With federal agencies eagerly anticipating the passage of the Modernizing Government Technology Act (MGT Act) CIOs and their teams are beginning to research and plan their IT modernization efforts.  However, as Appian Federal Industry Practice Lead Jason Adolf recently shared on the FTI podcast, there’s no reason to wait for MGT Act funding and agencies can get a jump start on IT modernization by using tools like Platform as a Service (Paas).

One of the reasons that legacy IT eats up so much agency budget – current estimates range between 70 percent and 80 percent of OPEX – is that each system requires its own support infrastructure, from contractors to operate and maintain the systems to cybersecurity tools to protect data.  As Jason notes, with hundreds of systems within an agency the costs of operating, maintaining, and then replacing these systems is enormous.

However, if multiple bits of infrastructure could be reduced to a single instance that can run multiple systems like HR, invoicing, case management, to name just a few, then the equation changes .  With Platform as a Service it’s possible to build multiple applications on a single infrastructure, which then reduces all of the associated operational costs.

But this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the ideas that Jason has to help agencies take the first step in freeing themselves from the burden of legacy systems.   You can hear more of his thoughts in our latest podcast.