Management

A Presidential Transition Cheat Sheet for Federal IT

How will the new Biden administration impact federal IT policy and personnel?

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Phil Goldstein is a former web editor of the CDW family of tech magazines and a veteran technology journalist. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife and their animals: a dog named Brenna, and two cats, Grady and Princess.

President Joe Biden and his administration will undoubtedly implement a wide range of new policies across the federal government, and this will reorient agencies’ focus in many areas.

Federal IT policy is one of the aspects of government that will likely have a large degree of continuity between the Trump and Biden administrations, as IT modernization is widely seen as an issue with bipartisan appeal. Some policies will continue largely unchanged, and the General Services Administration’s IT Modernization Centers of Excellence program was even codified into law in December 2020.

However, there are some areas where the new administration might change course or place a different level of emphasis. One area of pressing concern is cybersecurity, following the suspected Russian cyberattack against government agencies and the private sector that was discovered in December. Indeed, on Jan. 13, Biden named Anne Neuberger, the cybersecurity director at the National Security Agency, to the newly created position of deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technology on the National Security Council.

The people the Biden White House chooses for the roles of federal CIO, federal CISO and national cyber director will have their plates full, not just with responding to the cyberattack, but with helping the government move forward with supporting remote work as the coronavirus pandemic continues.

It’s a busy time in the realm of federal technology. Given that, FedTech has created a cheat sheet to help federal IT workers and the larger federal technology community stay on top of the changes that may be coming over the course of 2021. This guide covers the timing of expected personnel announcements, which policies might be tweaked and what career federal IT staff should be doing to help new CIOs as they assume their roles at agencies across the government.

It’s the start of a new era in federal IT, and FedTech will be delivering insights and reporting on the ways in which the Biden administration is impacting federal IT every step of the way.