Survey by the EY Center for Government Modernization finds 48% of federal decision makers say IT modernization projects take a year-plus to move from pilot to production

by Intelliworx

It can take a federal agency a year or longer to take an IT modernization project from the pilot phase to production, according to 48% of federal decision makers polled by EY. That’s not a surprise given the size, complexity and critical nature of the government’s IT infrastructure.

The consulting firm polled 131 federal decision makers about modernization and AI for its 2026 EY Federal Trends Report. We’ve previously covered some of the findings about the state of AI implementation in the federal government and the shortage of tech talent.

In this third and final post stemming from this survey, we are looking at the findings focused on modernization.

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1. Approaches to federal IT modernization

The survey identified three primary approaches respondents said their agencies are taking to modernization: incremental, foundational and reactive.

Incremental. 45% of respondents say their agencies’ approach to modernization is primarily incremental improvement. That means they are making “application-level enhancements” such as “modifications to software applications through new features, bug fixes or performance optimizations.”
Foundational. 41% of respondents say their agency focuses on foundational changes in modernization. Examples include “system-wide overhauls” such as implementing “new software applications.”
Reactive. Finally, 14% of respondents indicated “their agencies’ approach to tech modernization is largely reactive.” That means “addressing whichever system or application is most in need.”

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2. Milestones of AI modernization

Respondents also identified three requisite milestones of AI modernization projects: preparation, governance and migration from pilot to production environments:

45% cite the establishment of “a governance framework for AI projects”;
40% cite “data cleansing and preparation” pre-deployment; and
48% cite moving a project “from pilot phase to full-scale deployment.”

These findings are broadly consistent with a previous survey of 189 federal chief data officers (CDOs) conducted by Deloitte and the Data Foundation. Moreover, CDOs have an obvious role in preparing data for modernization projects. That survey also found most CDOs (64%) are “involved in setting data governance policies for AI use” within their agency.

3. Phases of modernization

Federal agencies seem to fall into one of four camps in terms of modernization progress, according to the survey. Some have still yet to get to the planning phase while others say they are in the post-transformation stage.

Here’s how the numbers stacked up:

26% say their agency is “in the legacy/premodern stage of the IT modernization”;
15% say their agency is “in the planning phase”;
37% say their agency is in the “mid-transformation phase”; and
22% say their agency is in “the post-transformation phase.”

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Intelliworx has been providing purpose-built software to the federal government for 20 years and currently serves 40+ federal government agencies. The company is a certified service-disabled veteran-owned small business (SDVOSB) and is FedRAMP-authorized.

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