Rep. Will Hurd (R-Texas) believes his modernization legislation included in the Senate’s recently passed defense bill can begin to solve some of the impediments to federal IT modernization, which has been stifled by vacancies for senior government information technology (IT) leaders and about 15,000 unfilled IT-related positions.
House IT Subcommittee Chairman Hurd spoke at a technology conference Monday hosted by the Professional Services Council, the same day the organization released a joint report with Grant Thornton on a 2017 survey of federal IT officials. Hurd pointed to the Modernizing Government Technology (MGT) Act he sponsored as a first step in solidifying federal chief information officer (CIO) efforts.
“Look, I think everybody would say that we wish there was more permanent people in position. I think the last time we looked at this, only half the federal CIO’s are permanent. If you’re not permanent you’re not going to take advantage … you’re probably not going to do anything earth-shattering, and that’s unfortunate,” said Hurd. “What you all can be doing in the interim is making sure that the CIO’s are prepared to use a new tool that they have called MGT.”
MGT sets up working capital funds for agencies to utilize in their effort to phase out legacy IT systems, and increase their migration to cloud computing services.
While many CIO positions across the federal government may not be permanent, Hurd urged those in place right now to act on MGT as soon as possible to start building up the working capital funds. For modernization to lead to greater cyber resiliency of federal networks, IT personnel and must hold acting CIO’s, chief financial officers, and agency heads accountable, according to Hurd.
MGT is one step to solving network modernization efforts, but federal agencies must also address the thousands of unfilled IT-related positions.
PSC and Grant Thornton’s report surveyed 313 federal CIO’s, chief information security officers (CISO), and IT professionals from 29 agencies, who identified budget constraints, continued cyber security challenges and senior IT leadership vacancies as their greatest impediments towards modernizing their systems.
Thirteen of 27 CIO positions remain vacant, and no nominees have been named for the top federal CIO and CISO positions which belong to the Office of Management and Budget. Installing new cyber leadership has been slower under the Trump White House than with previous administrations, according to the report.
“At a time of transition, budgetary uncertainty and competition for IT talent, federal CIOs continue to push forward and attempt to do more with less,” said George DelPrete, a principal with Grant Thornton Public Sector, in a statement. “CIOs must continually find creative ways to innovate and bring new ideas to their organizations while addressing enduring challenges like battling increasing cyber threats and maintaining mission-critical legacy systems.”
The lagging effort to find new cyber leadership is slowing down modernization efforts, with more than 70 percent of those surveyed for the report noting that more than half of their applications remain tied to legacy systems.
“While many CIOs have been able to make incremental progress in modernizing some systems, there is still not sufficient funding to get ahead of the curve,” PSC and Grant Thornton write in their report. “This sentiment that funding for IT investments has not kept up with the pace of innovation was consistent across all respondents this year. Some pointed out the approach of even distribution of funding when it comes to IT modernization is counterproductive.”
MGT will begin to solve some of the lingering problems related to funding and modernization, but a change in approach to finding new CIOs is needed to fully realize the effort to best protect federal networks, according to Hurd.
“I think over time there will be a correlation between the folks using MGT and the quality of that CIO. I think the CIO that has built an organization that can advantage of this is … I think these folks are going to be some of the best in their class. Those that are coming into tough situations, I think they’ll be able to see [MGT] as a real opportunity to change the game,” he said.