Despite pressure to modernize, agencies are still spending about 80 percent of their IT budgets maintaining old systems. A new bill, still in the planning stages, seeks to make it easier for agencies to move to the cloud in terms of both financing and obtaining authority to operate for commercial cloud systems.
Sens. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) and Tom Udall (D-N.M.) are teaming up to sponsor the Cloud Infrastructure Transition Act of 2015. The bill would give new authority to the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) to speed accreditation of commercial providers, establish a framework for the federal CIO to set up working capital funds for IT modernization and task agencies with strict reporting requirements designed to expose their reliance on obsolete technology.
Former House staffer Rich Beutel, who helped draft the Federal IT Acquisition Reform Act, is advising current Senate staffers on the bill.
"It started out as Son of FITARA," Beutel told FCW.
Lawmakers and staffers wanted to build on the success of the 2014 legislation with some ideas that didn't make it into the final bill. Eventually, a common theme emerged around cloud and modernization. Beutel said the new bill's backers hope it will "help agencies find the resources necessary to get off the old junk and move to new systems, which have cybersecurity built in by design."
The funding piece is designed to solve a key impediment to IT modernization: the appropriations cycle. It's tricky to set aside money to update legacy applications and move them into the cloud while still paying the operations and maintenance costs of an old system. The problem is compounded by the way appropriations are handled -- through continuing resolutions and last-second funding bills. An agency that bets on a modernization plan could find itself with no money to keep its existing systems in business during the key transition period.
Read More: https://fcw.com/articles/2015/12/22/cloud-bill-2016.aspx
Sens. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) and Tom Udall (D-N.M.) are teaming up to sponsor the Cloud Infrastructure Transition Act of 2015. The bill would give new authority to the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) to speed accreditation of commercial providers, establish a framework for the federal CIO to set up working capital funds for IT modernization and task agencies with strict reporting requirements designed to expose their reliance on obsolete technology.
Former House staffer Rich Beutel, who helped draft the Federal IT Acquisition Reform Act, is advising current Senate staffers on the bill.
"It started out as Son of FITARA," Beutel told FCW.
Lawmakers and staffers wanted to build on the success of the 2014 legislation with some ideas that didn't make it into the final bill. Eventually, a common theme emerged around cloud and modernization. Beutel said the new bill's backers hope it will "help agencies find the resources necessary to get off the old junk and move to new systems, which have cybersecurity built in by design."
The funding piece is designed to solve a key impediment to IT modernization: the appropriations cycle. It's tricky to set aside money to update legacy applications and move them into the cloud while still paying the operations and maintenance costs of an old system. The problem is compounded by the way appropriations are handled -- through continuing resolutions and last-second funding bills. An agency that bets on a modernization plan could find itself with no money to keep its existing systems in business during the key transition period.
Read More: https://fcw.com/articles/2015/12/22/cloud-bill-2016.aspx
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