Three agency tech leaders describe how their organization is modernizing IT and overcoming decades of ‘tech debt’
by Intelliworx
Modernization is on the agenda for most federal agencies these days – and for good reason. Information technology (IT) has improved dramatically and yet some agencies are still working with IT systems first deployed decades ago.
That’s according to a recent virtual panel hosted by the Federal News Network (FNN). The news outlet hosted agency executives and business leaders from across the private sector to share some of the modernization progress the government has made. The panel noted several technological advancements are driving the need for modernization including:
- Data and network speeds are faster than ever;
- Broad stakeholder expectations for good experiences (i.e. CX); and
- There are more devices and of greater variety connecting to networks.
Although not stated explicitly, it’s probably safe to add that processing power continues to improve – in line with Moore’s Law – and storage costs have become commoditized. There are of course many other drivers ranging from cybersecurity to accessibility. The point is that modernization is a requirement to keep up with current times.
Tech debt and barriers to modernization
Every panelist from an agency noted their organization was working with “technical debt.” Tech debt describes the notion that some technology decisions made in the near-term come with long-term consequences. If you rush a software implementation before a product is ready to solve a pressing challenge, you’ll fix the short-term issue but incur a long-term “debt” that has to be fixed later.
Outdated software is the quintessential example of tech debt. Software that isn’t updated, may lead to security vulnerabilities, outages and higher costs to maintain or replace it. That’s the “debt” that’s incurred. As with financial debt, you might enjoy the purchasing power of a loan today, but you’ll have to pay that money back – with interest.
Another barrier to modernization panelists described was the number of “mission critical” systems running on old applications and infrastructure. One speaker noted the DoD has systems with communication protocols that are easily 30 years old.
This brings both tech debt and operational challenges to modernization. Why? Because you can’t just turn off mission-critical software and migrate to a new system. Traditionally, both systems must remain operational until the migration is complete.
This particular speaker described a clever way his company furnished infrastructure capable of translating protocols. The agency could use data communication from old sensors and “translate” to modern protocols. This allowed the agency to use data from both its old and new infrastructure – with a single modern system.
Short stories of agency modernization
That sort of creative thinking was a hallmark of this virtual panel. Three agencies offered cliff notes to their modernization projects including the Cybersecurity Infrastructure and Security Agency (CISA), the U.S. Space Force and the Indian Health Service (IHS).
1. Technology modernization at CISA
CISA is part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which was formed in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. As such, the organization, and its technology infrastructure, was cobbled together from a range of other agencies.
Some of the infrastructure CISA inherited was already old. As a result, CISA CIO Robert Costello said on the panel that his agency has somewhere between 15-20 years of tech debt. He spent the last three years working on modernization:
- Year one was hiring talent and training the team to build the skills they needed;
- Year two was building out three different cloud environments; and
- Year three was migration from on-prem to the cloud – and taking on additional IT responsibilities.
While their “biggest customer is cybersecurity,” another key goal of modernization is to free up the agency’s staff to focus directly on the agency’s mission. This as opposed to requiring operational staff to manage the IT that supports the agency’s mission. For example, some of the other responsibilities include running the help desk, deploying equipment and managing an administrative network.
“Let me do all these things that you shouldn’t have to do as a mission operator,” he said summing up the benefits. The transformation is notable too. His office for example, “used to be a compliance office of sorts” but today it’s a 24/7 operation.
Looking to the future, Costello said, his agency’s focus centers on “modernizing legacy systems, deploying administrative systems that allow people to do their work and then the consolidation of IT systems.”
2. Standing up the Space Force
The Space Force was created four years ago, and it’s one of two services nested within the Department of the Air Force. Guardians, the term the Space Force uses to describe its team members, is reliant on the Air Force for “enterprise IT and core services.”
That’s according to Col. Nathan Iven, who is. currently, the acting director for the Space Force Chief Technology & Innovation Office. He noted, however, that the Space Force is aligned with their sibling organization around cloud adoption, cybersecurity, AI requirements and the overall needs of the workforce.
Like CISA, the Space Force inherited systems that “have been around for quite some time.” There are sensors the agency manages “that are operating on 4,800 baud.” A baud is a unit of measure that describes the speed of transmission of signals and was first used in the late 1970s. Data transmission speeds today are exponentially faster.
In terms of modernization, the agency has been working to transition off “older circuits,” modernizing voice communications, leveraging a hybrid of cloud and edge computing, and focusing on strengthening commercial partnerships.
Where space was once the sole domain of government, today there are many private sector businesses involved. So commercial partnerships have become increasingly important, and part of the overall National Defense Strategy.
3. IHS upgrades a system from 1984
The Indian Health Service (IHS) is part of the Department of Health and Human Services. It provides public health services to American Indian and Alaska Native people. As part of that mandate, the organization operates 45 hospitals, many of which are in rural locations. And they do it with a modest overall $8 billion annual budget – and tech systems fielded in 1984.
The Service’s Chief Medical Information Officer, Dr. Howard Hays, says his organization has been working on a 10-year modernization project. IHS has been upgrading routine tech services to Microsoft 365, moving to a “zero trust framework” for cybersecurity and standardizing and consolidating applications.
For example, Dr. Hays said the organization is striving to centralize its applications for human resources (HR) management and electronic health records (EHR). He noted his organization is currently migrating health records to a commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) software product.
Collaboration is required because modernization is a grind
These stories and the speakers make modernization sound easy, but the fact is some of this has never been done before. No playbook exists for modernizing software and infrastructure at a scale the federal government is managing.
Indeed, sometimes it seems impossible, says Costello, the CIO at CISA. His team is working nights and weekends, and occasionally has “emotional meetings where we don’t think we can get this done,” he notes. But then, perhaps over pizza, they figure it out.
Such collaboration might seem insignificant on the surface, but it’s a big part of the agency’s modernization success. It signifies how the agency has broken down “silos between different groups, people can share information that they couldn’t [share] before.” That’s a routine problem government IT leaders need to solve to be successful in modernization.
In a sense, collaboration is a fuel source for the grind of modernization. “We kind of just chip away at things until they get done,” Costello said.
A recording of the webinar is freely available for viewing here: IT Modernization Strategies in Government Progress and Best Practices 2024.
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