By shifting to a continuous modernization approach, government CIOs can update legacy systems while demonstrating business value.
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Efficiency is now a mission-critical imperative for government IT
A recent Gartner survey showed that 46% of government CIOs reported their organizations have slowed, paused or rethought modernization investments in the past 12 months compared to previous years. Even more concerning, 30% responded that their oldest core application in use is 10 or more years old.
Although financial and staffing challenges are slowing efforts to modernize, delaying will increase technical debt and potentially impact essential public services. To maintain government modernization initiatives and minimize associated costs and risk, CIOs must rethink their approach.
Update government legacy systems with a continuous modernization approach
The U.S. administration has set higher expectations for government CIOs to modernize software and manage data more effectively. Amid tighter budgets and growing security threats, CIOs must focus on three key imperatives to prove IT’s value in measurable ways:
Operate efficiently
Modernize effectively
Deliver successfully
But as the number of legacy systems increases, modernization efforts will be more challenging, leading to service failure. CIOs must shift their approach to build momentum for modernization. Here’s how:
Adopt a continuous modernization approach
Financial constraints may lead organizations to reduce investments as a cost-effective measure, but it’s a short-term gain. Increasing technical debt will make it harder to achieve cost savings – a primary driver of modernization initiatives – in the long run.
Instead of thinking about updating legacy systems as a single “problem” to fix, CIOs should adopt a continuous modernization approach. Focusing on addressing legacy systems associated with specific service obstacles on a rolling basis will minimize cost and risk.
Build a business case for core system modernization
Neglecting to update and modernize essential public services can lead to significant failures and financial losses. To ensure that investment in updating core systems continues or accelerates rather than slowing, CIOs should build a successful business case for updating core systems.
This approach should be aligned with a wider mission and broader business objectives and priorities to demonstrate the value of modernization for service delivery to budgetholders.
Use the Gartner TIME model
By identifying, prioritizing and addressing systems that have the greatest impact on mission-critical business capabilities, modernization efforts can continue to be focused in areas where they are needed most.
The Gartner tolerate, invest, migrate and eliminate (TIME) model can help evaluate applications to determine how to proceed based on IT quality and business value.
Government modernization FAQs
How can continuous modernization be applied to update legacy applications?
Rather than using a rip-and-replace program, continuous modernization focuses on removing specific business obstacles caused by outdated legacy applications. Continuous modernization is implemented through identifying, prioritizing and removing the most severe friction points that hinder delivery of value. This approach minimizes cost, risk and impact to the organization.
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