Discover how modernizing your base network infrastructure can enhance readiness and resilience.

Excerpt

Modern government agencies don’t just rely on digital infrastructure to fulfill their missions—they depend on it. From disaster response to public services, resilience and readiness start with the underlying system.

The backbone of IT must be agile, secure, interoperable, and cost effective, and that’s a great deal to ask from outdated software, aging hardware, and legacy processes. For acquisition professionals and program officers, IT modernization requires rethinking how systems are designed, built, scaled, governed, and protected. It means developing a forward-looking mindset and incorporating adaptable approaches to security and interoperability, ensuring that new investments don’t become tomorrow’s legacy obstacles.

This guide outlines strategies for advancing IT modernization through the evolution and growth of systems to support long-term mission readiness. Following these methods will help build smarter, safer, and more capable networks that meet the demands of modern government.

Modernizing Base Infrastructure to Enhance Mission Readiness

The average person may think of IT modernization as installing new computer workstations, printers, or other devices to enable work to be done more efficiently. There’s definitely plenty of that, but when the process concerns government agencies, the stakes are much higher and the challenges much deeper.

The Government Accountability Office estimates that US taxpayers spend over $100 billion a year on information technology, most of which is used to maintain current systems. It’s a costly proposition; on an individual level, it’s roughly equivalent to spending money to fully repair a vehicle that’s been on the road for ten years or longer.

Maintaining an up-to-date network can be a matter of life and death in many instances, such as for defense and intelligence purposes. Accessing the network ensures mission readiness, from the front lines to headquarters and even to agencies in Washington, DC. Legacy IT modernization “is the number one biggest rock that needs to get moved” to enable progress, according to Chris DeRusha, former chief information security officer at the Office of Management and Budget.

Progress brings many tangible benefits to the challenge of modernizing base infrastructure.

Easier Access to Data for Better Decisions

Facts on the ground often change rapidly, especially in defense. Modernized IT ensures that agency personnel have the latest context, allowing for faster achievement of mission goals.

Frictionless Interoperability and Agility

Designing systems for future applications enables IT backbones to adapt as missions and standards change. This flexibility also better supports joint missions and evolving challenges on the ground. The DoD’s 2019 modernization strategy document specifically cites Allied and NATO interoperability as a key benefit of modernizing.

Eliminating Bottlenecks

Aging systems share a common feature: They break down, leading to delays, bottlenecks, and disruptions, causing delays or worse. Worse, the amounts spent on maintenance become a waste of public money.

Increased Automation Capability and Reduction of Manual Work

Modernized IT is better suited to support emerging, memory-intensive applications in artificial intelligence and machine learning. Directing systems toward modern, cloud-based environments leads to better resource sharing and enables personnel to focus on higher-value work.

Information Security Upgrades

Modernized systems give agencies the rare chance to adapt to emerging cybersecurity standards from the ground up, using the emerging zero trust architecture (ZTA) concepts.

Mission Continuity

Government agencies frequently encounter challenges when operating in remote environments that lack adequate telecommunications infrastructure. Adapting to cloud solutions enables mission personnel to have continued access to resources, even during crises.

Designing Scalable Networked Systems: Why Interoperability Matters

In today’s complex IT environment, acquisition officers and program managers have it easy in one regard: They don’t have to take on the impossible task of building a network that will adapt to growing demands decades into the future. They just need to think modularly, develop networks that can expand when needed, and connect across departments while sharing data securely and supporting joint operations.

This means considering interoperability from the outset, which requires designing systems with the following considerations in mind.

Having Open Standards and Modular Architectures

The legacy approach in IT modernization has historically involved closed proprietary standards and architectures. Today, the state of play across the tech world is open source, enabling systems to communicate effectively and reducing long-term barriers to collaboration between agencies and their personnel. “[C]ompeting needs and priorities often make it difficult for agencies to identify solutions that factor in the required capabilities for every use case,” the Federal Times reported.

Prioritizing Data Portability

It’s not just the systems that need to talk to each other; it’s also the data itself. For data to be transferred from one system to another, the government and its agencies need to develop common formats and secure exchange points. Of course, portability is not without risks, as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development noted in a recent white paper: “Data portability can facilitate data flows and data sharing, but transferring data to destinations not controlled by the original data holder can increase digital security and privacy risks.”

Enabling Cross-Agency Missions

Government missions often expand beyond agency borders. This is most evident in defense and public safety but also in many other contexts that require a coordinated response, such as environmental management, health, and education. Mission planners must consider various scenarios and how systems fit together when envisioning IT modernization.

Maintaining Flexibility Through Smart Procurement

One vendor may have the perfect solution today, but don’t get locked into inflexible, long-term contracts or agreements. Make sure to include technology portability issues and opt for platform-agnostic approaches to facilitate evolution over time.

Changing Approaches to Governance

The need for interoperability is no longer just a simple technology issue. It must be central to cross-agency cooperation, not only at contract time but also in the future, for developing proper governance strategies.

IT Modernization for Cross-Agency Missions

People are as vital as systems in creating the right conditions for cross-agency collaboration. Integrating across domains requires intentionality in design, leadership, and governance for the long term. Focusing on these areas can help IT modernization and system integration projects move deliberately toward fruition.

