A panel of Federal government technology experts urged Congress today to support a coordinated, enterprise-wide overhaul of outdated government IT systems and emphasized the critical role of the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) and senior agency leadership support in driving IT modernization progress.
Those recommendations were delivered today at a House Oversight Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Information Technology, and Government Innovation hearing that focused on unlocking efficiency through IT modernization, and where witnesses highlighted several aspects necessary to drive modernization efforts.
Chief among those is the TMF, which is run by the General Services Administration (GSA). The fund was created in 2017 under the Modernizing Government Technology Act to provide money to Federal civilian agencies to undertake tech modernization projects.
“The cheapest, fastest, and most effective way to modernize IT in the Federal government is to fund programs like the Technology Modernization Fund and to get technical people into government and then to empower those people,” said witness Erie Meyer, a founder of the U.S. Digital Service and a former chief technologist at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and the Federal Trade Commission.
The U.S. Digital Service was repurposed by President Donald Trump in January to become the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
“TMF is one tool that will address barriers and help us move forward,” added Margaret “Margie” Graves, the former deputy Federal chief information officer (CIO) who held that title from 2016 to 2019.
Subcommittee Chairwoman Nancy Mace, R-S.C., introduced legislation last week alongside Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., that would reauthorize and reform the TMF and its governing board.
“The TMF is a necessary piece of the IT modernization puzzle. Without it, the unpredictability in the annual budget cycle would make it too difficult for some modernization projects to get off the ground,” Rep. Mace said at today’s hearing.
Former Deputy Federal CIO Maria Roat – who held the title from 2018 to 2020 after serving as CIO at the Small Business Administration, and who now heads MA Roat Consulting – said that the TMF also aligns with an enterprise-wide approach to IT modernization.
“I believe we are at another inflection point where there is even more opportunity to take the next step in IT modernization, by examining the Federal government through an enterprise portfolio lens,” Roat said. “Agencies have long worked together and shared information to accomplish their respective missions. Many of the TMF projects reflected this interconnectedness.”
Former Federal CIO Suzette Kent, who held that title from 2018 to 2020 and now runs Kent Advisory Services, said that she viewed the government as an enterprise during her tenure, and emphasized, “That is an effort that needs to continue.”
Kent also noted that recent executive orders and the streamlining of IT acquisition at GSA “loudly signal that Congress and this administration understand that achieving efficiency and delivering effective mission outcomes requires modern technical capability and bipartisan collaboration.”
However, the witnesses also stressed that support from senior leadership is crucial to getting IT modernization projects up and running.
When asked by Chairwoman Mace to name the biggest barrier to change on the modernization front, Graves said “The biggest barrier is probably the senior support.”
Kent also echoed the importance of support from the top, saying, “Every one of the successful examples [of IT modernization] had an agency secretary that leaned in and said, ‘We want to get this done,’ and ensured there was funding, that we moved fast through procurement, and that the outcome was measured.”
One example of a successful IT modernization project that Kent discussed was when the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) moved from a legacy, COBOL (Common Business-Oriented Language) application to one with more modern code base.
Under that project, which was funded under the TMF, Kent said the agency was using code translation tools that were available at the time to test the accuracy and ability of those tools to turn 11 million lines of code into 3 million lines of code.
“But the tools at that point in time only had about 75, 80 percent accuracy, which meant somebody actually had to go in and translate, you know, hands on keyboard, to do the rest of that work,” Kent said. “The code assistance tools that are available now are operating at a 97 and 98 percent accuracy in many cases. They are also significantly less expensive.”
Kent explained that at the time, that work at HUD was “groundbreaking.” However, she explained that “as we think about other agencies who haven’t taken those steps forward now, the complexity, the risk, the time, and what it will cost us will be significantly less.”
