As agencies strive to modernize and innovate, they often accumulate technical debt – a concept that’s as real as financial debt, but often less visible. In fiscal year 2023, more than half of the planned spending on IT investments ($122 billion) was dedicated toward the operations and maintenance of existing investments.[i] The majority of IT budgets are consumed by maintaining older systems, and the problem of technical debt is becoming more critical. This growing burden limits innovation and increases the complexity of integrating modern technologies. Technical debt not only slows down development processes but poses vulnerabilities to cyber threats and the inability to meet modern mission demands.
What Is Technical Debt?
Technical debt refers to the implied cost of additional rework caused by choosing an easy solution now instead of using a better approach that would take longer. It’s like taking out a loan on your code – you get quick results, but you’ll pay interest in the form of increased difficulty in future changes.
What Causes Technical Debt?
Technical debt accumulates due to a complex interplay of factors that federal agencies often face in their IT operations. The ever-changing landscape of requirements and regulations in the federal sector often necessitates rapid adjustments to systems, sometimes at the expense of code quality or design integrity. This type of time pressures and tight deadlines frequently force teams to opt for quick fixes rather than robust, long-term solutions.
Budget constraints can limit the resources – and oftentimes, the seniority and experience of talent – available for comprehensive development and maintenance, leads to compromises in code quality or system architecture. Inadequate skills or knowledge within the team due to staffing constraints because of a limited budget can lead to suboptimal coding practices or architectural decisions.
Multi-vendor support systems fragment the technical design processes, and each team may have their own approach on how to support the overarching strategy, leading to disjointed decisions. Considering the varying contract lifecycles and vendor motivations affected by this acquisition cycle, future-proofing their solutions may not always be the team’s priority. This lack of comprehensive planning may result in decisions that solve immediate problems but create future complications that the government must work around. With the persistence of legacy systems pervasive throughout federal IT environments, the technical debt ceiling grows to seem an insurmountable cost as these outdated systems become increasingly difficult to maintain and integrate with modern solutions.
| The Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported in 2019 that some critical federal IT systems are over 50 years old, highlighting the potential scale of accumulated technical debt.[ii] |
How to Identify Technical Debt?
Identifying technical debt is a critical step in managing it effectively. By understanding the root causes and their trends, federal Chief Information Officers (CIOs) can make informed decisions about where to direct their focus in remediation.
Code Reviews and Audits: Regular, thorough code reviews help identify outdated coding practices, inefficiencies, and potential vulnerabilities. These reviews, conducted by experienced developers or automated tools, can reveal areas where shortcuts were taken or where code quality has degraded over time.
Performance Metrics Analysis: By closely monitoring system performance metrics such as response times, error rates, and resource utilization, CIOs can identify areas where technical debt is impacting system efficiency. There are also more obvious signs often indicate underlying technical debt, like sudden drops in performance or noticeable but gradual declines over time.
User Feedback and Bug Reports: End-users are often the first to experience the impacts of technical debt. Frequent complaints about system slowdowns, crashes, or difficulties in performing tasks can point to underlying technical issues. These increases in bug reports or reoccurrence frequency of similar bugs may indicate areas of the system burdened by technical debt.
Technical Debt Tracking Tools: Specialized software tools can help quantify and visualize technical debt across an organization’s IT portfolio. These tools often integrate with existing development environments and can provide metrics on code quality, complexity, and potential vulnerabilities.
Regular System Assessments: Periodic, comprehensive assessments of IT systems can reveal areas of technical debt that might be missed in day-to-day operations. These assessments should cover aspects such as architecture design, data management practices, integration points, and adherence to current best practices and standards.
5 Strategies CIOs Use to Keep Debt in Check
Reducing this debt requires a proactive and multi-faceted approach. Gartner recommends an integrative governance that considers the asset, portfolio, and infrastructure. Here are key strategies federal CIOs can use to get started in identifying technical debt:
5.1. Get Analytical About the Numbers
56% of CIOs expect to implement Agile, DevOps, or a similar flexible IT delivery model to increase IT responsiveness and help spur broader innovation ambitions.[iii] Unresolved technical debt creates unplanned friction in development and compromises the agility of these delivery models or even make it challenging to implement entirely. Quantifying technical debt helps agencies take a structured approach to managing it. Leveraging tools that offer quantitative measurements of their technical debt can help CIOs make data-driven decisions around prioritization and where to invest for highest impact. Tools like DX360°® TechDebt Guardian enable automated discovery and analysis that provide insights into areas where debt is accumulating.
5.2. Pay Down Your Debt with a “Payment Plan” Roadmap
Not all technical debt can be tackled at once. Successful CIOs review the severity and patterns of technical debt, relational impact between them, and the remediation requirements to create roadmaps that prioritize remediation based on feasibility, expected ROI, and alignment to the IT strategy and needs of the organization and users. For example, urgent issues, such as those that affect system security, are typically at the forefront – despite resource constraints – while less critical items are scheduled for the future.
In addition, ensuring that their strategies for paying down the technical debt includes reductions that support broader modernization efforts and cybersecurity initiatives balance immediate fixes with long-term improvements in a cost-effective way.
5.3. Treat Tech Debt as the Business Risk that It Is
Technical debt should not be treated as a purely IT problem—it’s a business risk. Poor code quality and outdated systems increase the chances of security breaches, system downtime, and operational inefficiencies. According to a report by McKinsey in a 2023 survey, CIOs estimate that tech debt amounts to 20-40% of the value of their entire technology estate (before depreciation)[iv].
This percentage highlights the importance of addressing technical debt and outdated infrastructure as both a cost-saving and risk-mitigation strategy. Federal CIOs are elevating technical debt discussions to ensure they receive greater visibility and become a shared priority across the agency. By leading these conversations, CIOs ensure that the entire leadership team is aligned in addressing the challenges posed by legacy systems and outdated technology, fostering a collaborative approach to remediation.
5.4. Practice Informed Intentionality
Sometimes technical debt is necessary for short-term gains and the importance of the objective outweighs debt risks and costs. The key is informed intentionality coupled with a clear plan for paying it off. This is particularly important when rolling out new technologies. Implementing governance frameworks helps federal CIOs create a discipline that prevents short-term decisions from creating long-term problems.
No different than choosing to buy a property or taking on other loans: debt can be good or bad but always intentional.
5.5. Actively Incorporate Debt Management
Managing technical debt isn’t a one-time project; it’s an ongoing effort. Recognizing this process can help CIOs adopt continuous monitoring practices to ensure that debt is regularly reviewed, evaluated, and addressed. Tools like DX360°® TechDebt Guardian assist in this ongoing process by continuously identifying areas where debt is accumulating, recommending remediation actions, and calculating remediation costs to simplify the review process. By implementing these strategies and tools, federal CIOs can gain a clear picture of where technical debt exists in their systems, its potential impacts, and can better prioritize areas for effective debt reduction. This proactive approach to identifying technical debt is crucial for maintaining agile, efficient, and secure federal IT systems in pace with modernization.
Conclusion
Managing technical debt isn’t about achieving perfection – it’s about making informed and conscientious decisions that balance short-term needs with long-term sustainability. With the right strategies and tools, federal CIOs can turn the tide on technical debt and pave the way for a more agile, efficient, and innovative federal IT landscape.
Managing debt is a complex and critical challenge for federal CIOs, but not insurmountable. By tackling technical debt head-on, federal CIOs can unlock their agencies’ potential for innovation, improve efficiency, and better serve the American people. These best practices and solutions, like DX360°® TechDebt Guardian, can help CIOs keep technical debt in check and their ambitious IT strategies on track. Request an early preview today: demo@netimpactstrategies.com
