The Covid-19 crisis has put a spotlight on how archaic government systems are failing to keep up with the times and handle an unexpected surge of applications for public assistance programs. Cybersecurity threats have demonstrated vulnerability in aging government IT systems. New missions and requirements for government technology capability have shown the limitations of 20th century technology systems and resources for addressing 21st century needs.

The scale of the problem is massive. According to our estimates, federal, state and local governments would have needed to spend an accumulated $316 billion more over the past 20 years to have kept up with the growth of software investment per worker in the private sector. This should be viewed as a lower bound on the shortfall in government IT investment, as this figure excludes hardware investments that also should have been made.