Top Federal IT Initiatives Include Security, Disaster Recovery, Digitizing Records

By Christine Kern, contributing writer

Recently, Information Week asked its readers to rate more than 30 government IT initiatives in terms of importance and current leadership focus. Security, not surprisingly, topped the list, with 86 percent saying that locking down data was crucial. Over a third — 35 percent — of respondents also said that budgetary deficiencies are the chief obstacle to effective IT updates.  Other stats were not so predictable, but provide some ripe opportunities for VARs to fill the gaps.  For example, only 6 percent of respondents reported real improvement in their agency’s IT performance in terms of efficiency and effectiveness year over year, with 17 percent saying they are actually less effective.

And while 7 percent see significant IT innovation within their agencies, almost a third report very little at all. Meanwhile, 34 percent of agencies are filling gaps with contract workers and integrators, and only 19 percent have adequate staffing trained with appropriate cloud, security, and acquisition skills.

In addition, 69 percent say that disaster recovery planning/continuity planning was significant, followed by digitizing and protecting records (49 percent), closing redundant facilities (48 percent), and coping with the storage and growth of data (49 percent).

Respondents reported that just 37 percent have strategic IT plans in place, a drop from 45 percent in 2013.

When asked about the maintenance vs. innovation split, 26 percent of respondents reported that they spent more than 80 percent of their budgets simply maintaining existing systems.  Just 2 percent stated that their split is 20/80, and out-of-control storage growth is most likely to blame.  Meanwhile, at the bottom of the priority list are IT process improvement at 27 percent, green IT with 24 percent, social network technologies at 23 percent, VoIP at 21 percent, and BYOD at 21 percent.