Back in the 1990s, the main goal of an IT manager was to keep system costs down. Today, having an effective digital infrastructure means focusing on agility and resiliency, with efficiency as a tertiary side effect of good management, according to David Bray, CIO at the Federal Communications Commission.
“In the 1990s, the mandate for IT was be as efficient as possible,” Bray said during a Dec. 16 Federal Times webcast. “While I think that’s good … the challenge that we have going forward in this more exponential era is how we achieve agility — how can we move forward with speed — and how can we actually achieve resiliency.”
On Demand: Watch full webcast with FCC’s David Bray and Level 3’s Brian Hoekelman
Bray pointed to the explosion of both data and the connected devices that produce and consume that data and how those upward trends will continue exponentially over the next 20 years. Having an efficient IT system isn’t enough if those systems can’t adapt to new technologies and threats in a timely manner.
“The survivability of an organization is really a function of that organization’s ability to change,” Brain Hoekelman, vice president of business and cloud ecosystem development at Level 3, agreed, citing companies in the private sector that fell by the wayside because they couldn’t adapt.
“If you’re efficient without speed and resiliency, you’re dead in the water,” Bray said.
While efficiency has become the third priority, it is still a priority, as well as a natural byproduct of current trends.
Being agile, resilient and efficient means breaking away from outdated legacy systems — a particular challenge for federal agencies.
Bray considers the legacy challenge a problem of perspective as much as anything else. Since systems don’t come with an expiration date, it can often be hard for IT managers to convince their supervisors that it’s time to make a change.
“When something is working and good enough, you might say, ‘Why do we need to replace it?’” he said. “You don’t wait to replace a roof after 20 years, you replace it even if it hasn’t leaked yet because eventually it will leak. The same is true for IT, although along a shorter timeframe.”
According to Bray, changing the cultural perception to one where IT systems have a “best by” date could fundamentally change how the government views maintenance and acquisition.
“If they came with expiration dates for IT systems, I don’t think we’d be in this situation where the federal government has accumulated so many legacy systems that are in dire need of being modernized,” he said.
