House Passes IT Modernization Bill

Next stop for Rep. Will Hurd’s Modernizing Government Technology Act: the Senate. The bill passed the House in a floor vote, highlighting the bipartisan concern lawmakers share regarding the nation’s aging federal technology, which includes at least 10 critical systems more than four decades old.

The MGT Act’s journey through the House was swift, sailing through the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee only days after its April 28 introduction. Companion legislation in the Senate, however, is moving slower. The bill, a bipartisan effort that included input from the White House, the Government Accountability Office and top Democrats, would create two new ways for agencies to modernize their IT systems. First, it would allow CFO Act agencies to create working IT capital funds. Hurd has referred to these funds as “the meat” of the bill, and it would allow agencies to recoup savings from existing modernization efforts rather than give cash back to the Treasury Department. Hypothetically, an agency that realizes savings from moving to the cloud could hold on to the savings for up to three years, so long as it uses those savings for further modernization efforts. In addition to agency-specific working capital funds, the MGT Act creates a central modernization fund and authorized appropriators to fund it up to $250 million per year for two years. Agencies strapped for cash could then make their cases to borrow against the fund to modernize certain systems. The final say for what agencies get money will come down to the commissioner of the Technology Transformation Service, an office within the General Services Administration.