Government Agencies Struggle to Balance Speed and Efficiency in IT Modernization

The Foundation for American Innovation and IBM Center for The Business of Government co-hosted a roundtable discussion on 'The Innovation Adoption Kit' to explore how federal agencies can adopt new technologies at scale.

One of the central challenges in current IT modernization initiatives is striking a balance between moving quickly and reducing duplication. Agencies struggle to achieve these goals simultaneously, as rapid modernization can lead to a more complicated technology estate with new applications being implemented faster than existing ones are retired.

To address this challenge, participants highlighted three key practices for applying portfolio logic to government acquisition: making the enterprise visible by discovering and mapping out existing systems; measuring pilots against legacy systems using standardized outcome measures such as cost per user and adaptability; and acquiring while divesting by planning for system retirement throughout the procurement process.