Join Nextgov and Defense One on Feb. 10: Tech Modernization in Focus

Federal Chief Information Officer Tony Scott has repeatedly called the government’s legacy technology problem “bigger than Y2K.”

The problem is simple to explain but complex to address: 75 percent of the government's $80 billion IT budget is spent on archaic systems, or what’s referred to by many as “keeping the lights on.”

Some of these systems are almost hilariously out of date, as a forthcoming Government Accountability Office report will highlight: 28 systems are at least 25 years old. Yet, many are mission critical systems that aren’t easily moved to modern architectures. That challenge is amplified by budget-tightening and stagnant tech funding in recent years.

However, there are glimmers of modernization efforts within government.

The Federal Communications Commission, for example, plans to move its IT entirely to the cloud by the end of 2017. The leader behind that effort, Chief Information Officer David Bray, invested resources in top talent and then technology – in that order – to begin the effort driven in part by a realization that FCC’s headquarters were being forced to move.

Another bold idea, led by Frank Konieczny, one of U.S. Air Force’s top tech officials, would see the military department get out of the business of managing IT. Instead, the Air Force wants to push all its IT services, like email, to commercial vendors that can do it cheaper and easier than the Air Force could.

Bray and Konieczny will be two of several featured speakers at an event titled, “Transforming Defense and Federal IT for a Modern World,” hosted by Nextgov and Defense One on Wednesday, Feb. 10.

For more information or to register, click here.

(Image via Maksim Kabakou/Shutterstock.com)