Survey Highlights Data Sharing Opportunity in Federal IT Modernization Efforts; Red Hat’s David Egts Comments

A new report by MeriTalk has found that 73 percent of federal information technology leaders said that deriving data from legacy applications is vital in efforts to advance government reform and use of shared services.

The publication said Thursday it conducted an online survey of 275 federal IT leaders in January for the report, which was underwritten by Red Hat, and respondents said they consider improved data sharing as a primary opportunity to speed up IT modernization.

“While improving security has long been a top priority, improving data sharing between new and legacy applications using [application programming interfaces], DevOps, microservices, and more speaks to how government IT is evolving,” said David Egts, chief technologist for Red Hat’s North American public sector.

“They are preparing for a cloud future and the need to connect data between clouds,” he added.

The study also found that 86 percent of federal IT managers said they believe APIs are critical in their agencies’ modernization plans, while 66 percent and 62 percent of respondents respectively said they think DevOps/agile integration and open-source software will have a favorable impact on IT modernization initiatives.

Seventy-three percent of IT professionals said their agencies have an IT modernization plan in place and 76 percent noted that their organizations have started to execute an incremental approach to IT system upgrades.