One solution provider, Deltek, advises four growth areas for federal IT service providers through 2021:
- Cloud computing
- Cybersecurity
- Big data
- Data center optimization/infrastructure modernization
1. Federal government cloud computing comes into its own.
In February 2011, the U.S. Chief Information Officer (CIO) released the Federal Cloud Computing Strategy, charting a “cloud-first approach” for an estimated $20 billion of the federal government’s $80 billion in annual IT spending at the time.
Several federal agency IT leaders convened in spring 2016 to discuss their cloud migration struggles as part of a panel discussion hosted by Federal News Radio. The top four government cloud computing obstacles to success they identified included:
- The cost of migration
- The immobility of some legacy systems
- Re-architecting systems to be truly “cloud native” rather than just “lifting and shifting”
- A relentless focus on security
- As the Food and Drug Administration’s CIO Todd Simpson wryly observed during the discussion, "Security is probably the one thing that could get me fired.”
2. Federal government information security gets focused.
Simpson’s comment may have been a nod to the February 2016 resignation of the Office of Personnel Management’s CIO. The exit took place in the wake of that department’s massive breach the previous year, which exposed 21.5 million federal employee and contractor records.
As federal agencies race to safeguard their systems and data, many are focusing their limited resources on five key areas:
- Threat identification
- Data protection
- Detection security
- Response security
- Disaster recovery
3. Big data volume quadruples.
Many of the recent cybersecurity challenges are driven not just by the increasing sophistication of the attackers themselves, but also by the vulnerability created by massively expanding datasets that must be carefully monitored and protected.
By 2020, Federal Communications Commission CIO David Bray expects the current volume of data to grow 20 times larger in the next five years.
Few if any agencies are prepared to:
- Handle data volumes that are projected to grow 400% annually due to the proliferation of Internet of Things devices like body cameras on law enforcement and military personnel
- Gain actionable insights by implementing data analytics infrastructure and building the right team of subject matter experts and data scientists who will ask the right questions and get the right answers
