Booz Allen’s Lloyd Howell on Federal IT Modernization

Lloyd Howell, chief financial officer and treasurer at Booz Allen Hamilton, said he believes information technology modernization efforts within the federal government will continue and grow over time, the Washington Business Journal reported Wednesday.

“I think on some level, the need to modernize any agency or department’s IT infrastructure is always going to be there,” Lowell said. “We believe that the demand and the pressures to do so are only going to grow over time. To execute operationally what needs to get done is increasingly going to rely on technology advancement.”

He said the company is better prepared today to get through any future budget constraints than it was a decade ago when it filed for an initial public offering.

“What we do with our clients is think through scenarios that could impact them in a budget way and what their priorities will be if certain scenarios played out,” Howell told the publication. “That’s an ongoing dynamic, so as we enter these periods of uncertainty, we have a sense of what clients would like to do if they are in a more constrained environment or, if their budget would get increased, what they would want to devote those resources towards.”

He also offered insights on market conditions seven years ago when the company came up with the Vision 2020 strategy, which marked Booz Allen’s pivot toward artificial intelligence, data analytics, cybersecurity and other emerging technologies as investment areas.