and execution, translating cybersecurity risk into actionable strategies, guiding agencies through complex procurements, modernizing fragmented data environments into secure, governed platforms, and delivering feasibility studies that unlock funding and establish implementation readiness. We focus on outcomes, risk reduction, and governance—not selling technology or pushing one-size-fits-all solutions. Our deep experience working within state government gives us a practical understanding of governance, procurement, and budget cycles that sets us apart.

Our Approach

TAS employs an execution-focused methodology built on a proven Discover → Design → Deliver → Optimize model that translates strategy into working systems. Our approach is phased, repeatable, and aligned to state budget cycles, regulatory constraints, and operational realities.

Central to our work is a human-centered design approach. We incorporate personas and journey mapping to ensure requirements reflect real user needs, increasing solution adoption and reducing change-management risk. This customer-centered lens informs everything from feasibility study analysis to RFP development and data governance design.
Our methodology is flexible, adapting to each agency's maturity, accelerating timelines when prior research exists, and filling gaps when it doesn't. We integrate policy, architecture, operations, and people into cohesive programs that support business agility while meeting compliance and audit expectations.

Each engagement is staffed with seasoned industry, functional, and technical specialists who deliver objective assessments and embed practical governance into architecture and operations, going beyond checkbox compliance. We focus on enabling informed decision-making and sustainable outcomes through early stakeholder engagement and "art of the possible" exploration.

Case Studies

Needs Entry

October 2023 – June 2025

The Washington Health Benefit Exchange (WAHBE) operates Washington State’s health insurance exchange, Healthplanfinder, which launched in 2014 to support implementation of theAffordable Care Act
Healthplanfinder was originally built using a monolithic architecture that was standard at the time but no longer meets modern enterprise needs for speed and quality of delivery.
Although the system is highly stable, it relies on non–cloud-native platforms and technologies that are approaching end of life.
Re-platforming to a modern architecture is expected to reduce infrastructure support costs and improve the ability to scale system components.