Federal agencies rapidly falling behind commercial sector.

• Author: Clark, A.J.

(*) INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

The problems with Healthcare.gov caused a lot of linger pointing, hut not many people are looking at the problem from an overall technology perspective.

Sure, they're mentioning that too many users overwhelmed a website full of faulty links, but noone is talking about the real issue. Healthcare.gov is just the most high- profile example of seriously outdated federal government information technology. Most government IT is at least five years behind that of the mainstream commercial world of companies like Google, Facebook and Amazon.

In die past few years, there have been dozens of instances where the federal government has disrupted progress, slowed procedures, increased costs and even entirely stopped projects. It's not just the defense sector. The entire federal government is lagging.

As a military veteran, I have personally faced challenges in the Veterans Affairs system, whichstands in stark comparison to the relative ease with which I use my civilian United Healthcare insurance.

The government's effort to modernize the Army with technology such as smart combat vehicles andan advanced wireless command-and-control network is another high-profile case in which technology gaps contributed to a program failure. Future Combat Systems was cancelled in 2009, and although budget shortfalls were a factor, another reason it didn't work is that the new technology was meantto overhaul many old systems and bring them together.

Coupled with that daunting challenge were long-time government engineers who were, somew'hat rightfully, skeptical of new technology. Skepticism can be a good thing in that it can cause deeper investigation and study that provides a better outcome, but too much can cause gridlock.

In the meantime, die commercial industry has evolved into high-efficiency operations. It has moved from single providers figuring out entire cnd-to-end solutions to an industry where companies searching for a solution will adapt existing and proven technologies. Just substituting one component, for instance, using Amazon cloud or Google apps programs, can ring up cost savings of 25 to 30 percent.

One of the key fallouts from the government technology time warp is that young tech specialistsare declining to join the federal work force. A recent report from Freedman Consulting, commissioned by the Ford Foundation and die MacArthur Foundation, found that "deep questions remain about the ability for many areas of government...