The White House has sent proposed legislation to carry out an idea, first outlined in its budget proposal in February, to create a $3.1 billion Information Technology Modernization Fund to help modernize legacy IT systems that are costly to maintain and difficult to secure.
Currently, agencies spend more than two-thirds of their IT budgets to maintain legacy systems, which limits their ability to develop more secure and efficient systems, according to OMB.
“By establishing a central fund that agencies must apply to and compete for, the legislative proposal will provide strong incentives for agencies to develop comprehensive, high-quality modernization plans. Additionally, stable funding allows for long-term thinking and shorter development times, rather than costly one-off fixes,” OMB said.
The initial amount is considered seed money to get started on modernization projects; agencies would draw on the fund, to be held at GSA, for up-front money they cannot invest under current practices and then would reimburse the fund from appropriated money moving forward. GSA would provide advice in developing and carrying out improvements.
The proposal also calls for an independent board of experts to identify the highest-priority projects across government. “By collecting modernization proposals from many agencies, the board can identify opportunities to replace multiple legacy systems with a smaller number of common platforms something that is difficult for agencies, acting on their own with limited insight into other agencies operations, to do,” OMB said.
