How cloud can help agencies enhance security, save costs, and improve mission delivery through the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF)

With a new round of funding, the US federal government has the opportunity to advance the largest government-wide technology modernization program in a generation. As part of the American Rescue Plan that was signed into law in March, federal agencies are eligible to modernize their mission delivery with additional funding available in the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF). The TMF makes $1 billion available to executive branch agencies for technology modernization projects, prioritizing projects that modernize high-priority systems, address cybersecurity challenges, offer cross-government products, and improve the public’s ability to access government services.

In a recent update, the General Services Administration (GSA) and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) announced they will consider projects with minimal or partial repayment requirements depending on the scope of an agency’s proposal. Namely, the fund will support projects that address urgent modernization or cybersecurity issues facing the US government but which may not have a financial return that supports full repayment. The TMF board is now considering project proposals, which are due by June 2, 2021 for expedited consideration.

Cloud computing offers a variety of solutions agencies can consider for TMF projects. A few ideas (mapped to the TMF prioritization of funding guidelines) include:

• High-priority systems: Consider migrating your legacy, mission-critical applications to the AWS Cloud. Maintaining existing on-premises infrastructure increases an agency’s operational burden and drains IT budgets that area already resource strapped. Organizations that migrate to AWS from on-premises environments realize up to 51% in infrastructure cost savings. Once on AWS, it is simpler to modernize and re-architect application elements, leveraging cloud services and optimizations that provide the most significant benefits. Importantly, agencies also benefit from enhanced security and functionality on the cloud.
• Cybersecurity: AWS’s unparalleled resilient infrastructure and security services allow government customers to build highly available and secure workloads that incorporate FIPS 140-2 level encryption and key management for data security and privacy, zero-trust architectures and capabilities to elevate protections and minimize risks, and automate the governance, detection, and response to threats to minimize the scope and impact of events in near real time.
• Public-facing digital services: The COVID-19 pandemic placed unprecedented pressure on citizen services, at a time when they were most needed. Cloud modernization enables low-cost access to emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) for automation, omnichannel cloud contact centers for seamless support for citizens, and internet of things (IoT) for intelligent services that agencies can leverage to improve the citizen experience. By hosting public-facing applications and digital services in the cloud, agencies can securely store data in real-time, uncover meaningful data insights to improve citizen services, aggregate data from across the agency, and deploy analytics tools to generate insights to enhance delivery.

By working with AWS, federal government agencies can enhance security, innovate quickly, retire technical debt, and save costs that can be reinvested into the mission.

Agencies that are interested in learning about cloud solutions can visit our Cost Optimization Help Center or learn best practices for cloud cost optimization on AWS.

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