Federal Pain Points and IT Requirements

The latest Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA) Scorecard, released in December 2021, highlights how federal agencies are faring across several areas related to IT modernization. The full breakdown from the scorecard is available here. These scorecards are useful to identify where government agencies are struggling and where they are doing well. Consequently, technology vendors and channel partners can use them as a guide for identifying what solutions their customers need.

The COVID-19 pandemic has spurned greater demand for health information technology (IT) by demonstrating the importance of having robust medical research, health surveillance and healthcare systems capable of rapidly responding to new and developing situations, something which requires strong IT investment in big data, cybersecurity and cloud. In addition, both the pandemic and emerging technologies have led to numerous changes within the healthcare industry, such as telehealth expansion and increased use of wearables, which necessitate robust health IT solutions.

On December 8, 2021, the National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) released its 2022 annual top 10 priorities list identifying the most pressing technology and policy issues that state CIOs are prioritizing for the upcoming year.

At RSA this year, Chris Krebs gave an important talk: “Cybersecurity Has a Posse” where he stressed the importance of collaboration between government and industry to fight the cybersecurity war. He started by pointing out that his agency, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is an “all-source” group. He meant that CISA collects threat information from sources all over the world, including government agencies, private industry, and more. Krebs’ group consolidates that information and disseminates it – daily – to security professionals across all industries.