Keep Compatibility in View

Acquisition officers and program managers will shape the success of your IT modernization from the outset. Write requirements into requests for proposals and other procurement documents that focus on ensuring system compatibility between agencies and various levels of government (local, state, federal, and international). Compatibility challenges tend to be large scale, so consider situations where disaster response agencies are unable to communicate. Another concept to keep in mind is backward compatibility, as this recognizes that not all partners will modernize at the same pace.

Create Good Governance Models

While missions will always have primary owners, an integrated operating model requires a different perspective on overall system governance. Build around concepts of joint leadership and funding models, and consider your partners in future lifecycle planning. The good news is that joint planning also enables the sharing of resources, so design systems to align across various organizations for the long term, not just in a narrow, self-interested way.

One approach to consider is the development of cross-agency steering committees, as these can help guide lifecycle management when systems and requirements evolve.

Leverage Shared Services

Use programs like Login.gov and FedRAMP to reduce duplication and streamline compliance. Build your networking infrastructure to use what already exists, and keep an eye toward opening doors for working together. Utilizing existing resources helps control cost burdens in smaller agencies. Emerging options, such as cloud services and modular architectures, allow for increased flexibility.

Align on Shared Mission Outcomes

A crucial aspect of IT modernization that’s designed to cross-agency boundaries is conceptual. It means envisioning where missions intersect and creating consensus definitions of success. Aligning in this way enables the government to prioritize critical investments and produce clear accountability and faster decision-making.

This type of thinking helps establish a natural foundation for sharing data standards and using shared resources for interoperability. When agencies align around shared mission outcomes, IT investments stop being siloed solutions and start becoming strategic enablers of coordination, speed, and clarity across domains.

Modernizing Cyber Defense

A vital benefit of government IT modernization is the chance to overhaul cyber defenses. As global threats intensify—online and offline—defense, intelligence, and civilian agencies must strengthen their ability to detect and respond to increasingly sophisticated adversaries.

Modernization gives agencies a rare opportunity to rebuild from the ground up, designing cybersecurity postures that support today’s most advanced defense technologies. Only flexible, scalable systems will do in an era where non-state actors are consuming more attention from agency leadership.

The federal government has already embraced one of the most powerful tools in this shift: ZTA. This model upends the old “keep threats out” approach, replacing it with a posture of continuous verification—even for trusted users and systems.

Make ZTA a Pillar, Not a Patch

Apply the concepts of ZTA across your networks and to all users, devices, and applications. You have a rare opportunity to develop a state-of-the-art approach to security, so accept the challenge and make it work. By one particularly important measure, ZTA helps agencies catch up to the workplace of today, at least according to analysts at the National Institute of Standards and Technology: “[It] is a response to enterprise network trends that include remote users, bring your own device (BYOD), and cloud-based assets that are not located within an enterprise-owned network boundary.”

Cybersecurity Actions with IT Modernization

Even with a revamped network, system administrators still must stay alert. Addressing the basics of managing network security is critical, or your carefully designed modernization project may result in an embarrassing breach.

Monitor Continuously

Misconfigured systems represent a persistent threat even when systems are current. Implementing automated tools that continuously scan for misconfigurations, detect configuration drift, and flag anomalies in real time can significantly reduce these vulnerabilities. These tools deliver real-time insights into cloud infrastructure, flagging gaps before they escalate into breaches. Modern approaches also use automated remediation, which aligns well with zero trust principles.

Patch Promptly

Even with ZTA, which offers network segmentation and access controls, vulnerabilities can still appear. Unpatched systems can cause problems and open networks to malicious actors, and they are frequently cited as a root cause of high-profile breaches. Next-generation patching management tools include capabilities for automating and prioritizing based on the severity of the problem and the value of the exposed asset. Patching strategy also extends to your agency partners because vulnerabilities put the entire network at risk.

Secure the Supply Chain

As the government found out with the SolarWinds hack, even securing your own systems isn’t enough to rest easy at night. Third-party software remains a prime target, which is why a 2021 executive order requires agencies to extend cybersecurity protocols across the software supply chain. Apply risk assessments to third-party vendors, APIs, and cloud services, as even one weak link can compromise an entire network.

Building the Infrastructure for What’s Next

Modernizing IT infrastructure is no longer optional—it’s a strategic imperative. Agencies that build with interoperability in mind, aligning systems to support mission demands and collaboration across agencies, will be best positioned to thrive in today’s complex threat landscape.

As modernization accelerates, the focus must stay on mission readiness: making systems interoperable, scalable, and able to adapt in real time. The cost of inaction is measured in lost capability and missed opportunity. The next era of government operations demands an infrastructure that is agile, integrated, and secure by design.

Future-ready networks. Mission-ready operations. Modernizing your base network infrastructure is critical for increasing mission readiness, scalability, and security. Sumaria Systems provides the expertise and innovative solutions to integrate, protect, and optimize your network for peak performance. Discover how Sumaria can help you build a resilient, future-ready infrastructure.