VanRoekel Calls for Lean, “Future First” Federal IT Agenda

Abhi Nemani | Civic Commons | October 26, 2011

The nation’s new Federal CIO Steve VanRoekel unveiled on Tuesday his “Future First” agenda, which emphasized the need to change the way government procures software and sets policy: In the end, we can’t build a 21st century government without fundamentally changing how we invest in technology.

Traditionally, it has taken years for an IT solution to move from planning to budgeting to procurement. Too often we have built closed, monolithic projects that are outdated or no longer needed by the time they launch. And because of how they are architected, modifying these systems to meet emerging needs has often cost more than building a new system from scratch...