In her prepared testimony for today’s hearing, Kent recalled that during her tenure as Federal CIO her office was able to line up key technology efficiency goals – among them cutting fraud, waste, and abuse; promoting the next leap in cybersecurity to zero trust security architectures; using common government tools for common processes; employing scalable and hardened commercial tools; and deploying digital solutions. She explained that “much of the needed frameworks of policy and law are already in place” to support those aims.
Getting over current legacy government technology hurdles and closer to those kinds of technology efficiency goals requires focus on what Kent called “two things that are game changers in the modernization journey.”
The first, she said, is the “vision and commitment this Administration and Congress are demonstrating to modernizing technology and actively eliminating the barriers of the past.”
The second, Kent said, is the extraordinary advancement (over the last two years) of the tools to drive modernization efforts,” including code translation tools that leverage AI large language models “to unlock the power of data.”
Citing her work with companies providing those services, Kent said they “have unleashed new accelerators that are re-defining the expectations of time, effort, risk and costs of modernization.”
“This is not hype or promise of what is to come, these results are real and repeatable,” she said, citing studies that show the use of AI tools to more quickly reach business efficiency goals while cutting the spending required for modernization efforts by up to 50 percent.
Kent also reiterated calls for a concerted effort to upskill the Federal workforce to use the latest technologies so that the “government gets the maximum value from the technology it implements.”
“By making modernization a visible priority and by embracing commercial modernization tools Congress and the Administration can open the door to a new reality for achieving government efficiency,” she said.
In her prepared testimony, Roat talked about the need to approach Federal government IT modernization on an enterprise-wide basis.
“The concept of a federal enterprise portfolio is foundational to achieving IT modernization and technology transformation and avoiding discovery on-the-fly,” she said. “By adopting a portfolio mentality, agencies can collaboratively work towards common goals and share best practices and technological advancements.”
“Further, technology-enabled transformations improve federal and agency services, and drive process and cost efficiencies, rather than technology changes for technology’s sake,” Roat explained.
“A federal-wide portfolio approach enables federal agencies to work together to streamline processes and improve the delivery of services to citizens,” Roat continued. “Leveraging shared data and resources, removing barriers, and accepting prudent risk can simplify access to government services, improve response times, enhance service quality and promote transparency.”
Additionally, she said, “It is not enough to have a strategic plan that is aspirational.”
“The implementation requires multiple mechanisms to be in place to execute and includes an ability to systematically remove and address barriers such as data sharing or access, cybersecurity, culture and change management,” Roat said. “Implementation requires a clear understanding of the mission portfolio, year-over-year funding mechanisms, nimble and flexible procurement mechanisms, agency leadership, OMB and legislative support for executing cross-agency and federal-wide programs, strong program management, and a skilled workforce to deliver and sustain operations.”
Meyer savaged the Trump administration’s DOGE-driven efforts in her prepared testimony.
The former CFPB official – who was invited to testify at the hearing by subcommittee Democrats – said she believes “deeply” in the promise of using better IT to improve government efficiency.
“Done right, it can save money, reduce fraud, and make government work better for everyone,” Meyer said, adding, “I’ve seen it happen.”
“But what’s happening right now under DOGE is not modernization,” she said. “It’s chaos. And it’s chaos with a human cost. When DOGE arrived at my agency, they didn’t modernize anything. Instead, they broke the consumer complaint system.”
Meyer also claimed that “DOGE is centralizing access to some of the most sensitive data the government holds – Social Security records, disability claims, even data tied to national security – without a clear security plan, proper oversight, and I question the basic vetting of AI tools they’re using to analyze it.”
“Let me be clear: this is not modernization,” she said, asserting, “It’s a heist.”
“DOGE is burning the house down and calling it a renovation,” Meyer said. “This path is making government less efficient, less secure, and less capable of protecting the people it’s supposed to serve.”
“The cheapest, fastest, and most effective way to modernize IT in the federal government is to get technical people into government, and then to empower the people who’ve taken an oath to serve,” Meyer said. “The most expensive, slowest, and least effective way is to lose all of your technical talent and sloppily outsource it once you realize what you have done.”