Why is integration so hard for the federal government?
Siloed development and inconsistent data standards create integration barriers at scale, making fed tech interoperability as much a governance and cultural challenge as a technical one by Intelliworx One of the biggest challenges in modernizing its technology is integration. GAO reports have cited interoperability as a key challenge that has hindered several high-profile technology projects. Why is integration such a challenge? “[Government] Systems don’t talk to each other. They weren’t designed with that goal in mind, so it creates a big, big gap in what’s needed right now versus what’s available,” the EPA’s CIO Carter Farmer told FedScoop in a piece exploring the proliferation of technical debt. Many of the legacy systems the government relies on are decades old. In a sense, systems integration is a bit like trying to plug a modern smartphone into an old landline telephone jack and expecting the contacts to synchronize and the apps to […]
