House Bill Takes Aim at Cutting Federal Agency Legacy IT Tech

A bill introduced in the House of Representatives on April 21 would push the federal government to hasten its pace in evaluating and replacing legacy IT systems in favor of more modern systems.

The Legacy IT Reduction Act of 2026 is sponsored by Rep. Maxwell Frost, D-Fla. It does not appear to have companion legislation in the Senate.

The bill has been forwarded to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, of which Rep. Frost is a member.

At the top line, the legislation aims to “require the reduction of the reliance and expenditures of the Federal Government on legacy information technology systems,” according to its text.

The bill would not authorize any new funding to carry out its purposes.

The bill, if it becomes law, would require federal agency chief information officers (CIOs) to produce inventories of their legacy IT systems “used, operated, or maintained by the agency.” It would also require the director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to issue guidance to CIOs on those legacy IT systems.

As part of the larger effort, agency CIOs would also report to OMB the last “update or refresh” of legacy IT systems, the cost to operate those systems, vendor information, and “the date of the next expected update or modernization, retirement, or disposal of the legacy information technology system.”

OMB would have to make inventories available to congressional oversight committees and agency inspectors general.

Federal agency directors would then have two years to develop plans to modernize their legacy technology systems, along with estimated costs, and “the ability of the agency to adapt an updated or modernized legacy information technology system to changes in policy, technology, or other user needs, as necessary.”

Those plans would need to be updated every five years, the bill says.

For its part, OMB and its Office of Electronic Government, overseen by the federal CIO, would need to issue guidance to agencies within 180 days to determine what qualifies as legacy IT systems, along with templates to inform their compilation.

Finally, the Office of he Comptroller General would report to House oversight and homeland security committees on implementation of the law, and how the law “functions alongside other information technology modernization offices, policies, and programs,” including the Technology Modernization Fund, agency IT working capital funds, the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program, the 18F program, and the 10X program of the General Services Administration, and other programs and policies of the federal CIO and the United States Digital Service.