Despite a broader push to provide federal agencies better IT and cybersecurity, the Professional Services Council say that chief information officers face the same challenges they always have: finding talent, maintaining legacy systems and guarding against cyber attacks.

Related: Read the report

PSC's 2016 Federal CIO Survey interviewed 41 agency officials to get a sense of the state of the federal information technology field at large, in addition to the White House effort to modernize the government.

The survey found that while CIOs were largely positive about increased administration plans like the IT Modernization Funds, Cybersecurity National Action Plan and acquisition measures like category management, the problems they are meant to solve still loom large for many agencies.

"Although there are a host of new initiatives that are continuing to drive the IT agenda in agencies, CIOs and [chief information security officers] interviewed for this survey continue to cite similar challenges as in previous years," the report, coauthored by Grant Thornton, said.

"The main challenges and themes these executives struggle with include using an antiquated and bloated acquisition process, preparing adequately to protect federal networks and data amid rapidly increasing cyber threats, and hiring the talent (federal and otherwise) needed to execute their mission."

Here are three takeaways from the report:

Cybersecurity funding is on the rise, but so are the threats

The report found that more than half of agency CIOs have seen cybersecurity threats jump by at least 25 percent in the last year. Forty percent of CIOs also said mobile attacks were on the rise as well, possibly fueled by phishing attacks.

Funding to combat these threats is on the rise as well, but not at the same pace. The report found that while more executives have seen funding increases in their agencies this year, "less than 40 percent of CIOs reported their organization having an effective information risk management strategy."

$3.1 billion may not be enough to fix government's IT woes

Despite a proposed revolving fund to help agencies modernize their IT, the report found that many CIOs felt the $3.1 billion suggested for the fund would have "relatively little impact" government-wide when it comes to shifting off of legacy systems.

Some CIOs thought the fund may be more effective for smaller agencies, but were also concerned about their ability to pay back the money used from the fund over time.

"Both legal requirements limiting the flexibility of funds appropriated to agencies to be used for other purposes and the potential for only limited savings to be achieved over time were mentioned as potential weaknesses in the revolving fund proposal," the report said. "Regardless, all CIOs appreciate the dialogue and focus on this issue and agree more investment is needed."

Cloud development still a tough slog

Only five percent of survey respondents reported that they were satisfied with their progress in adopting cloud services, as agencies work to try to marry both the new system architectures and cost effectiveness.

One motivating factor, the report said, is the Office of Management and Budget’s Data Center Optimization Initiative policy, which requires agencies to shed 25 percent of their overall physical data center costs by the end of fiscal 2017.

Thirty-three percent of CIOs said they currently use some cloud services, but funding challenges, data security through third-party systems and staff knowledge of cloud architecture continues to slow adoption.

Read the full report

on PSC’s website.
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