Page 20 - FCW, September 15, 2017

Modernization
“We believe recent announcements to end premier support for key vendor ERP systems will continue to motivate agency IT modernization initiatives and be more cost-effective governmentwide in the long run,” a GSA spokesper- son told FCW. “Cloud computing has already proven itself as a viable model for ubiquitous, on-demand access to configurable computing resources.”
The role of customization
Federal agencies have been shifting productivity, collaboration and infra- structure services to cloud environ-
agencies might not bother moving such systems to the cloud, but “on the other hand, eventually functionality and secu- rity become a problem, and people have to figure out how to move.”
EPA officials sought to remove cus- tomizations that could be replaced with a standard software solution, and often the software had evolved to the point that the customization was no longer needed, Dunkin said. Sometimes, how- ever, agencies customize an application because it does not want to change its business process. She and her team quickly realized they needed to stop doing that.
Unique requirements do crop up. For example, EPA’s Superfund accounting system has to do things that standard software packages don’t. Customizing it
systems that traced their roots back to the arrival of PCs.
“There is no reason for any agency in the federal government to have 400 systems,” said Neal, who is now senior vice president at consulting and technol- ogy services provider ICF.
Older IT systems are an increasing cost burden. In 2010, about 68 percent of the federal IT budget was spent on operations and maintenance. That amount was forecast to rise to 77 per- cent this year, according to a 2016 Gov- ernment Accountability Office report — due in part to the increasing cost of maintaining legacy hardware and older applications.
That growth in operations and maintenance spending means less money for new technology, and it is
ments provided by Microsoft, Google, Amazon and other vendors. But mov- ing core business applications, such as those that run financial and HR services, will be much more difficult.
Ann Dunkin, who was the Environ- mental Protection Agency’s CIO until January and is now CIO for Santa Clara County, Calif., said years of customiza- tion are keeping agencies from updating their business systems.
“You have some agencies that are really stranded on quite old versions of software,” she added. These agencies “have painted themselves into a corner by doing a bunch of customizations.”
Dunkin said EPA learned not to cus- tomize software because “when the new release comes out, you have to test or rewrite every one of your customiza- tions to go to the next level.” Some
involved building code outside the core system that shares its data.
“That would be the preferred practice now,” Dunkin said. “You are not custom- izing that system, you are simply using its interfaces to share the data back and forth that you need.”
When preparing for cloud migra- tions, agencies will need to aban- don many of their customizations and change their business practices instead. They must also come to terms with how many custom-built systems they are managing, which can be a staggering number.
Jeffrey Neal, former chief human capital officer at the Department of Homeland Security, did a survey of HR systems not long before he left the department in 2011. He counted over 400. Some of them were homegrown
also being blamed for security weak- nesses. Although both the Obama and Trump administrations have pushed for IT modernization investments, appro- priations have been hard to come by. In May, the House approved $500 million in IT modernization funding, but the Sen- ate had not yet acted on the measure.
The biggest impediments to change
In their push to move federal users to the cloud, vendors might face other big obstacles.
Ray Bjorklund, president of govern- ment IT market research firm Birch- Grove Consulting, said he believes industry’s goals will clash with the real- ity of government. “New ideas or inno- vations that the executives might rec- ommend first have to be tested against the law, budgeting processes, financing
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“You have some agencies that are really stranded on quite old versions of software.”
ANN DUNKIN, SANTA CLARA COUNTY, CALIF.