An Excursion into Government Legacy IT Systems - I

Abstract

The Office of American Innovation (OAI), chartered by the administration to pursue "excellence in government," has an opportunity to modernize government IT systems. These systems, used by agencies that the American public relies on, are old, inefficient, and costly to maintain. President Trump has said that the cost of preserving legacy computer systems is “so high, it’s not even a believable number.” The challenge of modernizing legacy IT systems is not new and, unfortunately, prior efforts have little to show for the money. However, this grand challenge must be addressed because we cannot afford to allow our IT systems to continue to degrade and user morale to continue to suffer. The public would blame current leadership for such a failure.

The good news is that it can be done; an agency of government empowered to undertake that mission - let's stipulate that OAI is that agency - can modernize legacy-IT systems by combining sound business practices with system engineering. The resulting IT systems must be consistent in their designs, easy to use, and capable of evolving in response to increased demand, extended functionality, and new technology. To turn this vision into reality, OAI will need to carefully partition the problem, define the roles of stakeholders, build an Integrated Process Team (IPT), and avoid the minefields that have derailed previous efforts. This White Paper describes a path to success.

Introduction

The Office of American Innovation (OAI), chartered by the Trump administration to pursue "excellence in government," has an opportunity to address challenges posed by government legacy IT systems (systems developed years ago which still run). This is the first of ten posts in a White Paper explaining how to modernize these systems. Failure is not an option; the costs are too high. Moreover, government cannot simply turn this complex problem over to private industry; the risks are too high.

The legacy IT problem is serious, but not hopeless. The problem can be solved using management skill and resolve, system engineering, and sound business practices. There is more good news: it is possible to build an effective government-industry team such that OAI has the “wind at its back;” and it is possible do this job at a reasonable initial cost, a prelude to major long-term cost savings.

1.     Scope

This white paper addresses modernization of legacy government IT systems. The new family of government IT systems will be referred to as Government Systems-21 (GS-21).

1.1     What makes government systems different from private-sector systems?

Why is the government-IT-system problem so hard and why can’t we simply turn this job over to a successful private corporation? The private sector provides several types of IT systems: consumer devices and host software; enterprise systems such as database management systems; and software as a service that resides “in the cloud.” Vendors profit from selling products and services to as many customers as possible. Vendors may upgrade products at their discretion, and while they have strong incentives to make their products both state-of-the-art and upward compatible, they are under no legal obligation to do so. Likewise, they are under no obligation to refine their products or services in response to the needs of any one customer.

By contrast, government is a single customer whose requirements reflect the needs of the public and are dictated by the functions of and legal constraints on their agencies (privacy, security, persistence, etc.). Government agencies have typically contracted for systems built to their own, independent requirements and specifications. This has resulted in a variety of monolithic systems which lack consistency among the various agencies and, since they are unique, require very specialized knowledge to maintain and modify. We propose a new generation of IT systems, GS-21, which 1) observe interface and data standards over time and across agencies, 2) give highest priority to security, 3) support one-time data entry, data consistency, real-time transaction-based redundancy, and (authorized) access to data across systems, 4) can evolve in response to increased user demand, extended functionality, and new technology, and 5) are responsive and resilient in the face of high demand and various threats.

While GS-21 will be developed using commercial technology, adoption of “off-the-shelf” systems is not expected to be a viable GS-21 solution.

1.2     Agencies

Many federal agencies and offices have their own IT systems. Those that do include the Social Security Administration, the Office of Personnel Management, the Department of Homeland Security (which has several), the Internal Revenue Service, and the Department of Veteran Affairs. A challenge for OAI is to provide incentives for candidate agencies to sign on as early GS-21 adopters. Those incentives include

·         gaining influence in the GS-21 community,

·         being part of the early expression of GS-21 requirements, and

·         becoming trainers for later adopters.

1.3     Challenges

One attractive feature of a new system development is that we can start small, like a small business. However, this convenience should not mask these GS-21 challenges:

·         To seize the opportunity by acting with determination;

·         To enlist agency users in requirements definition, UI design, and data specification thereby making GS-21 their system and making them GS-21 advocates;

·         To invest in System Engineering from the start; and

·         To favor technical and programmatic decisions over political decisions.