Tech Tips for the Next President

A cadre of former chief information officers and senior industry executives have authored a transition paper containing tech recommendations for the next presidential administration.

The recommendations prioritize five categories, including “advancing America’s competitive edge,” “reinventing government technology” and “evolving the workforce.”

The paper’s authors are big on the government continuing to increase its investment on research and development and new technologies, like cloud-based systems, but equally open about workforce issues that have arisen as tech continues to evolve.

Ensuring next-generation talent is available to occupy science-, technology-, engineering- and mathematics-based careers may require the government to issue more green cards to international students pursuing STEM careers, the report argues.

Other recommendations would ensure recent tech momentum built by the Obama administration, including a bigger IT budget and a push to shore up legacy systems, continues regardless of who occupies the Oval Office.

In fact, the report argues many of the administration’s marquee tech efforts -- the cloud-first policy, data center consolidation efforts, the 2004 Department of Homeland Security directive requiring two-factor authentication -- have been too small-bore and “failed to change federal IT’s culture or improve Uncle Sam’s tech outcomes.”

The report envisions a complete rethink of the federal government’s underlying IT architecture.  

“We can’t have a 21st century, integrated and intelligent government if every agency maintains its own IT fiefdoms," the report states. "America needs one integrated approach under an empowered, capable, and visionary CIO core."

Cybersecurity should also be a priority area for the next administration, the paper argues, as should getting ahead of other future tech policy issues, like “clear rules on the use of body cameras by law enforcement.”

“This report is ambitious in its thinking, it advocates aggressive timetables and presents a challenge to a new administration to create a true 21st-century government,” said one of the paper’s authors, Alan Balutis. He’s the senior director of U.S. public sector at Cisco Systems and former chief information officer at the Commerce Department.

(Image via Andrea Izzotti/Shutterstock.com)