“… The bill, which passed Congress as part of the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act, is still awaiting a final signature from the president. But even then, the road to modernization will be an involved journey for agencies, some of which are maintaining systems that are decades old. And these aren’t just any systems, but critical systems that they rely on to execute their mission. Any disruption to services would impact services.
“Those mission-specific applications don’t have the opportunity for modernization, unless there is money and almost a no-harm approach to it [modernizing],” said George Chambers, Executive Director of the Office of Enterprise Application Development and Information Technology Infrastructure at the Health and Human Services Department.
Chambers said the MGT Act reminds him of the parable about an individual sitting on the side of a river. This individual saw bodies floating downstream and pulled each person out to resuscitate them but never had the opportunity to go upstream and figure out how to prevent people from falling in the river in the first place.
Likewise, agencies are so consumed by their missions they often don’t have time to stop and address chronic technology issues. “MGT provides that opportunity for federate groups like HHS,” Chambers said…”
Source: The ‘UnSung Hero’ of IT Modernization – By Nicole Blake Johnson, December 6, 2017, GovLoop. Read the full article here.
