Decouple to innovate
How federal agencies can unlock IT value and agility by remediating technical debt.
September 13, 2018
How federal agencies can unlock IT value and agility by remediating technical debt.
September 13, 2018
New research reveals how federal agencies can unlock IT value and agility by remediating technical debt.
There is widespread consensus across the federal government to the need for IT modernization. However, overcoming often decades of underinvestment and the subsequent constraints of legacy systems requires new thinking on how we manage and remediate technical debt.
In making the case for IT modernization, federal executives too often fail to consider the full impact of technical debt. While many recognize the cost to upgrade legacy system, they fail to account for current inefficiencies, strategic liabilities, and lost opportunities to innovate, improve performance and realize economies of scale. Thus, the status quo continues to linger despite real threats to business continuity and real potential to transform.
New approaches can enable a more strategic understanding of technical debt, including assessing potential paths forward for optimal outcomes. Fueled by the increasing maturity of DevOps, agencies can pursue hybrid strategies that iteratively add new functionality while core business logic and data is decoupled, exposed via APIs and migrated to new platforms. These hybrid digital decoupling or continuous modernization strategies allow agencies to transform themselves at a pace that they require and can sustain.
RELATED: Dave McClure discusses leading IT modernization in government
Drawing on the responses of 185 federal IT leaders, the Accenture Federal Digital Decoupling Survey serves to clarify and quantify these issues. Among the key findings:
According to Accenture analysis of CAST Appmarq data, government had the highest technical debt per application—up to five times greater—of 11 industries examined. The analysis also found that it is 2.5 times more expensive to manage applications that are ten years or older compared with new applications.
Accenture Federal Services’ CIO Advisory and IT modernization teams worked with Accenture Research to survey 185 federal IT executives to learn how technical debt is impacting federal agencies.
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Get an overview of key research findings.
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