Rather than have efficiencies imposed on them in fiscal year 2026, more agencies are considering establishing efficiency programs aimed at making measurable gains and driving IT innovation.
This is evidenced by the uptick in agencies talking about appointing a policy or technology champion to set their efficiency missions, success metrics and agendas.
Agencies appear to have recovered from the initial shock of government’s first attempt at rapid efficiency gains, and now it will fall to their efficiency champions to identify their people, process and technology assets. Additionally, these leaders should flag areas where agencies’ digital experience is frustrating or annoying for citizens.
With these learnings in hand, agencies can begin attacking pain points in major initiatives with technology.
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A Technology Approach to Efficiency, Starting With Code
CDW Government’s technology approach to efficiency consists of three lanes: code, infrastructure and the edge. That’s because these areas are where inefficiencies lie.
We consider ourselves a code-first company, so we’ll start there.
Agencies may have developed their code themselves, and it might be ancient or prototype code in production for a decade. That is not optimized. Another possibility is that agencies bought their code or software and continue to pay for any inefficiencies within it.
CDW Government recommends that agencies measure their code’s efficiency and determine where it is costing them next fiscal year. From there, agencies can put requirements for fixing these inefficiencies in future requests for proposals — something we’re not quite seeing yet despite conversations indicating that these requirements are coming.
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Finding Inefficiencies in Infrastructure and Edge Technology
If agencies opt not to start with their code, infrastructure is a much easier area to demonstrate ROI. Those looking for efficiencies should leverage established patterns for optimizing the cloud. But they also can’t neglect data centers, which lack the millions of users refining practices like they do with the cloud.
Efficiency metrics should be part of agencies’ infrastructure evaluation criteria, and it’s important to remember that while all efficiency is sustainability, not all sustainability is efficiency. Some sustainable practices simply don’t contribute to efficiency, and agencies should think before pursuing them.
As for the edge, agencies have deployed a wide array of inexpensive, energy-efficient sensors in remote locations, but there’s a networking element to optimizing them because they’re generating, collecting and sending back a continuous torrent of data.
Early adopters of edge technology may have small, outdated computing clusters that are the equivalent of an old, inefficient garage fridge when it comes to running up a power bill. In fiscal year 2026, these agencies should look to consolidate with newer, lower-latency infrastructure and send as many applications as possible to the cloud while shutting down the rest. The cloud affords agencies greater minute-by-minute visibility.
Remember, efficiency isn’t a one-time exercise but a mindset, like security, that requires a culture shift from agencies. Not all efficiencies require additional funding to implement, but agencies looking for tooling could do worse than Amazon Web Services’ cost and storage optimizers.
This article is part of FedTech’s CapITal blog series.
