President Donald Trump announced today he has signed an executive order creating a new technology council to move and update the U.S. government’s infotech systems.
A White House official confirmed today that about 20 technology CEOs will attend conferences at the White House in early June to talk about enhancing government information technology.
“Americans deserve better digital services from their government. To effectuate this policy, the federal government should change and update its infotech and how it uses and delivers digital services,” Trump’s executive order dated April 28 stated.
Trump has held a number of conferences with leading tech CEOs since becoming president, consisting of Apple, Facebook, Alphabet, Microsoft, Tesla and others.
In March, Trump signed a different order to overhaul the federal government. Trump tapped Jared Kushner in March to head a White House Office of American Innovation to take advantage of business ideas and possibly privatize some government functions as the White House pushes to diminish government, cut federal employees and eliminate policies.
Formally called the American Technology Council, Chris Liddell is going be its director. He is the White House director of strategic initiatives, and previously worked as Microsoft and General Motors co chief financial officer.
A 2016 U.S. Government Accountability Office report openly approximated the United States government spends over $80 billion in IT every year, but said costs has fallen by $7.3 billion since 2010. In 2015, there were no less than 7,000 separate IT investments by the U.S. government, the report stated.
The $80 billion figure does not consist Defense Department categorized IT systems; and 58 independent executive branch agencies, consisting of the Central Intelligence Agency, the report stated.
The GAO report informs that U.S. government IT investments “are becoming progressively outdated: many use outdated software languages and hardware parts that are unsupported.”
The report discovered some companies are using systems that have parts that are at least 50 years old. “The Department of Defense utilizes 8-inch floppies in a legacy system that coordinates the operational functions of the country’s nuclear forces,” the report stated.
The report informed that the Defense Department plans to upgrade the system by the end of September.
