The Time for IT Modernization is Now; Can Congress Make It Happen?

By Chris Wiedemann, Consultant

Those of you who have been following our blog (or the myriad news sources surrounding federal IT) will be familiar with the many challenges facing government IT managers: cybersecurity, cloud migration, enabling mobility, providing more effective and efficient services to the American public…the list goes on.

As if that wasn’t difficult enough, federal customers are faced with flat or shrinking budgets, an increasing share of which goes to maintaining costly legacy systems instead of the modernization that federal technology desperately needs. According to estimates by US CIO Tony Scott, roughly 80% of total federal IT expenditure goes to steady state, or operations and maintenance – and that share is only going to increase. We’ve often heard about legal, cultural, or regulatory barriers to IT modernization and cloud adoption, but the question underpinning everything else remains: How can government actually pay for the modern technology it needs to execute its mission?

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