Federal Government Information Technology

Moving Your Agency From 'Lights On' to IT Transformation

NextGov: For years, government leaders have faced budget cuts that reduced funding for IT to support government departments and agencies. This created a long-term strain on the IT budgets, leaving little to no funding for new development or IT transformation initiatives.

In such a situation, the “safest” way forward was the “lights-on approach,” which usually focused on operations and maintenance (O&M) of existing siloed and monolithic systems. Many IT leaders grew to fear changes to current systems and infrastructure, equating change with unexpected problems, negative publicity and irrecoverable damage. However, this strategy is anything but safe: It only leads to inefficiency in the long run.

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