Page 41 - FCW, January/February 2020

about on par with those of private companies, but government was far below in cost savings and productivity improvements. Respondents said incorporating cloud in the business strat-
egy is the key to seeing benefits, underscoring the need for investments that provide strategic benefits as opposed to legacy systems maintenance.
3. Cybersecurity will be a
growing area of focus.
In response to growing concerns about election security and ransomware, Congress increased the proposed budget for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to $2 bil- lion. CISA’s major initiatives include building relationships and developing the Trusted Internet Connections 3.0 guidance to encompass key concepts of zero trust, cyber kill chain and risk management for cloud. Moreover, the National Security Tele- communications Advisory Committee’s Cybersecurity Moon- shot is well underway, with workshops scheduled nationwide. The first was held in November 2019 at Auburn University’s McCrary Institute.
Moreover, Version 1.0 of the Defense Department’s Cyber- security Maturity Model Certification is expected to be inserted into government contract clauses in the coming months. Provi- sions in this year’s National Defense Authorization Act indicate strong congressional support for CMMC. It is good that lawmak-
ers are paying close attention and are open to hearing from stakeholders as the process unfolds. Finally, the Cyberspace Solarium Commission, with tight congressional involvement, will report fast-track cybersecurity recommendations in early spring.
Although IT governance has been strengthened, as measured by agencies’ Federal IT Acquisition Reform Act scores, it is not clear that appropriators agree on the role of the CIO, having required only the CIOs at the departments of Agriculture and State to approve IT systems spending. In addition, CIO-specific budget authority is still generally a fraction of total agency IT spending. I hope lawmakers are supportive of CIOs taking a leadership role in the shift from infrastructure to mission applica- tion of IT.
In another noteworthy item, more than 40% of IT spend- ing is up for contract renewal in the next two years, based on assessments by IT analysts. That will create the opportunity for major movements to modern computing platforms, including
a shift from funding IT as a capital expense (i.e., hardware and software) to funding IT-as-a-service contracts built using the Cloud Smart Strategy with a mix of serverless computing and low-code/no-code applications.n
Mark A. Forman, former administrator for e-government and IT at the Office of Management and Budget, is vice president of digital government at Unisys Federal.
OOK
2020 PREDICTIONS: THE LONG VIEW
to see these successes followed by some The net neutrality pendulum
Ten years ago, FCW’s sister publication GCN
fired up the crystal ball and offered 10 predic-
tions for government IT in 2020. Here’s how
that forecast from former GCN staff writer
Shawn McCarthy, now a research director at
IDC, has held up. will resolve these issues, and by 2020, we telecommunications lobby will win, and by 1. should see cloud solutions that have solidly 2020, setting priorities for certain data pack-
remain a mixed bag. government operations.” “A few large proof-of-concept efforts will
4
emerge during the next two years and help build the foundation for broad acceptance of
cloud-based solutions. But after that, expect
4Most of the predictions were spot-on, but this one was uncanny in
critical issues, such as security breaches,
service challenges and difficulties in adher- “We expect the net neutrality supporters to ing to government rules for archiving and win the first couple of rounds in this fight, information availability.... However, agencies but the topic won’t go away. Eventually, the
OO
Cloud computing progresses, proven themselves on several fronts, eventu- ets will likely be the norm.” but success and cost savings ally becoming a widely accepted platform for
its foresight.
2.
swings both ways.
Yep.
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